Modern single-driver speakers - thoughts ?

Hornshoppe Horns are special and get even better with the Heil upgrade

I am thinking of buying a pair of Blumestein Orca's to go with my many low powered tube amps. I want to see how they compare to my HSH's.

If you do get them, please let us know how they compare. I've always been interested in the HSH's.

If you are looking for a single driver speaker, I'd also consider some Omegas as well. I've got some Orcas and Omegas and they are two different sounding approaches to the single driver concept.
 
If you do get them, please let us know how they compare. I've always been interested in the HSH's.

If you are looking for a single driver speaker, I'd also consider some Omegas as well. I've got some Orcas and Omegas and they are two different sounding approaches to the single driver concept.

Seikosha, how would you describe those differences? I guess you have the Orca's broken in ?
 
I am interested in this as well. Fostex drivers take forever to break in properly.
 
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Hi Tone_Boss,

Here’s a Q&D so far comparing the Omega Super 3xrs vs. the Blumenstein Orcas.

The Orcas have about 80 hours of music on them now. I’m sure they still have more burning in to do based on my experience with Fostex drivers. I think cabinet design/philosophy has a lot to do with the differences I’m hearing so far between these two designs. Louis, the Omega designer puts in a lot of effort to take the sound of the cabinet out of the listening equation. He uses at least 4 layers of different materials bonded together including some kind of rubber sheeting, if I recall correctly, to dampen and control the sound. Also, the cabinets on the Omegas are also partially filled with sand. Clark Blumenstein, in contrast, uses his cabinets to accentuate and tailor the sound of his driver. There is absolutely no damping in his cabinets, just bracing that is used allowing/tailoring the sound of the cabinet to work with the sound of the driver.

Lightly tap on the driver in the Omega (am I the only one who does this…sometimes I swear it can give you a sense of a speaker’s coloration ) and you don’t get much sound at all except the sound of the light resonant frequency of the paper cone. When you tap on the driver of the Orca, it’s almost as if you just tapped on a drum. You’ll get a surprisingly reverberant sound shooting out the port. The Orcas are very lively and for me a little too ambitious in the upper bass which just seems to try a little too hard. I almost get the feeling that the Orcas are saying…”hey, look at how much bass I can get out of this little driver.”

I seem to be pretty picky about my bass. I like it to be very tight and only there when it’s supposed to be, and I don’t need that typical mid bass hump that most speakers seem to present. What I would call too much is normal to many folks. That said, the bass on the Orcas seems to be driven as much by the sound of the cabinet as the driver itself and it doesn’t have the definition that you get with the Omegas.

Being larger floorstanders, with a greater cabinet volume, the bass on the Omegas does of course go lower. That said, neither design gives true lower bass. The Omegas in my room start rolling off below 60hz. I’ve not measured the Orcas yet, but what I hear tells me that the cutoff point is higher for sure. Both speakers sound much larger than you’d expect.

From the midrange up, the Orcas are just a little brighter compared to the Omegas. I wouldn’t describe neither as being particularly better, however I suspect that ultimately, the Orcas do go higher. Both are very fast and cohesive making the conventional sounding speakers I have sound slow and heavy. Both image very well and throw out a well spread out and deep soundstage.

The Omegas are significantly more efficient than the Orcas and sound considerably better using my two low powered SET and SEP tube amps vs. solid state. With the Orcas, the tubes don’t have nearly the advantage that they do with the Omegas and perhaps that’s due to the big difference in efficiency. If I run the Omegas on solid state, I can’t wait to put the tubes back in, not because the solid state sounds so bad, it’s just that the tubes have a crazy good synergy with the Omegas. I don’t get that to the same extent with the Orcas.

Last point; as I stated previously, the Orcas only have about 80 hours on them. Their character over time could still certainly change as they continue to be played. I fully expect them to at least continue to mellow out just a little more so don't take what I say as the last word.

Hope that helps and if anyone else out there has the two speakers, I’d love to hear their impressions as well to see how they compare to mine.
 
Seikosha, thanks for the excellent review/comparison. Very interesting differences.

