It isn't easy finding some decent Onkyo loudspeakers, great to have if you have a nice Onkyo audio system especially
Onkyo Stereo Loudspeaker System
Essay D-07
Designed & manufactured in Japan
ORIGINAL release price 40,000 Yen (yikes! that's approximately A$500)
Released to market 1989
2 Way Bass Reflex (forward port)
NOTE: interesting method used for the bass reflex port, inside the cabinet there is audio wadding which funnels sound pressure waves from the driver and out through the port. The tweeter area is largely isolated from the port by this wadding.
Internal cabinet volume 7 Litres
Bookshelf format (although they can be wall mounted, see below for details)
80 Watt RMS per speaker audio power handling
8 Ohm impedance
Frequency response 70Hz - 30Khz
Efficiency: 90dB/W/m
Dimensions (speaker cabinet only):
370mm high x 150mm wide x 230mm deep
The base foot is removeable (2x heavy duty screws) and this ADDS 70mm to the above height
On the rear panel are two holes (just above the manufacturers label) and these are used to secure to a wall mounting bracket (not supplied)
Construction: plastic throughout - not wood. It is a very heavy duty plastic, like a polycarbonate
Front cloth is a deep brown colour
Front removes easily if this is more desirable for the listener
Spring terminals for speaker cable - not binding posts/banana sockets
Weight of EACH speaker is 5.8Kg - not so light
So what is inside these beasties?
Driver: 12cm fibre diaphram ONKYO speaker
Magnetically shielded - this comes from the days before LCD televisions and the magnetic field from loudspeakers could cause strange colours patterns on the screen of the old CRT based televisions
Marked on the rear as:
ONKYO
W-1226A
30W 5.5 Ohm
JAPAN
2942 6
Tweeter: 2.5cm dome ONKYO speaker
Very large magnet!
Marked on the rear as:
ONKYO
TW-3108A
30W 4.5 Ohm
JAPAN
9945
L-R-C Network for the crossover, set to 2500Hz
COSMETIC CONDITION:
No physical damage to either cabinet (extremely tough plastics used)
Front grille cloth on both speakers has very light signs of wear/abuse - just the tiniest of one very small hole in one front grille and three in the other. I only noticed these when I took the grilles off to clean them - very difficult to spot this wear.
More noticeable is a couple of little white dots or "scrape" markes (also white) on each cabinet. These are by no means terrible but you can notice them.
Both cabinets are very clean and tidy - very presentable for any lounge room or study.
TESTING:
This is the part that really matters!
Both channels work great, that means both the driver and the tweeters! I have received speaker systems in the past from others and the tweeters are dead - this is actually common because in general, tweeters (no matter what the brand) do a lot of work at high sound levels and the coils will often go "open circuit"
I had a look inside the cabinets, measured the DC resistance of all speakers - all is fine.
Next I did a cabinet seal test - this is important for the bass reflex to work properly. By changing the air pressure at the port, I can easily make the driver diaphram move in and out - all good.
I also listened for noisy voice coils (rubbing or scratching) - no issues here either
Finally I have hooked them up to a NAD test system and given them a good tryout over the last few days.
First thing I noticed is that the low end is not the greatest (manufacturers specs show 3dB point is 70Hz which is pretty high) but this is quite frankly not surprising with such small drivers. To get a really thumping bass going, these should be used with a decent sub-woofer system which can look after the very low end frequency response.
These speakers like to be fed a bit of audio power, sure they sound fine at low levels but pump them up a bit and they sound pretty damn good, albeit with the low frequency response limitation.
So, in summary, nice set of retro bookshelf speakers which are now extremely difficult to find. They do a good enough job but don't expect miracles, they do their job but don't have the "low end muscle" of larger speaker systems.
These are NOT LIGHT - total weight for both of the loudspeakers is 11Kg
I can manually provide for you a Courier quotation, the cost of which can sometimes work out lower than Australia Post
