Omega Speaker Systems has been building speakers since 2001, and they are all handmade in Norwalk, Connecticut. All of the company’s 3-series speakers are single-driver speakers. The company also has a full production line of other speakers including the Hoyt-Bedford line of floor standers and monitors, plus a subwoofer. The company sells through a dealership network as well as factory direct from their website, www.omegaloudspeakers.com.
Louis Chochos, the company founder and chief designer and engineer, builds all the speakers himself. Louis designed and built his first speaker when he was 12 years old. Louis has a commitment and dedication to building some of the finest cabinets and speakers in the industry at real world prices that anyone could afford. The workmanship is first rate and not usually found in products in this price category. Prior to opening Omega Speakers, Louis was a custom furniture builder.
My first encounter with Louis occurred in 2009 when I was looking for a high efficiency speaker for the Decware Taboo, a 6-watt pentode amplifier I was using at the time. I purchased a pair of his Super 5 speakers, which used a single 4.5-inch hemp cone driver. The Omega’s 93dB efficiency made it easy to drive with amplifiers with outputs as low as two watts. The Omega line was developed to produce speakers that were easy to drive and had transparency and detail rarely, if ever, found in a speaker in this price category. The Omega Super 3T Louis sent to me for this review was in a very attractive EKO Fumed Oak laminate; this is a standard finish and retails for $495 for the pair. (Picture shows EKO Neutral laminate finish.)
Design
The Omega Super 3T is designed to work close to the wall as it has a very small port in the rear. The frequency response is 60-20k Hz and the 4.5-inch driver is 94dB at 8 ohms efficient. The rear of the cabinet will take either a banana or spade termination. The connectors are of very high quality. The front of the speaker has magnetic grills covers which are included in the base price. Each monitor weighs in at 15 pounds and worked well with my Soliloquy Stands. As noted the cabinetwork is first class and there is a feel and look that I have not seen in a speaker that is handmade in the United States that retails for such an attractive price.
The driver is the R5 4.5-inch, custom designed for Omega. Louis fine-tunes each driver for the Super 3T. The driver is easy to burn in and the manufacturer recommend 50 hours of run in time for the speakers to sound best. The Omega Super 3T sounded very good right out of the box.
Equipment and Set Up
The setup was fairly easy. I put the speakers next to my desktop workstation to the right of me in a near-field setup. The speakers were placed on Soliloquy Stands, four feet apart on each side of the equipment rack. The Dared 2A3 SET amplifier and the Woo WA5 300B were the two amplifiers used in this audition. I used Nordost Blue Heaven interconnects terminated with banana plugs, and the Oppo BDP 95 as my source. The Nordost Blue Heaven power cords were used on all equipment.
Both amplifiers put out 8 watts into the 8-ohm load of the Super 3T and had no trouble driving the speaker to comfortable levels, and filled the room easily. Music selected for this review included both male and female vocalist and a large selection of pop, jazz and classical recordings. Listening was done for an average of 6-8 hours daily over a three-month period.
Sound
After the setup was completed I put Patricia Barber’s Modern Cool CD in the Oppo BDP95 and I knew immediately this speaker was something special. The new RS5 driver used by Louis in this speaker is more natural sounding than the Hemp Cone driver it replaced. I noticed little change after the 50-hour recommended burn in period; in contrast, the Hemp Cone Driver that was used in previous designs had a 300-hour break in period.
The midrange is where most of the music comes to life, and listening to Heather Massey’s Lock My Heart recorded with Dick Hyman on the Yamaha Grand piano let me hear how well the Super 3T reproduced the midrange. The Dared 2A3 was a fantastic amplifier to use with the Super 3T. The Dared 2A3 has a more romantic sound than the Woo WA5 which has more of a fuller sound and deeper and more extended bass. The Dared had terrific synergy with the Super 3T. The suggested retail price of the Dared is $1,200 but is sold directly by the U.S. distributor on eBay and Audiogon for $859.
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Thanks for the lovely review Frank. I am particularly interested in the fact that you had this set up in a near field configuration as that works for me.
The setup I used the 3T for was near field. The 3T has small port but works well against the wall and is perfect for low wattage tube amps. You can use it near field or away form the wall also.
Thanks for that. Was there any suggested guideline for – or did you find best results in – having them a minimum number of inches offset from a rear wall? Surely, they’re not flush against the wall right (toe-in angle aside)?
Louis said these were designed to go against a wall or could be used away from the wall. In my downstairs Den they are near field. I will be setting them up in my speaker room this weekend and away from the wall about 2 feet and about 5ft apart in a 10X10 room.
Actually downstairs they were flush against the wall. In the upstairs room they are now two feet out off the wall. They are not toed in and firing straight ahead. The room is 10X10
Fantastic write up Frank! These looks like great near-field speakers. Thanks!
Thanks Peter and glad you liked it
Great review. Thanks for the read.
Glad you liked the review Ross.
I’ve seen your review of Audience The One single driver speaker. How does the Omega Super 3T compare to them. Looking for bedroom system. Are the Audience worth the extra expense? Would I’d be missing much?
Thanks
Thanks for the inspiring review, Frank.
Based on your review, and conversations with Louis Chochos, I ended up purchasing the big brother to the Super 3T — the Super 3S — with the Dared 2A3C integrated amplifier and Kinber Kable 4PR speaker cables. I already had a Marantz UniversalDisc player and some high-end interconnects.
It’s a beautiful system, with a full and musical sound, lots of detail, great voices, excellent bass (the Super 3T goes to 38Hz) — and the price is incredibly affordable for this level of sound quality.
Absolutely superb.