A thread to discuss all things Ωmega speakers and even to shoot the breeze about full range single driver speakers since it’s an inclusive subject.
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It’s not the best way to open a thread, but what the hell, let’s do it differently tonight.
I was pissed, I waited 7 months for my speakers and when I opened up the box I see what to me looked like crappy quality control. The whizzer cone on my Omega Junior XRS Alnico driver was all folder over back onto itself.
After some ranting and fucking and motherfucking and goddaming I got in touch with Louis and he said there was no way he’d let something like that happen. That it’s rare but he’s seen it before when a shipper drops a box square on it’s side (the wrong side being the front facia down) and that the air pressure alone causes the squoosh. The whizzer cone looked perfectly folder over onto itself, just the area of the rim, like an origami.
Well, Louis got a replacement driver out to me a day later it’s installed and I can begin my break in process in earnest now.
Interestingly enough, I took a picture of the back of the Omega driver as I hadn’t been able to find one on the internet. The alnico (aluminum, nickle, cobalt) hence the name is VERY small compared to a typical magnet structure for a 6 1/2" driver.
here you can clearly see the seam on the whizzer where it folder back onto itself. I was able to straighten it out and listen to it for a couple of days but interestingly enough I could clearly hear the drop off on the high end versus the other undamaged speaker.
Here’s a picture of the magnet structure. For reference, that’s a quarter on top so you can see how remarkably small the magnet is.
After reading a bit into alnico magnets apparently their power can be greatly increased by a precisely controlled cool down process and you can manufacture very specific strengths by aligning the polarity in in varying angles based on how it’s cooled down.
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A 17 lbs slab of granite, feet attached with a flexible layer of silicone adhesive and teflon sliders underneath as well as a layer of white tack putty between the granite and the bottom of the speaker. A shit ton of stability and pretty decent vibration isolation. $78 total expense.
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Spent a good bit of time with two sets of ears on my Omegas yesterday. It goes such a long way in the hobby to be able to listen and discuss with a friend what you’re hearing. Both the similarities and differences. And yes, there are differences but not so much in that we’re hearing different things but that we enjoy and focus and critique different aspects of the same piece.
The speakers have about 50 good hours on them, according to Louis, they’ll be fully broken in at about 150 so a good long way still to go.
That being said, I’m seeing more and more flashes of brilliance but more importantly, flashes of brilliance in the types of things I put a lot of emphasis on. My room is always going to be a limiting factor being 9.5’ by 11.5. So my working room is restricted coupled with the fact that it’s an office and a listening room so I’m compromised on my furniture arrangement to begin with.
I’m so impressed by the fact that one full range driver can do so much. The stage width and depth on them is impressive. Instrument separation and instrument placement is excellent. To my aging ears, they’re a little rolled off on top, but conversations and reading all point to the top being what’s going to continue to develop over the next couple of weeks. They’re also very dynamic, with a lot of detail presented at low volume, 60 to 65 dB in my sitting position. So far the only struggle is they have a tendency to get shouty in the vocal range if given past a certain amount of toe when chasing for a more precise center image. This would not be near as much an issue in a larger space however.
Last comment for now, the sound treatment panels do their thing, so a hearty recommendation from me on that being best practice solution if you’re serious and have no constraints by the WAF. Roughly an $850 dollar expense for 7 purpose built panels and it’s probably one of the best investments I’ve made in the hobby.
I’d probably go back and change the dimensions of some of the panels but it would be more for practicality rather than performance.
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I want to take a moment to comment on just how GREAT the spatial dimension of the sound coming out of these speakers is in @dB_Cooper 's room. I really have developed a love for making speakers disappear and not being able to easily isolate sound radiating directly from the speaker itself, having the speaker hide in the music is beautiful. It was a wonderful surprise to get a feel for the depth these Omega’s exhibited in Johnny’s room. I have not before experienced a speaker push the depth back so far, it felt like it was coming from “behind”/ deep in the back wall 
That was REALLY COOL!
He has a few inches of play space around each speaker and I know he will take full advantage of that to move them a tiny bit each way in the future till he finds the soundstage he enjoys best w/ his equipment.
If you have ever been on the fence in trying a single driver speaker that has no crossover, professionally built or even DIY, I highly recommend taking the chance on this design/style. I am constantly amazed at just how good they sound in various spaces. 
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I think that’s the fun/challenge in 2 channel listening. Where as a HP chain is relatively fixed and will yield the same results for different people, a 2 channel chain can be tailored so much by placement, room dimensions, room treatment leading to very different presentations.
