Thank you for the priceless data. I built my first speaker in 1968. Open back baffle. I was lucky, because I was ignorant, yet it “worked” because I loaded it with near-wall placement. I have built a few rigs in my time, but they would all have been better had I known what you have discovered.

I was really interested in this speaker. All the amplifiers required turned me away. I love watching these videos and learning more with each video. I can't imagine the time spent on all of these videos. Thank you I really appreciate all you have done.

Thanks Danny , great info , I inherited a pair of these , using a digital drive rack to control these , some things like that magnesium cone breakup at 5 k , Yep goes off like a fire alarm, thanks for all the great info about what these are doing !!

Another great video, Danny! I've never heard of these before but it's interesting to see how easy these were were to fix, esp when compared to the Klipsch RF 7IIs from the last video.

I've been running a set of Orions since version 3.1. I did the update to version 3.3 later. The Peerless bass drivers do have a serious limit to their excursion. I added a pair of subs, crossed over at 50 hz, which eliminates that as an issue. I manage them with a miniDSP DDRC24 active crossover, which has a DIRAC DSQ EQ feature. I measured system response in my room and had it create a custom filter to approximate a Harman curve. This is still a very good sounding system. I have yet to have an audiophile visitor not complement this system. As for Danny's comments on active crossovers and the amplification choice here, he totally ignores the reason Siegfried chose to go this route instead of doing a passive crossover. A single loudspeaker driver is an inductor, and provides a frequency dependent, reactive load to an amplifier. So by its very nature, a bare driver does not provide a flat response. Now if you put a passive crossover circuit in front of it, you add capacitors, resistors and inductors, which then give you a frequency dependent impedance curve which looks like a Coney Island roller coaster. And that's just for a tweeter high-pass circuit. Now when you add in mid and bass drivers, with high and low pass filters there... It's a real mess. But we're not done there yet. Nope. Many of your extreme hi-end loudspeakers add in equalization to their crossover designs, which makes that impedance curve even worse. This is very hard for an amp to properly manage. That's why people drop many, many thousands of dollars on things like Krell, Threshhold, Bryston, or Rowland Research solid state power amps. Now when you use an active crossover, an amp channel only has to manage a single driver. There's no passive, reactive component in between the amp and the loudspeaker driver. Then you don't need a megabuck amp to deal with it. All of the Linkwitz loudspeaker designs use active crossovers. Earlier designs used analog crossovers, but his last designs were all digital crossovers. There are some digital crossovers that offer DSP EQ, which allows you to tailor the total system response for the room you are in. Then you're not just limited to whatever sound your speakers give you in the room you're stuck with. The lowest cost active crossovers are typically pro grade, from manufacturers like Behringer, dbx, Rane or even Nady. There are many manufacturers. Some of the best known home audio digital crossovers are from miniDSP. Another major benefit is that you can use much, much lower powered amps when you use active crossovers. A lot of power is wasted having to push through a passive crossover. You really don't need to push many watts into a tweeter or mid-range driver to get a lot of level out. You could even run a single ended tube amp on your tweeter, and a mid-level tube power amp on your mid-range driver, and a solid state amp for the bass driver. You have a lot of options. Were I to do this project again, I'd probably prefer to use the longer throw SEAS bass drivers now used in the LX521, and possibly use a passive crossover between the tweeter and 8" mid-bass driver. The comments about baffle interference have merit, but nearly 20 years ago when this speaker was designed, that wasn't seen as a big deal. Obviously Linkwitz changed his mind, which is why the LX521 design does speak to it. With a passive crossover on the upper drivers, this could be bi-amped with a miniDSP DDRC24 and would not need subs, which would allow for more amplification choices than I currently have. That aside, as it is, my system still sounds good enough that whenever I get the urge to go in a different direction and then sit down for a careful listen, that urge goes away. I'm in the San Francisco area. After the pandemic is over, get in touch and come by for a listen.

Good one! More of your wonderful info is more appreciated in my case

When talking about the diffraction caused by the baffle was to reshape the baffle into a round and radiused shape - i.e. the top of the baffle would be round over the top of the tweeter. Is this possible and what would the likely impact be?

