I have been away too long! What happened to Orion?!?!?!

[05fronty 5,000+ posts]

yep was good back in the day. my first setup was a old 225hcca on a pair of 12w5's. that amp needed the bridging module

 

[Louisiana_CRX 5,000+ posts]

yep was good back in the day. my first setup was a old 225hcca on a pair of 12w5's. that amp needed the bridging module

i still have a couple of the 225's nice old school amps

 

[05fronty 5,000+ posts]

i still have a couple of the 225's nice old school amps

lutz of course you do

 

[gunz4me2 10+ year member]

DEI was the worst thing to ever happen to car audio. I'm surprised they didn't manage to run Polk Audio into the ground like they did with Orion and PPI.

 

[Louisiana_CRX 5,000+ posts]

DEI was the worst thing to ever happen to car audio. I'm surprised they didn't manage to run Polk Audio into the ground like they did with Orion and PPI.

i like the early directed amps

 

[PPI_GUY 10+ year member]

To the OP, guy you and I may be near the same age. When I got back into car audio a few years ago, I had to rethink what I knew. You can forget buying something like the old school high current stuff now. There are only a very few high current amps even still in production. Most everything is moving toward class D which is much easier on your electrical but, lacks some of the impact you remember. Orion still makes some nice stuff but, you might want to stay away from the Cobalt series. Also, don't be misled by the pricing. Car audio is MUCH more affordable than it was in the late 80's and early 90's. You can get big, reliable power for half or less than half of what we used to have to pay for it.

Your other option is to visit forums like this (and others) along with watching Ebay for good, old school equipment. The products that performed back in the day can still perform now...IF...they have been taken care of and not thrashed. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Most on these forums are plenty helpful and always ready to give their opinion. Just remember Google is your friend and research can save you $$$.

 

[blazeplacid 10+ year member]

another thread like this,great.

my cousin bought an Orion 800.1 and asked me to install it. He already had it so I just put it in for him.

The amp is pushing an RE Se 10" sub very nicely. Amp doesn't get hot or turn off or do anything weird.

I wonder if the people who say "its pure crap" actually run/have ran the new stuff, or just read what everyone says on forums.

 

[dB-r 10+ year member]

Most people that are older (like me) think the old stuff was better than the new stuff, but most people (unlike me) have no clue what's inside of an amp that actually does "the work"... I think I could probably drag my Orion 2250SX AKA "the beast" out of storage and put it up against a pair of $200 Class AB BOSS amps and it would, well, lose... People just don't know... Modern amps make good power, and can sound good on subs too, even like the old Class AB amps.

For an example, I have clamped the Sundown SAX-100.2 bridged @ 2 ohm at almost 800 watts (not recommended BTW)... I am sure that is also possible with a amp like the Orion 2150, but the Sundown cost $200, the Orion you'll be lucky if you can get off Ebay for $200 used, god only knows what those things costed new (I forgot) and the Sundown is flat rate to rebuild $100, will cost you at least $150, maybe $200 depending on how bad it's smoked to fix the Orion 2150 just because it takes more time to work on, more older less power handling parts, vs in the newer amps, half the parts that handle twice the juice of the older parts...

 

[dB-r 10+ year member]

This is the datasheet for an older mosfet which would have been considered "powerful" back in the day, and was used in older amps like old Opti's etc:

IRFZ34 55 Volt 26 Amps

http://www.irf.com/product-info/datasheets/data/irfz34n.pdf

This is a MODERN mosfet which would be considered to be "medium power" these days and is used in ALOT of modern amps:

IRF3205 55 Volt 110 Amps

http://www.irf.com/product-info/datasheets/data/irf3205.pdf

This is what is considered as a "heavy" or high current mosfet these days:

IRFP2907 75 Volts 209 Amps

http://www.irf.com/product-info/datasheets/data/irfp2907.pdf

These are just low voltage power supply mosfets. The modern Class D amps 3000 watts and up use 400 volt 23 Amp outputs... vs old class AB amps used 80 volt 10 amp bipolar transistors.... Even todays modern class AB amplifiers use 200 volt 16 amp bipolar output transistors, way more power there than the old stuff.

