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T flush-fit appearance, the plate also hasbi-wirable gold-plated terminals, eachof which accepts banana plugs.Generally, the plate on most budgetspeakers has only a single set ofchromed terminals and is screwed tothe outside of the cabinet so it sitsproud of it, rather than being rebatedinto it.

Inside the cabinet there is more ofthe same. The cabinet is built from18mm medium density fibreboard(MDF) rather than ordinary 12mmchipboard, and all internal surfaces arecovered in non-allergenic foam sheets.

So where has Orpheus made itseconomies? The quality of the bassdriver and tweeter isn’t quite up tothe standard of those used inOrpheus’ top-line models, but neitherare these speakers cheap Chinesecopies of famous brands. Built inDenmark, the 110mm diameter bassdriver has a woven Kevlar cone and avery heavy, powerful (and shielded)magnet assembly. The 25mm silkdome tweeter also has a very largemagnet assembly, but is distinguishedfrom ordinary tweeters by having a

large chamber at the rear to improveits performance at the lower limit ofits operating range.

It’s the crossover network thatshows the most definite signs of cost-cutting, because with just threecomponents, it’s the simplest electricalnetwork Orpheus has ever built. Evenso, there’s been no skimping oncomponent quality. The large, air-cored inductor is well wound withthick copper wire and on its ownwould cost more than the entirecrossover network in many smallbookshelf designs. Similarly, the 400volt MKP polypropylene capacitorsSerhan uses are rarely found inspeakers at the Aurora 1’s price.

Because of the 2.6kHz crossoverfrequency and the relatively highpower-handling capacity of thetweeter (compared to the cheapneodymium-powered models thatare commonly used at this pricerange), there’s no music-numbingProtec device in sight. Orpheussays this crossover/drivercombination results in ‘minimalphase angle and a nominal impedance

36 | Australian Hi-Fi

The new Aurora range from localSydney manufacturer Orpheus showsthat its chief designer, Brad Serhan,has found it hard to shake the habitsof a lifetime. The company’s re-designed budget-priced Aurora 1 hasmost of the little tweaks you generallyfind only in high-end loudspeakers.

You don’t find such tweaks inbudget-priced speakers becausealthough each one doesn’t cost muchon its own, they still increase themanufacturing cost, which in turnforces up the final retail price. To giveone example, the screws that securethe Aurora 1’s drivers to the frontbaffle are made from high-tensile steelrather than the usual ‘hardware store’grade. Want another one? Not only dothe Aurora’s drivers have propersealing gaskets to prevent air-leaks;the rear terminal plate does as well.(Most budget speakers don’t havegaskets at all and if they do, they’reonly on the drivers.)

Serhan also hasn’t been able tohelp himself with the rear terminalplate. Not only is it recessed into thecabinet, which gives a really neat,

ORPHEUSAURORA 1 LOUDSPEAKERS

Australian Hi-Fi | 37

of 8-ohms while maintaining a highsensitivity of 89dB SPL with a 2.83volt input.’

Take a close look at the two driverson the Aurora’s front panel and you’llsee the bass driver’s frame overlapsthat of the tweeter. This is a cleverway of getting the two drivers’acoustical centres closer without theexpense of a specially mouldedtweeter surround. It does, however,mean Orpheus has had to rebate thebass driver into the baffle, which costsmore than just fixing it to the bafflesurface, as happens with most low-cost speakers.

The bass driver is rated at 130mm,but has a Theile/Small diameter of110mm, for an effective cone area of95cm2, which isn’t too bad for such asmall cabinet (the cabinet is 280mmdeep, 360mm high and 180mm wide).The driver’s roll surround is made ofrubber, which, although not quite ascompliant as foam, will certainly last alot longer. (Foam surrounds have anasty habit of rotting away ratherquickly in Australia’s climate.) Thedriver chassis is tough ABS plastic,which means that if there’s any fluxleakage from the shielding (I couldn’tdetect any) it won’t be directed alongthe support legs.

I usually expect to see very cheapcable and spade-lug ‘quick-connectors’ in small bookshelfspeakers (even if it’s an expensive,imported brand) so I was pleased tosee Orpheus running true to form andusing separate runs of high-qualitymultistrand cable from each driver tothe crossover, and that the wire issoldered at both ends. This meansthere’s no contact resistance toincrease over the years, as can happenwith spade-lug connectors.