Thanks for the interesting and good explanation, my friend made diy orion speakers which really didn't play well and I agree with the findings. I'm interested in what distance you perform speaker measurements, and what do you think is better when making 2 wey cross. to make a classic 12db / oct ... or to go to 6db / oct but with added RC imped. compensator for wofer and RL compensator for tweeter which is characterized by approaching 12db / oct and how phase behaves in this case.

Danny, given the problems caused by the front baffle and the fact that the woofers are pulled out of the cabinet; would it make sense to pull the mid and tweeter out to a new cabinet?

I have built passive crossover using seas Trym schematic and work really well👍

Hi Danny, what a detailed video this us! There is a lot more to it about upgrading speakers than I thought even after watching so many of GR videos. Result: I keep delaying my speaker up grade. Your advise that I should not spend too much on my Kenwood speakers makes more and more sense as I watch you more. I have vintage 5 way speakers, so upgrade should be expensive. A look at the schematic shows that only one capacitor supports two different tweeters, and woofer seems no support at all; there is no no cap, coil or a resister in the path of a woofer? Could you advise me a little to help me decide on sending my speakers to you?

What I like about this video is the fact that Linkwitz took quite a bit from this video to design the LX 521...

For passive crossover, you need electronic compensation (gain) or bass units.

Would love to see measurements on the mini in the 4” pvc tube firing upwards with tweeter above firing straight ahead

Nelson Pass designed a passover for a later Linkwitz. Siegfried designed around many problems. Which woofers are these?

Top idea about capacitor filtering the amplifier...to releaf bass fraquencies

I've always thought that this speaker is perfect in looking cool! Never had them but I have had Seas Thor with them magnesiums, they sounded really good on acoustic music but very harsh on hard rock.

Thx for all your knowledge Danny Question , so the rear tweeter is in parallel but only at a much higher range due to the value of the cap Thx.

great as always...any chance for upgrading a wharfedale linton heritage??cheers.!!

Excellent video Danny. You know your shit. I built a pair of Orions in 2004. I can’t afford your upgrade, but I’ll seriously consider the norez stuff. Besides, my hearing is shot to hell. Paul.

There are many different versions of these. Many upgrade paths already

It seems Mr. Linkwitz agreed about the baffle, since the Linkwitz 521 has a narrowing baffle without the wings.

As always to the point videos. Interesting approach, especially to the rear tweeter control, which I hadn’t considered yet as a possible solution. What value of cap did you settle on, 1.5uf? Another simple way to tame the high end on the Orion is to run a Hartman curve on the whole signal, e.g via a Roon filter, slowly rolling the response down all the way from 200hz to 20khz comes very close to what you found in the off-axis response. I have a now very altered version of the Orion as I wasn’t happy with what I got with the original and didn’t want to just throw away a set of reasonable expensive drivers. My differences being 2 instead of 1 midrange to get an natural extra 3db from the second driver and extension from the slightly wider lower panel provides that little extra bass boost without eq and excessive excursion. Big improvement from using a totally floating isolated baffle so there is not any panel distortion added, chopped and rounded the baffle on the side of the tweeter and widened the baffle of the lower mid driver bY about 3” each side. Ditched the original dsp and now use a DEQX DSP with very minimal eq, to get all the phase problems under control and which allows also much steeper x- overs (48db/oct. while staying phase linear. 2 small 8” boxed servo subs provide enough clean base for now, but I’m playing with a dual ripole sub (2 x 12” aside) setup as well, as they just sound incredibly clean and dry and play down to almost 18hz from a 40 x 40 x 30 package. Ultimately I would like to run these as servo subs, but I’ve got 240v supply so, I can’t order your plate amps and drivers for now. Are there other plate amps you can vouch for that do run on 240v that can do the same and just order the subs from you. 🥴 Thank you.

Educational video Danny, but I am confused about what you said about the compliance in open baffle subs. Do you like a lower or higher compliance number CMS for open baffle? The 10" seas used by linkwitz are 0.24mm/N and your SW-12-08 are pretty close at 0.28 mm/N.