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Further update on the Omegas. Listen to people, try their suggestions but be willing to say you don’t like it if you don’t like it. I tried moving the speakers in a bit and play with the toe angle but at least in the room, I felt the stage compressed a little bit and I didn’t like it as the center image didn’t improve as I was expecting it to.
They seem to be very sensitive to toe and I’m thinking that because of the lack of a tweeter, I need to make sure that I’m exact with the overall geometry. They really shift a lot left and a lot right with my shifting my head left or right.
My previous Philharmonic monitors had a MUCH broader sweet spot range. So although I was very happy with the sound I was getting with before I started playing, and for the most part the speakers to get good sound are relatively easy to place. They’re more temperamental when trying to extract great sound via placement. I am also not sitting at ear level exactly to the center of the driver, so I’m going to have to rethink the existing feet I attached to the granite plinth. I need another inch and a half.
(that’s what she said)
So after going back and placing everything where I originally had them, and taking advantage of the additional 15 or 20 hours of break in, I’m starting to see where the speakers really shine and that is in lower levels of volume. It doesn’t take much, but it’s very noticeable especially when listening to the speakers at around 60 or 65 estimated spl. I’m hearing a lot more detail and nuance in quiet passages of source content. Like a lot more detail, things that are happening below the singer’s voice etc. Not sure if what I’m hearing is the speakers per se, or the entirety of the chain, but where I’m seeing the chain excel most is in that range.
Nothing else that I’ve listened to has given me the amount of information I’m hearing at the lower volumes and it’s actually a lot of fun when the house quiets down at night and I close the door to the room. In other words, not EDM times. lol
Lastly, here’s the system as it stands, the Kimble Kable TC8 may be something I look at at some point but I think they actually may be a good fit for the chain so we’ll see how things go.
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Sit still, stop squirming around in your chair, enjoy the excellent detail and dimension you have end enjoy your system. It’s a one man room, you don’t need anything beyond the spot your head sits in exactly in the sweet spot you can make. 
also you do realize those speakers are projecting past the back of your wall right? That’s so cool, I think it has to do with the excellent sound treatment you have applied everywhere. 
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They’re done. I’ve come to that conclusion over the last couple of days as I don’t hear any further progression but the last 1/3 of the break in period did bring a more delicate presentation at lower volume and a decent chunk of stage area with yet more definition and micro detail that’s been making feel more and more like this pairing was a great choice.
The single point source of sound presents a more focused image between the speakers and everything sounds appropriately sized and scaled. By that I mean that instruments and singers are proportionately sized. No eight foot tall head singing or instruments that would dwarf a human being.
I thought the speakers lacked that airy sparkle but after some measuring my ear level was about 1 1/4 inch below the center of the drivers and adding risers (more on that below) to the granite plinth brought a noticeable increase in just that. Everything from that 8K to 10K range is much more tangible and adds an additional layer to the space and room placement of instruments.
I wasn’t expecting much more than that from risers, but after a few hours listening I’ve come to the conclusion that they have tightened everything up. I don’t know if raising the speakers to ear level would do that but something is tightening up the image in a similar way a cleaner clock would clean up the sound. There’s less smearing on the lower end.
This is what I bought, they were $29 bucks with shipping. Chi-Fi risers, clearly a knock off of the Finite Element Cerabase product line but they’re working for sure.
For anyone curious, here are the links.
Now that the break in period and set up is pretty much done, I’m just going to focus on some final observations and perhaps compare them to the only other similar speaker that I’ve had, the Zu Dirty Weekend. They’re clearly different but they’re peers in the space so I might as well.
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Omega Mikro cables for my Omegas. Naturally right? I mean they MUST have synergy? What if components were like Geranimals, that their naming convention would automatically tell you what other components they’d have guaranteed synergy with? One can only think of stupid ideas like that when a little punch drunk from lack of sleep because of a long listening session the night before.
In short, they’re a good fit for the speakers. Cables can and do make a difference, YMWV but please do yourself a favor when you’re good with everything else in your chain, experiment a little with cabling.
That wonderful euphonic Omega midrange expanded a little, more up than down but the high end gained a little bit of sweetness, feeling a little bit more organic and it helped to counterbalance the LTA Ultralinear and Weiss that are both detailed in nature and if you don’t pay attention, they can move from an enjoyable technical to a clinical/antiseptic. What’s the tradeoff for all this gained goodness? Interestingly when I compare them to the Kimber Kable 8TC that I replaced, they’re not as deep in the lower register, they seem to roll off a bit steeper or earlier and I found myself going back and having to readjust the sub to dial everything back in. Gave it approximately 15 Hz higher crossover, from about 60 up to 75 Hz. Getting back on the plus column, they have a considerable impact in expanding the stage in every dimension which for me is the real boon here with the center focal image feeling more tangible, more precise, while moving the sound boundaries out about another 5 degrees.
