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ORION Construction Plans+It is my objective with this information to bring high accuracy 2-channel sound reproduction into the homes of music lovers, who enjoy building their own speakers, who want to learn about advanced speaker design or who could not afford a commercial product of comparable sonic quality. A finished speaker like this would easily cost five times as much, because of labor, overhead, marketing and distribution costs, and this without anyone getting rich. I believe the performance of the ORION is at such high level, that you will have great difficulty to find a comparable speaker regardless of price. When building the speaker you will need to have some woodworking capability or find a cabinet maker. At minimum a circular saw and a saber saw are required, but not a router. For the crossover you must load and solder components onto a printed circuit board, and connect wires where indicated. The finished assembly must to be tested electrically to avoid using the costly drivers as fault indicators. A digital voltmeter, D-cell battery and CD player are sufficient for spot checks. Acoustic measurements are not necessary.
The ORION Construction Plans+ contain:
The Construction Plans+ have all the
documentation (30 pages) to build the speakers, but it requires some skills in wood working,
electronic assembly and test. However, I would like to make the ORION accessible to you
even when you lack some or all of those skills. Therefore I offer optionally a fully assembled
crossover/equalizer and power supply for $800. The parts alone cost about $450, so in effect your incremental cost is
only $350 for assembly and test by a friend of mine. Alternatively, for $60 we will
test and, if necessary, repair the crossover/equalizer that you loaded yourself
using the ASP circuit boards. The cost of the ORION Construction Plans+ is $290 plus
shipping. The total project cost depends upon how much of your own time you are willing to spend on it. For budgetary purposes consider that the minimum material cost for the ORION project, including tax and shipping, is approximately $2300 without power amplifiers. Pre-assembled electronics, power amplifiers, pre-cut wood or finished cabinets add to this cost as shown in the table. Building a set of speakers takes 50+ hours of your time under plan A. Under plan B you would purchase the electronics from us. Under C you add the 12-channel ATI power amplifier that I can procure for a special price. Under C you get out of the wood cutting work. The $$ figures are estimates, but they give you an indication of how you can make up for your lack of time or skill in a particular area, by letting someone else do the work. There are even more options on the Wood Artistry website. I wanted to make the ORION accessible to a wide range of audiophiles at the lowest possible price. Everyone involved in this endeavor should receive a fair reward for their contribution but not more. The ORION is truly "value priced" but not in the typical sense of those words. At least not as they are used for the upper price ranges of the "high-end" loudspeaker market where the ORION might find competition.
1 Madisound offers a 10% discount
if the eight drivers are purchased together.
They sell these manufactured parts only to owners of the ORION Construction Plans. The cabinet construction that is described in the Construction Plans uses butt joints and no dowels and requires minimal woodworking skills. Only the curved side panels and the top dress panel may pose a challenge to the novice. They can be bought from Wood Artistry, professionally made. There are several manufacturing oriented changes, like stronger snap-on grill frames, hiding the driver wiring, midrange driver mounting posts, veneered top edges of the woofer cabinet so the plywood layer edges will not show, etc. All these also make the kits better. The Construction Plans require you to solder wires to 16 driver terminals and to 16 lugs on the terminal strips to which also the speaker cables are soldered. This results in very reliable connections. Alternatively, the Wood Artistry wiring harness with female Spaekon connector eliminates all soldering tasks, but requires that your 8-conductor speaker cable is terminated with a male Speakon connector, or that you purchase the complete 20 foot speaker cable assembly below.
The loudspeaker drivers used in this design, their arrangement, and the dimensions of the cabinet, together with the specific electronic crossover/equalizer and the use of multiple, identical solid-state power amplifiers are essential elements of the ORION. Speakers can be built with different components, but then it is not an ORION. Please do not ask me for free advice about modifying the ORION. Study the PHOENIX project and then try on your own. Let me know when you find something of significance.