To save you doing the math, thevolume of the cabinet isapproximately 10.7 litres, which isvented through a front-mountedport that’s 100mm long and about50mm in diameter. Unusually, thisport is tapered along its completelength. It is flared only at the exit—no doubt another small economy onOrpheus’ part.

In common with almost allspeakers that are made right here inAustralia (the giveaway to those that

are not is the phrase ‘Designed inAustralia’, rather than ‘Made inAustralia’), the Orpheus Aurora 1shave a real wood veneer. I personallythink that wood is rather wastedwhen the finish is Black Oak, as onmy review samples, but it wouldcertainly make the alternativeRosewood finish look stunning.

Listening SessionsIf you’re auditioning these

speakers in a showroom, make surethe cabinets are arranged so thatwhen you’re looking at the speakers,the tweeters are at the outer side ofthe cabinet, so they’re closest to theside walls. If they’ve been accidentallyswapped around (in a busyshowroom, it happens, trust me!) youwon’t be absolutely knocked out bythe clarity of the imaging. I waswarned in advance about this, butafter listening to the Aurora 1s forseveral weeks, I thought I’d switchthe speakers around, move themfurther apart, and then adjust mylistening position until I found thesweet spot.

I was a little surprised to find thatalthough I could still get a ‘sweetspot’, the imaging wasn’t a patch onwhat it was with the speakersproperly aligned. Visually, I thoughtthe speakers looked better with thetweeters ‘outside’, but if you listen toyour speakers with the grilles inplace—as most people do—this sideof it won’t matter a jot. Incidentally,although I mostly listened without thegrilles (when reviewing it’s one lessthing to unpack and re-pack) Ithought that in the interest ofthoroughness I should try it bothways, so I did, and can report thatthere’s not much in it. Maybe theextreme highs are a little softer, butyou’d only ever tell in a direct grilleson/grilles off A–B test, and even thenyou’d be hard-pressed to hear adifference. So do what you want to dowith the grilles, and don’t be dictatedto by the audiophile police.

Where you should pay attention tothe audiophile police is in the mannerof mounting these speakers. Yes youcan put them on shelves—or evenmount them on the wall if youwant—and you’ll hear great sound,

ORPHEUS

BBrraanndd:: OrpheusMMooddeell:: Aurora 1CCaatteeggoorryy:: LoudspeakersSSuuggggeesstteedd PPrriiccee:: $825.00WWaarrrraannttyy PPeerriioodd:: Five YearsDDiissttrriibbuuttoorr:: Orpheus LoudspeakersAAddddrreessss::12A Lime Kiln RoadLugarnoNSW 2210TTeell:: (02) 9584 1822FFaaxx:: (02) 9584 1708 EE--mmaaiill:: orpaudio@ozemail.com.auWWeebb:: orpheusloudspeakers.com.auFor additional information, turn to page 114

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but if you want to extract themaximum depth and airiness ofwhich the Auroras are capable (andyou’ll find what they can do is quitebreathtaking), do yourself (and them)a favour by mounting them on standsthat let the speakers sit level, andbring the tweeters to ear level. Thesestands should be at least 50cm from arear wall. (I found a metre workedbetter in my room.)

It didn’t take more than the firsttrack on the first CD I played throughthe Auroras to realise why Orpheusspeakers are used in the edit suites atABC radio stations throughoutAustralia, and in Channel 10’s TV editsuites as well. The sound has thatcrisp clarity that’s the hallmark of agreat monitoring loudspeaker, makingit easy to isolate individual sounds in

38 | Australian Hi-Fi

family, none is more beautiful ormelancholy than the oboe’. On this CDthere are 16 tracks that highlight theoboe’s sound at its best, fromAlbinoni’s Oboe Concerto in D Minor(the Adagio) to Ennio Morricone’sGabriel’s Oboe (from the soundtrack tothe movie The Mission) to modernworks from Bernstein, Ross Edwards,Carl Vine and Graeme Koehne. Ifyou’re comparing the Auroras withanother contender and using this CD,I suggest listening to the melancholyof the sound, rather than worryingabout pitch or tone or any of theaudiophile buzz-words like pace ortiming. You’ll actually hear the‘melancholy’ through the Aurora 1sand I’d venture that if you can hear itas well through the other pair ofspeakers, you’re going to have yourwork cut-out to make a decisionbetween the two! (The CD is ABCClassics 980 046-3.)

