Vaughan's OB1 - a quick take
Jul 28, 2011
Kari Nevalainen
While Vaughan Warren is continuing his speaker project "OB1 Zen Kenobi" (Part IV is coming soon), I got a kind invitation to visit his place in barren and beautiful Cornwall ...
... and see & hear his OB1 system. As you can read from Vaughan's description, the OB1 is a combination of OB and Box along the lines of the Tecton 4.5 Hybrids. Instead of the original Wharfedale 8" drivers, Vaughan now has Fane's 15ohm 8” FRS with special magnets claiming Hi-Fidelity Reproduction.
The baffle itself has a sandwitch construction, and on top and below the drivers there's an empty hole functioning as some kind of Hemholtz resonator.
The OB is much wider than the Box behind. The driver in the Box (hidden by the grill) shoots upwards like the port. The can next to the port is an audiophile grade stabilizer.
At the heart of the system, one finds a Trio KA305 Transistor amplifier from the 70s/80s. The amp is running the OB1s with QED Silver 25th Anniversary cables. In terms of the 15 ohm speaker load this amp may more suitable for the job than its modern counterparts.
The analogue tuner is Denon TU260L supporting a mini-DAB. Sony MDS JE 500 MiniDisc is used as a DAC with a PC Laptop as the CD source. This compact system has much sense: each component has its justified role in the team, and no component is too much above or below its fellow component. Plus the system made good work in running Vaughan's OB1 system in a fairly small room, the speakers still 40-50cm from the rear wall. As Vaughan puts it: in this system various disparate components are combined to transform their co-existance beyond the mere sum of their parts.
The sound? The sound was great. Lack of upper bass/low mid coloration was obvious, and made the sound an audiophile type in a good sense of the word. Even deeper bass notes were reproduced but the balance was in no way bassy, on the contrary. The Fanes aren't particularly directional but the dipole radiation helped the system to focus the sound to the listener. The stereo image was stable if listened from between the speakers. Vocal music came out nicely with a good amount of feeling in it. The system did good work with both classic and non-classic music. In fact, almost any piece of music that we listened had a positive aura around it. Brian Eno's new album had probably been a fascinating experience irrespectively of which system was used, but through Vaughan's OB1 system it sounded quite magical. Emotional experience of the music was well communicated.
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