Items that can be purchased from Linkwitz Lab:
(1) - The ORION Project Documentation is required in all cases, either for building the ORION yourself or as license when built by someone else. Do not order the ASP boards, if you buy the assembled crossover/equalizer. (2) - Assembled and tested ORION Crossover/Equalizer in a desktop enclosure of 17" x 8" x 1.75" with clear, static free polycarbonate cover. Separate rack ears are included. The unit is ready to be connected between your preamplifier and 6 or 8 power amplifiers.
Your net cost for this option is about $300 which pays for assembly, test and delivery.
The cost of the parts that you would have to purchase,
if you built the XO/EQ yourself, is about $450. Thus $748 is a good deal. (3) -
External 115VAC, 60 Hz line input, +/-12 VDC, 300 mA output power
supply. (4) -
External 90-250VAC, 47-440 Hz line input, +/-12 VDC, 300 mA output power
supply.
The 5-pin DIN output connector of the power supply provides: (5) - Full checkout of the assembled ASP crossover/equalizer. This option can be ordered later when you have a need for it. Contact me for the appropriate shipping address. Add return shipping to the $60. (6) - The AT6012 is rated at 60 W/channel into 8
ohm FTC full bandwidth output power, with all 12 channels driven simultaneously.
The power supply has high current reserve and a 2000 VA transformer. Two ORION speakers utilize 8 amplifiers, which leaves 4
amplifiers for any future use, such as surround
speakers. The actual power output of the individual amplifiers is more than
sufficient for midrange and tweeter. A separate amplifier channel is allocated
to each of the 10" woofer drivers to obtain output capability that is
commensurate with the midrange, yet minimizes bottoming and the risk of
mechanical damage to the woofers, or having to reduce the speaker's low
frequency extension. At very high sound levels the amplifiers clip first, which
gives a clearly audible warning to turn down the volume. You can spend more on
amplifiers, but they are not going to improve the accuracy of sound reproduction
in this application of driving frequency band limited, easy loads.
(7) - The AT1806
is a six channel power amplifier rated at 180 W per channel. It is capable of
producing slightly higher output volume from the ORION between 20 Hz and 60 Hz
with a maximum of 5 dB at 40 Hz.
Above 60 Hz it will deliver 2 dB less output than two AT6012 channels driving
the two 10" units individually. When using the AT1806, the two 10" woofers of each speaker are connected in parallel to a single
amplifier channel. The crossover/equalizer requires no modification. Amplifier alternatives (8)
- A special Hi-Flex 8-conductor speaker cable with a male Neutrik
Speakon connector
at the speaker end and four dual banana plugs of different color at the amplifier
end. The cable length is 20 feet (6 m). The conductors are #14 AWG.
Shipment
Payment optionsYou can pay with credit card over the Internet by using PayPal. In that case, please add a 3% payment fee (4% international) to the total cost of Kit and shipping. My address for PayPal is: sl@linkwitzlab.com . Alternatively you can purchase and send me a Postal Money Order, International Money Order, Western Union or Thomas Cook Money Order, or a Bank (cashier's) Check drawn in $USA currency and made out to Siegfried Linkwitz. I will wait with shipment against a personal check from a US bank until my bank has cleared it. A direct transfer of money from your bank to my bank account is not feasible due to unpredictable additional fees. Send your payment to: LINKWITZ LAB
Ordering informationSend an e-mail message with the subject "ORION order" to tell me
the details of your order and to provide me with shipping information. (1) - ORION Construction Plans+ (2) - Assembled crossover/equalizer ($748):
0 (6) - AT6012 power amplifier ($1645): 1 (8) - 2 Speaker cables with Speakon and banana plugs ($270): 0 * Power supplies are sold only in conjunction with the assembled xo/eq and not separately. Subtotal $1935.00 Shipment of: Shipment total $10.00 Total order $1945 PayPal fees (3% US, 4% international) $58.35 PayPal / Money Order in the amount of: $2003.45 sent on 14 July 2006 . Note: All material is copyrighted and for the personal, non-commercial use by the person who bought it from LINKWITZ LAB. It may not be passed on in any form for use by others. Comments: Anything you want to tell me
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