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I received my new Hawthorne Audio Silver Iris speakers Tuesday evening. Wednesday morning I headed for the woodshop (had to sweep away a few cobwebs). Had a piece of MDF big enough for most of the new open baffles. Had to make a trip to the lumber yard for the pine board I'm using for the top and bottom. I consider the entire project a "throw together" until spring when I'm planning on building a better pair. I still need to make a padded grill cloth to cover the beast.

Now that I've had them up and running for a few hours I'll give my initial impressions.

First off is a small caution. With my old Scott amp there was a problem. With recordings that have lots of bass, the speaker gyrated in and out uncontrollably, causing everything up through the mids to sound garbled a bit. This didn't surprise me much, as the Scott has shown itself to be poorly damped on a few other speakers. The Scott is a classic push-pull full bore pentode amp. These typically have poor bass damping. It hadn't been a problem with my EV's and Heresy's because they both didn't produce any deep bass. The Silver Iris has a lower fs than my EV's and has no box for damping like my Heresy's had (Heresy's have a low 0.35 Qts driver and don't need any amp help). The Silver Iris has a high Qts of 0.9 plus a crossover inductor between them and the amp. I'd quess this is a bit much for many classic pp amps. It shouldn't be a problem with decent triode or ultra-linear amps.
My solution was to put my Sansui receiver (used as a preamp) back into service and hook up my harman-kardon citation 16. This 70 pound monster is a dual mono solid state beast putting out 150 watts per channel and has damping out the wazooie. No compatibility problem now. ;D

Now to the sound.
These things are AWSOME! Period.
They are about the same sensitivity as my EV LS-12's (maybe a decibel or so more) The rating of 95 dB sounds right. Bass is deeper and cleaner than my EV's, although the EV's did a good job with the old Scott as well as the harman-kardon. The EV's had a bit of a "bump" in the 80Hz range. I haven't measured the Silver Iris's yet, but I suspect they don't have this. They extend deeper noticably, but I haven't measured this yet, either. I'm too busy listening to do any measuring yet. ;D Mids are more open sounding than my EV's. The difference is very noticable, but not huge. Detail and transparency are better than the EV's, but again, not by gigantic margins. They do sound like they are in a league with many other speakers I've heard the last few years that need fancy boxes to get any real bass. These do it in simple OB's. I'm guessing I'm getting around 50 or so Hz in my OB's, and at clean high volume levels. This is very good for a modest sized OB. If I run my Cerwin-Vega home-made sub, it being on barely makes a difference on the rock and folk I've listened to. I suspect a lot of movies will benefit form a sub of some sort.
Treble is very clean. Very airy (at least as high as my poor worn out ears can hear). Cymbals are very clean sounding. As far as clean sounding goes, everything seems to have a very clean and open sound. Very natural. And it's getting better. Over the last few hours I can hear things opening up even more. I bet in a week or two things will get even better (they're pretty darn good as is). And, don't forget, this is all being done with open baffle’s wonderful soundstage, big and open! This is the number one reason to get an open baffle.

This is, by far, the best sounding open baffle system I've heard yet. I'd love to hear the 15 inch bass driver that is available to go with this in the same baffle. You'd never need a sub at all with that. Maybe I'll have to save my pennies up for a pair of those...

Looks like I can pack away my EV's for good. Won't be needing them anymore.

Dave

• New speakers

I might modestly add that my EV open baffles may have triggered the spark of interest in getting Darrel interested in OB's. He heard them last year at a little mini audio fest at another friends house just South of Lansing. I think he was rather blown away by the OB sound. These new drivers outperform my old EV LS-12's in every way.

I'm amazed at the articulation and smoothness coming out of a 15 inch driver. I don't think I could recommend a better sounding woof/tweet combo for anywhere near the price that would work well in an OB. It's going to be a long time before I switch drivers again.

Dave

Haven't had the privilage of hearing the Orions yet. I'd like to, though.

Dave

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• Tweek