Finally, I don’t expect any of this to influence what anybody else here thinks. But as my own experiment I find it interesting to ask, What type of information can I personally get from the measurements, and what type of information can I get from other “ measurement oriented” individuals in terms of interpreting those measurements and predicting the subjective consequences? And how does this compare to what I can find in subjective reviewing?
I found that the subjective reviews of this loudspeaker tended to capture a more comprehensive and detailed way what it was like listening to different types of instruments and music through these loud speakers. In most of the reviews certain themes about the character of the loudspeakers kept coming up - characteristics that were just the ones I found so engaging.
I am printing some of those Devore O/96 review comments, so anyone interested can see what I mean.
(printing them in small so anyone can easily bypass this post who isn’t interested)
Devore Fidelity O/96 review selections:
Stereophile John Atkinson:
Even though I knew about the low-treble resonance and the lively enclosure, these problems were considerably less audible than I was expecting. Only with recordings of solo acoustic piano did they get in the way of the music by producing noticeable coloration, the piano's midrange sounding uneven, with some notes obscured. But with well-recorded rock and classical vocal recordings, the measured problems seemed to step into the background, letting me appreciate the O/96's full-range, evenly balanced sound and superb clarity.
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Dagogo
They have a big, rich, colorful tone, and a very natural, relaxed presentation, while still being very agile and transparent.
Massed strings were very visceral, full-bodied, and extended . The way they could swell, and float in a sea of air was breath taking. Massed strings most often sounded both powerful and relaxed.
You wouldn’t expect from their size, that theses apes would sound so big. Big in the same kind of way that our Publisher’s Tannoy Westminster Royal SEs sound big. They move a lot of air and the performance sounds real. If you listen in the dark or with your eyes closed, with the right recordings you may think and feel the music is coming from musicians and not speakers. The sound is energizing, life-size, full of emotion, and just flows into the room.
The O/96s struck a great balance between the overly tight bass of a modern loudspeaker and the big bloom of vintage speakers. They played music that was very emotionally involving with great bloom. Part of this bloom probably comes from the amount of air they move. This bloom maybe more than any other thing accounts for how lifelike they sound on rock, blues, and big orchestral music.
In his 2014 Axpona show report Miles Astor said this about the DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/96 speakers, “Wha’ts more, these speakers are truly the bumblebees of high-end audio. Given their relatively diminutive size, the Orangatan 96s should not sound as big as they do. Yet I continue to marvel at their ability to cast not only a wide and deep stage but also one with height! There are far bigger speakers that don’t have the image height of these apes! And most of all, John always seem to get it right where it counts: the midrange.”
I concur, there is no way a two way with a 10 inch woofer and a one inch tweeter should sound like these speakers. How do they sound so coherent, how do they sound so big, how do they sound so alive? I don’t know, but I do love it even if I can’t explain it.
They balance all of the above in such a way that is very beguiling. They have a significantly rich sound. They do this differently from the Linn Audio Loudspeaker’s Athenaeums whose richness seemed to add a sameness to the sound from one recording to another. This is not the case with the O/96s, through which each recording sounds significantly different from all others, just a richer and smoother.
The O/96s are also play music with great dynamics and micro-dynamics in such a beautifully relaxed way, but not so relaxed as to rob the music of its great emotion.
They also have a way of letting you hear the air around and within instruments that is so important to adding to the realism of listening to recorded music.
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Art Dudley
the Orangutan O/96s served them all with clarity, color, impact, drama, and scale.
Singing voices were clear and uncolored, if timbrally a shade richer than the mean.
The O/96 communicated the force of his playing better than any non-horn loudspeaker with a 1" tweeter and a high-Q woofer has a right to. Bonham's entrance in Led Zep's "In My Time of Dying," from Physical Graffiti (LP, Swan Song/Classic SS 2 200 1198), was especially impactful
. Musical sounds through this combination were also wonderfully physical,
Among the performance characteristics that are as difficult to describe as to quantify—and that, coincidentally, rise above others in distinguishing vintage from contemporary products—is a loudspeaker's ability to convey the substance of musical sound, rather than suggesting a pale if attractively pellucid sonic outline. The DeVore O/96 hit the latter goal more handily than most modern loudspeakers I've heard,
There's a great new reissue of Glenn Gould's recording, with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, of Beethoven's Piano Concerto 4 (LP, Columbia/Impex MS 6262); the O/96s played it with an exceptional sense of sonic flesh and blood.
Just as remarkably, the Orangutans did that while conveying far more of the recording space around and behind the instruments than other speakers no less substantial. That, I think, will be heard by some as the O/96's unique strength.
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O/93
Audio beatnik
I know my job is to tell you what the O/93s sound like, but let me start by saying that this is a speaker that doesn’t sound like it looks. They are small, two-way, floor standing speakers; but they sound like BIG floor standing speakers. So, if I had to put it very succinctly, I’d say the O/93s sound big and alive like live music sounds.
Few other speakers that I have heard in any setting are as great at reproducing a jazz drum kit or brass instruments as the O/93s.
So, I think that’s what we always have to judge the ability of a system by when it comes to drums. It’s easy to rob all the weight and substance from your system if you try to get every recording to have fast and tight bass, but I feel drums should always convey real rhythm and pace.
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Part-time audiophile
A snare drum skin sounds exactly like a real snare drum skin. A cymbal crashes, splashes, sparkles, and has airborne sonic decay as if a drum kit is being played in front of me. A singer’s voice has chest resonance – not just throat vibration – which signals my brain to believe that vocal emanation is being projected by an organic, physical mass, just like a real singer standing in the room would sound.
