The Orb Audio speakers set the bar for Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF). They come in four flavors, white, black, hand polished steel, and hand antiqued copper. Personally, I liked the black and the hand polished steel though my wife preferred the copper. All in all, you will be hard pressed to find a room or décor into which the Orbs would not easily blend. The white and black finishes can be used in almost any room and are so shiny that you can see your reflection in them. Thinking of my parents' house, I could see my mom going ga-ga over the white ones. With all the white molding in their house, she'd love to mount them near the ceiling (which of course would drive me up the wall, literally) where they would not be as noticeable. For the white models, Orb Audio went the extra step and put a matching white grill and even provided a white jumper wire. That tells me that they know their customer base and are willing to go the extra step to give them what they want.
The sub is a dull black with rounded corners and a textured finish. The grill is gray and stands off the front of the sub by about a quarter inch. The sub sits on four rubber conical feet with the port firing downward as explained above. In my opinion this sub does not cry out to be seen and its finish speaks to that. I like the rounded corners (my Axiom EP 500 reference sub doesn't and I'm getting tired of losing skin to the thing) but other than that, I wish the finish of the sub would have picked a direction - meaning, if it is meant to be seen, make it as pretty as the satellites, if it is not, give it a black grill to help is be as non-descript as possible. I personally like the grey grill, my wife - not so much.
One thing that I found exceptionally customer-friendly was the Orb Audio's modular design. Strapped for cash but you want a 5.1 system? Get the Mod 1. Tax refund check comes in and you've got a little extra money to burn? Buy another set of speakers and turn your Mod 1 into a Mod 2. Or you can just pick up a pair every once in a while to add to your system as your finances dictate.
One thing that I think the Orbs could have used was some sort of vertical adjustment when using the Boss stands. Given that many of their customers may attempt to place them in... shall we say... non-optimal locations, some ability to redirect the loudspeakers toward the principle listening location would be beneficial. The included desk stands do bend to allow the Orbs to be pointed in varying directions.
Loudspeaker Placement and Set up
All the speakers were wired from my Denon AVR-3805 with the crossover set at 120Hz. The manual (downloaded from the website) says that you can set the crossover at 80Hz but even Orb Audio says that is not optimal. I played around with the crossover quite a bit and found that in my room, 80Hz was completely unacceptable and I could hear a small but noticeable difference between 100Hz and 120Hz, and very little difference from 120Hz and up so I kept it at 120Hz. At this crossover point the sub can just be localized but I didn't have many problems or distractions with it. Orb Audio suggests for two channel music that you wire directly to the sub, then out to the mains. When matching the levels using the Denon's test tones, I noticed how easily my receiver drove these speakers. I believe that most any entry level receiver could drive these speakers to ear bleeding levels without much of a problem. This, once again, speaks to the cohesiveness of Orb Audio's design, as their customers are not likely to spend thousands on high-end monoblocks or flagship receivers.
I set up the speakers in a traditional 5.1 arrangement except that I had the sub in my normal (and believe me) optimal location - midway on the side wall. I have moved my reference sub (all 70+ lbs of it) more times than I could count and this is the only (feasible) location in my room for a sub that will not excite the room modes to the point of making a mess of the frequency response. At first, I had the Orb sub sitting on top of my other sub and I actually think it sounded a little better that way. It was elevated almost to ear level and I found the bass to be a little tighter and clearer than when it was on the floor. This may just be because of the shape of my room and, as always, sub location is a trial and error process.
I used the floor stands for the rear surrounds, which I set on either side of the couch. I found the floor stands to be of exceptional quality and quite useful. Even my two year old never managed to knock them over (not for lack of trying, I assure you), though those with small children and/or large dogs may want to consider wall mounts. The bases for the floor stands are extremely heavy and while I tried to get away with not using the carpet plate (essentially a square piece of metal), the speakers leaned precariously without them.
The provided stands were used following the instructions for the center channel. It was a little confusing as you are supposed to use two of the stands along with an extender bracket oriented horizontally. The brackets didn't seem to really be made for this purpose and I had to fiddle with them a bit to get the whole thing together. I never did get both of the bases to sit flush.
For the fronts, I used the desk stands, which essentially look like a scaled down version of the floor stands. I much prefer these stands to the provided ones on aesthetics alone. They just look much cooler to me. One "complaint" with the desk stands is that the manuals made a big deal about the speakers not touching but, on one of the stands, the welded attachment points forced the two orbs to touch. Bending would likely fix this, but I expected a good fit up front. In their defense, I never noticed any buzzing or sonic degradation during the evaluation period.
Note: The largest wire that Orb Audio says can be used with their unique binding posts is 14 gauge though with the Mod 2 system, you're going to be pressing it to get two wires in there (one to the receiver, one to the other speaker). I, of course, have my entire system wired with 12ga (argh!) so I had to dig up some of my older speaker wire to ensure a proper fit. For the targeted customer, I don't think this will really be much of a problem as they are likely to use the smaller gauge wire anyways. Plus, they can purchase wire from Orb for a fairly reasonable price ($15 for 50 feet for 14ga).
Lastly, the sub has an auto-on feature that will only engage when there is a frequency low enough and loud enough to trip the sensor. At first I just kept the sub on all the times as I hate having to remember to turn it on. After a while, I acquiesced and decided to give it a try. I never noticed the sub engaging during any point of the evaluation period. Because of the red light reflecting off the wall behind the sub, I could easily tell when the sub was in standby mode. Often, I would look over when I thought that the sub might have turned on, and it didn't, other times I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that it was engaged. The auto-on feature worked beautifully and most importantly transparently - exactly as it should.