Oh dear, I love those Seas units. Have been listening them for over a decade now.

how do i measure my (diy) ampliefers impedance to design a inline filter you mention here? tnx. nice improvement tips ! !

WOW I got about 5% of what you said . At that rate I think I will get it in a couple of years . Can't wait . This is fascinating . Perhaps I CAN fix my Infinity IL60 s

Wait wait wait!! You took such a deep look at everything which is great and i really appreciate. How come you added a capacitor in series with tweeter which should have had the identical phase characteristics as the front one. Putting another filter in its series will add phase shift in pass band of rear tweeter.

I am becoming convinced I want Danny to make me a custom speaker 🔊

Hi Danny, Did you ever upgrade a Vintage ROGERS LS 5/9 from the early 90' ? And is it worth it ? Thank you

I would be interested in his thoughts on the ORION replacement, the LX521.

Enjoyable video.

When are speakers builders going to get that phenolic is the best material for loudspeaker enclosure?

Is the tweeter surface mounted ? It looks like it's sitting on top of the baffle ?

Gotta love-em aluminum cones! :(

I have these same drivers in 30"x12"x8" boxes in a 15'x12' room. How would the sound change if I set them up open baffle?

Great info. Thanks for the video

I'm looking to upgrade Marantz M7055 having tough time.

Thanks Danny for your videos. I learn a lot with them. I am an electronic technician who is a "science-based" audiophile (no snake oil, no vodoo audio). I love music and am interested in audio technology to recreate audio recordings with precision and the illusion of being there. I am very interested in speakers, driver technology, temporal coherence, radiation patterns, among others, and I read a lot about it and I also learn by watching videos on KZfaq. I think I have a good knowledge, but from your videos I learned a lot more about them, for example spectral decay (which I did not know existed as a measurement), impulsive response, crossovers, etc. Thanks again !!

Have you looked at the LX521 and LX521.4 in comparison? That does fix a lot of the baffle surface reflection

So, Applied Science in lowering the temperature and the increase in electron movement basically lowered resistance.

The upper baffle is that size to achieve the lower frequency response that SL designed them to achieve. I’ve owned these and and then the LX 521s and they are fantastic. You should read SL’s writings (RIP) on the cabinet resonances.

Great info Danny, thanks

Danny, so far out of all the speakers you’ve come across which was the “ least” compromised from the manufacturer?

have you looked at their newer linkwitz lx-521 speakers for possible upgrades?

Danny, I’ve gotta give you credit for doing this vid. Not that it really matters, but the potential “hate mail” you might get could be kinda fierce. I totally get it though, if the guy wants to go fully passive, but you still had a lot of hurdles to jump. Those inline filter caps are an excellent idea. Great job, man.

Nice job of fixing these venerated hogs (i know they are linked to a contributor of hifi audio, but indeed, these are presenting some serious design flaws...). Now with all the money recuperated from selling the now unrequired multi-amp set up (that was required before your brought up your good and smart mods), one can get to invest on a good amp to match a new and better speaker design that one could/would/should purchase after selling these venerated & improved units to a collector (hipsters come to mind). As the disney song said: "let it go." ;)

So, a little black box for a balanced setup will need 2 caps per side, right? What size caps to limit my speakers to, say 40ish htz? Love your vids, Danny. Please keep 'em comin'! My speakers are serious bass overachievers that want to sling dustcaps across the room! A 6.5"er shouldn't be allowed to plumb the 20.!

Can you tell me if the BOZAK LS-400A is any good?

Ohh! Cool...a clinic...! Learned alot!

Nice you gave a bit of note to the most notable Siegfried Linkwitz. RIP.

How much does a upgrade like this cost,?

Well they come with a 50 Watts each driver amplifier what is cheap to build designed by Nelson pass and you don't need 8 amplifiers

Hello. What do you think of Sea's magnesium speakers. I don't like the sound type that many Sea's speakers have! Not the easiest to make speaker crossing filters for this! Cross filter Seas offers are far too easy to get really good sound with

3:36 in my limited experience.. speakers with metal cones(without exception) only sound good with tube amps. with class d or transistor amps they have always sounded thin, cold and harsh to me, obviously at different degrees for different gear

Impressive, totally rational

Have you heard the linkwitz lx521? it looks like they addressed many of your concerns

What would you consider is a good Q for woofers on open baffle?