I thought I’d try to give theAuroras a hard time with anothernew ABC release that’s doing regulartray-time at my abode, Mike Nock’s‘Big Small Band Live’. By ‘Big SmallBand’ Nock means he’s trying for abig-band sound whilst using only oneinstrument in each section, rather thanmultiple instruments. My only gripeis that because I think Nock is amaster at extracting emotion from apiano, I’m disappointed he’s playingkeyboard on this release (admittedly aKawai 9500!), but he was touringwhen this CD was recorded and Iguess it’s just not practical to cart agrand around on a tour. Anyway,dynamic and driving as the music onthe CD is, it failed to give the Aurorasa hard time at all, even when Icranked the volume up to levels Iconsider unfair for a small bookshelfdesign. I need not have worried: theAurora 1s didn’t think it was unfair—they sounded clean and sweetthrough it all.

Switching to disco-tinged rockrevealed the Aurora’s only limitation,which is that they can’t go really loudat really low frequencies, so the ‘thud’of a kickdrum is back in the mix, asare any synthesised underlying basslines. Oddly enough, I thought thisgenerally worked in the Auroras’favour, because such CDs are oftenmixed with the so-called ‘beat’ at an

the mix. It’s particularly noticeable onvocals, so is a great help whenpositioning microphones. Yet—andthis is the important bit—the claritynever promotes any sharpness thatwould over-emphasise sibilants.

The other hallmark of a truemonitor is frequency balance, and theAurora 1 has that in spades, if youdon’t count the low frequencyperformance, where it’s obviously alittle bass-shy due to its smallishcabinet and bass driver. My listeningsessions demonstrated that so far asthe ear is concerned, the Aurora 1’sresponse is very flat from at least A1(55Hz) to higher than high C (4.1kHz)and judging by the purity of theharmonics, extends easily out to15kHz without any major digressions.I suspect that there are some smalldeviations in response that have been‘engineered-in’ to improve the clarityI noted, but these do not detract fromthe overall uniformity of the response.Indeed they serve to demonstratewhy the difference between a speakerthat sounds good and one that soundsbetter can simply be a matter oftweaking one small section of theaudio spectrum by a few dB inrelation to another. This is somethinga measurement may never reveal butthe ear can tell you straight away.

What all this means is that whenyou’re listening to Diana Doherty’ssublime new CD, Souvenirs, you’llhear an oboe sound that’s second tonone and I’d have to agree withMartin Buzacott’s comment that ‘Ofall the instruments in the orchestral

e q u i p m e n t r e v i e w ORPHEUS AURORA 1 LOUDSPEAKERS

artificially high level (recordingengineers nearly always takeadvantage of the fact they can stuff amicrophone inside the kickdrum), sothe Auroras’ slight roll-off tended tonormalise the balance. Overall, myguess is that Orpheus has been able toextract pretty much all the low bassthat’s possible without compromisingthe woofer’s performance higher upin the passband or over-taxing thebass reflex port.

I couldn’t finish up this reviewwithout returning to mention theimaging again, if only to reinforce inyour mind how good it is. It’sfabulous. It’s not just that you canhear instruments properly spacedacross the stage, it’s also that you canhear how high the sound sources areabove the stage and their relativedepth on the stage in relation to eachother, and to your listeningperspective. I was intrigued enoughto pull out the Stereophile test discwhere Atkinson walks around a halldinging his bell and telling you wherehe is. Listening through the Auroras, Ididn’t need him to tell me where hewas: I already knew.

ConclusionOrpheus’s new Aurora 1 is an

exciting speaker not just because of itsgreat sound, but because in showingwhat it’s possible to achieve at thisprice level, it will serve as abenchmark to ‘keep the bastardshonest’, by which I mean otherspeaker makers who don’t have quitethe grip on what constitutes ‘goodsound’ and ‘good value’ as the teamat Orpheus. greg borrowman

LAB REPORTReaders interested in a fulltechnical appraisal of theperformance of the OrpheusAurora 1 loudspeakers shouldcontinue on and read the‘LABORATORY REPORT’ publishedon the following pages. Allreaders should note that theresults mentioned in the report,tabulated in performance chartsand/or displayed using graphsand/or photographs should beconstrued as applying only to thespecific sample tested.