Really lucky used find for me as these are not common in the used market and the guy I bought them from is local so we spent about a half hour just shooting the audio breeze and he’s a regular at the bar my daughter and her husband run so I get to throw that back at my wife for the idiot comment the previous day. 
I’ll think of something else to say I’m sure but for now the only real negative to these is that they take A LOT of work to set up as you want to maintain a constant relative distance between the cables and they are fragile AF, I mean it would take absolutely nothing to damage them.
I’m going to enjoy the rest of the weekend exploring what they can do.
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Woodwinds, oboe, clarinet, flute, sax… They sound absolutely glorious on the Omegas. Between the new cables and now the addition of a second sub which seems to address precisely what I was looking for after the change of cables, I feel as if I’m running out of things to nit pick on.
What am I going to do next? lol
I enjoyed my Zu a lot but even they didn’t really bring the coherency that a single full range driver seems to be able to present. The Omegas have been such a wonderful revelation.
way too early to start eyeing Voxativ. yes, way too early.
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How about PureAudioProject open baffle with Voxativ drivers?
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I would love an open baffle, it’s just that I simply don’t have the room! If I can find something that would work in a 10 X 12 room…
There are also a lot of designs out there that leverage Voxativ drivers. But don’t stir the pot. I’ve only had these for a month or so!
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and so damn pretty to boot!
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BTW the Audiophiliac has one in the wings for a review. Looking forward to that one.
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It amazes me how much the sound of a speaker can change with minor repositioning. I’ve had my Omegas now going on two months by the thread date. In that time I located their general positioning, after I got them. They needed quite a bit of breaking in so it’s hard to judge placement too much in those early days. Primarily just focused on breaking in.
After a couple dozen hours though they were already showing signs of the elements I’ve come to love about them. Mainly that correctness in the mids, their accuracy and coherency of staging and instrument separation. (perhaps their biggest strength)
I’ll let others decide whether this is to do with the single driver or the crossoverless design or both. I just don’t have enough experience with other loudspeakers to say for myself.
But after some constant steady what I would call improvement, first with attaching them to a granite plinth, then with the anti vibration feet, the continued break in process and some ongoing fine tuning in their placement. I’ve been really happy with their overall sound.
A big change with the speakers however came when I decided to connect them with the Omega cables I’ve talked about here previously. They added so much more detail and spacial information in the top half of the spectrum that I knew I wanted to keep them. However… what they added on top, they made an impact below and I have spent quite a bit of time chasing that mid to low end of the spectrum density and correctness that I’d lost.
Some reconfiguration of the subwoofer integration helped. A second subwoofer helped some more still, but I was still chasing that corporal density and authority to male vocals and husky female vocals. Annie Lennox, Amy Winehouse, Lake Street Dive in general. Or Celeste, on Stop This Flame and Jessie Reyes on Far Away to give more particular examples.
So last night after again fooling around with the subwoofers and not finding that last little oomph. I decided to go from about 3 degrees of toe, to about 1.5 degrees of toe.
Wow, what a difference.
Don’t be afraid to move your speakers even when you think you’ve got them right, continued “experimentation” is a way to confirm you have them right.
1.5 fucking degrees… wow, this hobby.
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@orrman ,
Quote from another post….“I think the Kimber works kind of well balancing the Omega speakers so might try some tube rolling to get that added weight.”
Respectfully, I worry you might be wasting money rolling tubes on the LTA, the weight you seek will eventually be added by getting your subwoofer properly operational in your room and in tune w/ those Ωmega speakers. Don’t forgetbthe Omega have a classic A curve, with more weight in the midrange and a lighter and slightly rolled off top and bottom end.
Being a hybrid amp. I think the LTA’s don’t vary much w/ a tube roll and will maintain their classic sound signature despite your best attempts to find tubes that will add the “weight” you seek.
Thanks Nick! I do think the Telefunken 12ax7 and 12au7 that I already rolled definitely changed the sound a bit compared to the stock. Kimber Cable probably did a little too but yeah the sub integration is definitely first on my list. I was missing a bit weight with the SVS as well so we’ll see afterwards.
I really like the Omega for their speed and timbre. Real instruments sound excellent. Treble is right where I’d like it to be. Detail and stage are also good. Just a bit more lushness that’s what I think I need.
Maybe I’ll try both subs if I have the time and energy.
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dbCopper mixed subs with very good results. Try the high level speaker input too and see if that changes things. Also, absolutely a bottom loaded sub will play differently from the SVS sub and will require some moving around to find its sweet spot…