Напольная акустика — Devore Fidelity O/93

The O/93 is a floorstanding member of the Orangutan family made by DeVore Fidelity, the loudspeaker company of designer John DeVore in Brooklyn, New York. The name reflects its rated sensitivity. It builds on the O/96 standmount, trading three decibels of efficiency for a lower price, and its woofer is derived from the one developed for the company's Silverback reference model. The pair was listed at USD 8,400 in the US and GBP 8,000 in the UK.

Key specs that matter

The O/93 is a vented design with just two drivers. A 250 mm paper cone mid/bass unit with a phase plug, built to John DeVore's specifications, works with a 25 mm silk dome tweeter that has twin magnets and gentle horn loading. DeVore quotes 30 Hz to 31 kHz. Sensitivity is 93 dB for 1 W at 1 m. Nominal impedance is 10 ohm, ranging up to 12 ohm with dips to 8 ohm. The cabinet is 902 mm high, 381 mm wide and 254 mm deep, and each speaker weighs about 20.5 kg.

Engineering and use context

Unlike most slim towers, the O/93 has a wide and shallow front baffle, a proportion chosen to suit the large woofer. Two small parallel ports on the lower back of the cabinet vent the enclosure, so the rear face should not be pressed against a wall, and wooden feet lift the cabinet about 25 mm off the floor. The DeF-SVDX crossover is built by hand and hardwired with silver wire and paper-in-oil capacitors rather than mounted on a circuit board. A single pair of solid machined copper binding posts is fitted, with no bi-wiring option. The standard finish combines a Fiddleback Mahogany front with Mink Maple sides and rear, and matched exotic veneers with hand-rubbed lacquer are offered, including walnut, maple, cherry, ebony and painted versions. Every speaker is assembled in the Brooklyn workshop. Because the woofer covers everything up to the tweeter, there is no separate midrange unit, and the circuit between the two drivers is kept to a small number of parts. The large baffle area also gives the large cone a broad mounting surface in a comparatively shallow cabinet.

Pairing

A high impedance together with the high efficiency makes the O/93 a light load, so low-power tube amplifiers, among them SET circuits delivering only a handful of watts, can drive it. Transistor amplifiers of moderate output also work, and in a space of about 20 m2 little power is needed for normal listening levels.

Alternatives

The DeVore Fidelity Silverback Reference is the larger floorstanding design whose woofer development fed into the O/93.