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.