+1. Very nice write up! :thmbsp:

Your write up makes me want to look at the Omegas as a second high efficiency speaker. I like the Orca's for their smaller size, but I really have the need for a very easy to drive speaker. I have also discovered that any amp (SS or otherwise) that has a high damping factor, does not have the synergy with the HSH's that my low powered tube amps have. I have tried many combinations and always come up with the same results. The one SS amp that I have that does well with the Hornshoppe Horns is my Pass F5. The F5 has a lower damping factor and really sounds nice with a small single driver speakers. Even then, I prefer the sound of my main three tube amps with the HSH's: Dennis Had SEP, Bottlehead Stereomour, and APPJ Miniwatt N3. All three have a unique sonic signature that varies even more as I roll different tube combinations in. I have another low powered SE tube amp coming that is being built by Kegger that I am looking forward to trying as well. I also want to try the Tekton line at some point, but my goal is to refrain from buying "big" speakers. I just don't have the space necessary for them to be at their best.
 
I've got the birch. I'm cheap! :)

Ok just curious, the bamboo enclosures are sized a little differently and they say the sound is different. I wonder if thats from the dimensions, material, or something internal. Like you mentioned they are big on the cabinet component in the sound.
 
I had a nice conversation with the owner of Blumenstein on Saturday. He actually called me back late on a Saturday to discuss his speakers, which impressed me. We talked about our personal gear and Seattle as well as his products. He is a very nice and down to earth dude. I am definitely going to buy the custom base Blumenstein sells for the Bottlehead Stereomour. Still deliberating on the Orca's though.
 
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Orca with 3" Fostex FE83en - $499

Madisound's Kanspea with 3" Fostex FE83en ( includes t-amp ) - $159

Madisound's Kanspea with 4" Fostex FE103En ( includes t-amp ) - $179
 
Orca with 3" Fostex FE83en - $499

Madisound's Kanspea with 3" Fostex FE83en ( includes t-amp ) - $159

Madisound's Kanspea with 4" Fostex FE103En ( includes t-amp ) - $179

For what it's worth, I've got the Orcas and the 4" Kanspea set and while the Kanspeas are great for the price and better than some little PSB's and NHT's that I've had, they don't come close to the Orcas in sound or build quality. For the price, I sure wish they did.

The port seems to be made almost of cardboard, the cabinet is probably pressboard and the binding terminals are old school clip style which will only take bare wire. Again, nice speakers, but one would be disappointed if they thought they could purchase these and get as good sound as they'd get out of the Orcas.

Comparing the two first hand gives you a true appreciation for cabinet tuning. There is a lot more to the final result than the cost, size or specs of the drivers. The Orcas use smaller and cheaper drivers than my Kanspeas, but they sure don't sound like it. Listening to the two, you'd swear that the bigger and more expensive driver was in the Orca.

Clark has frequent sales on his speakers so it's easy to buy them for less than list if you are patient and keep your eye on his website for specials.

I would whole heartedly recommend the Kanspeas to someone who wants to get a feel for single driver sound.
 
Indeed; they (the Kanspea "kits"( are not bad at all - and the drivers can always be repurposed later in more appropriate enclosures (maybe TLs or folded, tapered quarter-wave tubes, e.g.). Dollar for dollar, they're great add-on speakers for compact systems -- and they even acquit themselves (again, on a per-dollar spent basis) on more serious hardware.

It is interesting to note that Fostex's recommended enclosure designs often don't appear to be particularly great choices for their drivers.
 
I guess you could use other 4" speakers in these also.

Not necessarily. There are a number of parameters unique to each speaker that will determine what kind of box is the best for it. To further complicate matters, there are different computer simulation programs out there to input these parameters into in order to compute the best size cabinet. However, there are some variations in the results depending upon which computer program you use.

And then there are port sizes, port lengths, stuffing, bracing, wood type, horn vs. br designs etc. etc.

Bottom line, you can put two different 4 inch drivers in the same box and one could sound less than ideal if the box is optimized for the other.

One can go mad trying to figure out what the best box design is for a given speaker.
 
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