AHF

40 | Australian Hi-Fi

SIMAUDIO MOON ECLIPSE CD PLAYERe q u i p m e n t r e v i e w

TEST RESULTS

ORPHEUS AURORA 1 LOUDSPEAKERSe q u i p m e n t r e v i e w

Test ResultsI have started off with the gated

high frequency response (Figure 1)first not just because it’s delightfullyflat and shows a superb off-axis plot,but also because I suspect that small,innocuous‘bump’ at 1.5kHz is what’sresponsible for the speaker’s seemingclarity and crispness with vocals, socontrary to Greg’s assertion in hisreview, I believe these things can bemeasured.

I put the word bump in invertedcommas in the previous sentence,because across the region of thegraph shown, 600Hz to 20kHz, theon-axis frequency response of theAurora 1 is ±2.5dB, so the bump ismore of a blip, really. For those thatneed it spelled out, that’s a very flatresponse. Notice how well the off-axis trace tracks the on-axis trace,meaning that although the level fallsoff very slightly for off-axis listeners,the tonal quality is identical. It’s truethat there’s a small discrepancybetween the two at 725Hz, but Idoubt this would have any audibleeffect. Above 10kHz, of course, theoff-axis trace rolls off fairly rapidly,but in a controlled way that meansthere’s still useful output at 15kHz,which is close to the upper limit ofhearing for pretty much everyoneover the age of 30.

The pink noise graph shows theresponse right across the audio bandand if you iron out the slight jaggiesin the response at 160Hz and 80Hzcaused by the acquisition method,shows the Aurora to be within ±3dB

from 70Hz to 20kHz. In an ordinarylounge room that treats the bass alittle more kindly than the testenvironment used by Australian HI-FITest Laboratories, I’d accept that youcould tack a little more extension tothe bottom end within this window,so Orpheus’ spec of 60Hz is justified.And as Martin Colloms says in hisbook High Performance Loudspeakers:‘Every 10Hz of clean, uniform bassextension is worth having, ismusically important, and adds valueto the system.’

The same can’t be said of thesensitivity rating of 89dB. UnderAustralian HI-FI Test Lab’s standardtest procedure, the Aurora 1 returned86dB SPL. This is actually very good,because the wideband nature ofAHFTL’s test raises the hurdlesomewhat for bookshelf speakers, butit’s 1dB below ‘average’ and a good3dB short of 89dB. It means you’ll getaudible benefits from increasedamplifier power, though theperformance will be fine even with aslow as 30 watts continuous perchannel. The impedance of the Aurora1 (Figure 4) is controlled, falling below7 ohms only at 10Hz and across theregion 180–350Hz, so it’s a really easydesign to drive and will have anyamplifier sounding its best. As youcan see, the curve is ‘classic’ ventedenclosure, with the fundamentalresonances at 35Hz and 90Hz, and the

Figure 2: Pink noise frequency response at one watt atone metre.

Figure 3. Nearfield frequency responses, showing bassdriver response and port responses. (Note data for porthas not been re-scaled to compensate for difference inradiating area. See copy.)

Figure 1. Gated sine frequency responses at one watt, atone metre. (On tweeter axis and 30° off-axis, horizontally.)

Figure 5. Composite graph of pink noise responsemanually spliced to gated HF response, then all manuallysmoothed to one-third octave.

Figure 4. Impedance vs Frequency. (Second trace showsresult for a precision 7-ohm resistor, for calibrationpurposes.)

minima between them at 55Hz,coinciding perfectly with the peakoutput of the port (Figure 3).

Since I’ve mentioned Figure 3, thisnearfield graph shows goodperformance from the bass driver. Theport has some midrange output, asyou can see, but the level is not high(note that it would actually be lowerthan shown on this graph, because thetrace’s level has not been corrected tocompensate for the difference in areabetween the bass driver and the port).

The final graph (Figure 5) is acomposite graph where the pink noiseresponse has been spliced to the gatedhigh-frequency on-axis graph and thewhole lot smoothed to one-thirdoctave. This graph shows the Aurora’sfrequency response extending from80Hz to 20kHz ±2dB.

Steve HoldingAHF