Another master's class

Wow top infos, very interesting experience , thanks a lot for this know how

I wonder why did they originally use the most expensive SEAS drivers which are merely suitable for a closed box (if not for a port)? Is this because of price and exterior? However, honestly, these loudspeakers sound like a live stage in some big club. Someone likes this effect.

Have you ever work with JBL L-112 ?

Great video. The obvious design errors in this speaker are many. These look like speakers designed in 1965. The drivers are not inset flush with the baffle. Drivers centered on the baffle. The sharp edge on the top and the side walls extended out on the side. Being sold wood, the sides could be cut flush with the front and then the corners could be chamfered or round over with a large router bit. Why not use the 8 ohm versions of that tweeter? All the resonances in the frame. It's hard to believe Linkwitz designed this, as the engineering presented on his website is so good. It would seem that the addition of some foil backed butyl damping material could really improve these. I always assumed that these were intentional design elements to produce some sort of diffuse surround sound effect to augment the playback of large orchestra music. I've yet to have a chance to hear any of these speakers myself. I would be inclined to rescue the drivers and design an entirely new baffle that followed the presenters suggestions. Certainly adding a waveguide to that tweeter would allow lowering the crossover frequency to avoid that cone breakup.

Danny, in a Dayton Audio speaker design competition, someone designed a speaker baffle out of wire mesh so there was zero baffle. would that be optimal? or do you want SOME baffle?

nice one, good work

After buying a speaker is it worth doing all this to upgrade it? Wouldn't it be more cost effective to just buy a different speaker?

You have great information. Any chance you could narrate a video of actual upgrade work being performed?

Why don't you use any full range speakers.

Awesome honest feedback on these speakers. Personally I have found that owners of these back in the UK are a certain type; they believe these are the best speakers ever designed and if you listen to any other type of loudspeaker you have yet to progress to audio maturity lol. Each to their own but like Danny I always found them too coloured.

I would like to see Canton speakers on test and upgrade

Pretty cool!

The B&W 801 model 80 had a very complicated crossover. It was commonly replaced by a 3rd party crossover. What did the 801 upgrade cost? Was the 801 acoustic suspension?

Danny I always like to look after your channel, you provide real speaker craftsmanship. I am about to buy a pair of Audio Note AN-E Spe HE, these also have a large cabinet/ baffle around the speaker. Can this also cause problems on the AN type speaker I want to buy?

Yeah I have to agree with you on this, it's a nice speaker but does have a lot of cabinet resonance issues and personally I wouldn't use that 8" driver for over three or four hundred Hz... well actually I probably wouldn't use it for anything but if I did I wouldn't let it go higher than that. I think his LX-521 is a bit better.

Try the hypex plate amps it comes with DSP which would help a lot.

A lot of the issues seems resolved by SL newer Lx521. Any comments?

What kind of tweeter it is?

It's a shame you can't get the customer's honest reaction to these changes. They seem logical and well thought out, although it's a shame you had to change the function of the rear tweeter so profoundly.

How strange that he did such a baffle design 😲🤔

YUP Linkwitz himself dumped this baffle & went with twin trapezoid cutaway thing

Every single book about speaker building claims that active crossovers do always work and sound way better than any passive one. Is that no longer true?

When i saw this , im like what can a man in his man cave do to Linkwits speaker , nothing as it turns out , just make it worse . Dont get me wrong usually ive seen other videos and those other speakers are upgraded , but this if you touch it you only downgrade it .