The difference in the BASS today is the efficiency of the woofers. They all **** these days. Back when power was not easy to get from amps, woofers had to be efficient to be loud... See old school Cerwin Vegas. That's what I used to run, and yes, they were loud, in nice ported boxes, just like todays woofers, but with half the excursion (or less) and 1/4th of the power... You can still get lightweight efficient woofers, but people want big numbers, they want 1500 watt RMS woofers... And yes though, 1500 watt RMS woofers that are actually getting around 1500 watts RMS will absolutely be WAYY WAYY louder than my old CV's ever thought about. Back in the day people made their cars "rattle" with bass. These days, they rip the metal, break windshields, etc... And that's just the "daily" listeners....

 

[dB-r 10+ year member]

And no, before someone asks, you can't just stick newer parts in an old amp and make it louder. Maybe if you robbed the GIANT transformers out of the modern amplifiers and somehow wedged them inside of the old amps you could, but even then, the circuit boards, caps, output drive circuits, power supply drive circuits, etc would ALL need to be upgraded. In the end you might as well have just put the old "Orion" on the shelf and bought a newer amp that already has all those goodies in it.

The price difference these days comes from the fact that all modern car amps are built in China, Korea, or Brazil. Old ones were made in the USA and USA labor is super expensive compared to those other countries labor (wage) rates. Also in other countries it's not illegal to hire school aged children (10-up or so) to work in a "amp factory". Also because of the massive popularity of electronics components (like capacitors and mosfets, etc) the parts cost WAY less than they used to.

 

[Imtjnotu 5,000+ posts]

And no, before someone asks, you can't just stick newer parts in an old amp and make it louder. Maybe if you robbed the GIANT transformers out of the modern amplifiers and somehow wedged them inside of the old amps you could, but even then, the circuit boards, caps, output drive circuits, power supply drive circuits, etc would ALL need to be upgraded. In the end you might as well have just put the old "Orion" on the shelf and bought a newer amp that already has all those goodies in it.
The price difference these days comes from the fact that all modern car amps are built in China, Korea, or Brazil. Old ones were made in the USA and USA labor is super expensive compared to those other countries labor (wage) rates. Also in other countries it's not illegal to hire school aged children (10-up or so) to work in a "amp factory". Also because of the massive popularity of electronics components (like capacitors and mosfets, etc) the parts cost WAY less than they used to.

ygpm

 

[flea77 10+ year member]

Db-r, maybe you missed my first post in this thread where I talk about a two channel, 150 watt per channel Orion amp almost needing glass reinforcement, we broke our share of glass with WAY less than 1500 watts.

I remember you could buy a 200 watt per channel 4 channel Pyramid amp at Wal-mart back then for $99 or an Orion 280 (2x80) for $300 on sale, the difference was laughable. Maybe I am just out of touch but when we could shatter glass with 250 watts per channel into 4 ohm 15s it seems like the 6000 watt specs of today's Orion amps are either the same as yesterday's Pyramid's specs (a joke) or suitable as a weapon of mass destruction. And at their price point I am leaning towards the former.

And don't get me started on class d vs class a/b amps. Let's just say I personally want to stay away from class d, thank you.

Allan

 

[Gary S 10+ year member]

I believe Orion is still owned by DEI. DEI actually contracted with Orions' original engineer to design their stuff... their products are actually a very good value for the street prices they sell for.

However, when DEI owned PPI and ADS just a couple years ago, those two were their high end brands (PPI has since been sold to Epsilon). Orion would be a slight step down from those products.... but again, a good bang for the buck based on the street prices the products sell for.

The biggest problem seems to be that the stuff is all made in China and the quality control is suspect. But this is the case with most car audio these days.

 

[magnumsrt8215 10+ year member]

This has been a great read as i too owned orion back in the day 2 xtr 275's and 1 xtr 800, I also wondered what happened to them. Hell i bought my xtr's used and paid almost 300 for them. They were really good amps my only problem was is i ever plugged the speaker wire in backwards which i did a few times they would blow out quick and have to be repaired. I was a newb then so that happened too often lol.

 

[denim 5,000+ posts]

Current Orion is not total garbage, just nothing that really makes them stand out like they did in the past.