It comes from a different era too easily forgotten. Ideologies were very "out there " look at the older Arnie nudell infinities. Those were all very daring and none conventional in design terms. And hardly perfect... But still had a certain sound to them,

Sorry Danny: with all due respect to some decent stuff you do you should probably refrain from trying to comment or "upgrade" speaker designs by legends like Sigfried Linkwitz. You totally miss the background on designing dipole speakers for cancellation at 90 degrees and designing for uniform off-axis response both front and back for reflected sound. All SL designs are meant to be active, use a lot of EQ and are not meant to measure flat on-axis at all (since the power response and controlled directivity from dipole cancellation trump the conventional speaker design requirement). I myself designed a passive Xover for LX521s to turn them into bi-amped speakers so I can use the AR D150 tube amp on top and understand every aspect of the late SL's design and had a lot of private conversation with him. Other designers like J.Gerhard who designed speakers that sold for tens of thousands of Euros a pair gave every credit to SL's designs (which btw originated from some of John K's NaoNote dipoles). Knocking in hand on an open baffle on which the mid woofer is not even mounted is sort of laughable. You may have a customer base which thinks they can hear a difference in "high end" cables, you can upgrade the commercial speakers designed for cost trade offs, but if you take on the DIY crowd which has a bunch of very competent people on diyaudio and other forums this will turn into a much bigger discussion where your measurements will start to make a lot less sense (like "stored energy in edge diffractions" :). Cheers, Sonny

This is pure sacrilege! LOL What would be most credible is to see a full frequency sweep of the entire speaker before and after these "upgrades" and have blind AB listening tests by various people so there is objective and subjective results. Something to bear in mind is what Linkwitz's background and passion are. He is an electronics genius and his passion was speaker design and building. The Linkwitz Riley passive circuits bear his name for a reason. He has little interest or patience in cabinet making and does not tweak this aspect of this design within each model. Active crossover is his solution to the short comings of passive equalization. The amount of equalization that is needed for an open baffle system is such that it can only be done with multiple drivers and actively in his opinion and practice. And he was the authority in both active and passive crossover design. Don't forget that the Orion design is some 20+ years old. Even the LX521 was first released over 10 years ago. The last creation before his passing, the LX mini, is one that some say is superior in imaging and simplicity; short of an octave at the low end and the highs that old years do not hear. Yes, I have all three running in my home including the Pluto. Their cross over and equalization in all his designs are seamlessly transparent making marvelous music to my ears. There will inevitably be some compromises but non that one should be too critical of at their price point. And definitely better than any commercial offerings that I can audition at the load high-end sound rooms in western canada. Perhaps I will make my way down to one of the Audio Fests to hear your the NX speakers and get back into the hobby by building yours. And like Siegfried always says... Have fun!

Boy, Danny!. You are really trading on some sacred ground, with your criticisms and upgrades to Orions! You really placed your head on the chopping block to the Orion 'converted'. But I've been able to hear a pair of these for extended periods, and always thought they had problems, and aren't quite the speaker that fans have made them out to be. I have heard, and pointed out, the sonic problems I have heard, and they seem to be pretty close to what you point out. Especially the problem in the bass section. Next time I listen to these, I will be sure to point your vid out to the owner.

Tweeter is unhappy because the baffle is too wide. Woofer is unhappy because the baffle is too narrow....facplam. You're really being put through it with these last two speakers.

Going from active to passive is three steps back. Going from a Linkwitz designed active filter to a passive dipole design is going to zero. Shame on you!

Had a pair, sold them. The amount of hiss from that crossover was unbearable.

the truth will set you free, there are no sacred cows

you dont have a clue how this speaker works. good thing Siegfried did.

Bottom line: Linkwitz was a noteworthy designer of crossovers. Clearly he was not a similarly talented speaker designer. For all their positives, the Orions are fundamentally flawed.

this is like a scam artist taking 4x4 drivetrain and putting a honda engine into your jeep, and saying that this is going to improve your jeep "quite a bit", don't worry, I gold-plated the engine cover, and coated driveshafts with titanium dust... The premise of this "upgrade" is ABSOLUTE INSANITY. It went from being a fully active system with steep xover curves to generic subwoofer plate and passive xover... SOMEONE LITERALLY THREW THEIR SPEAKER INTO THE TRASH with this "upgrade". Imagine this guy gets to B&W Nautilus speakers with these "upgrades".