DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/Baby Speakers Review

I am very excited to share the new and incredibly fun O/Baby speakers from DeVore Fidelity with you. These, along with the micro/O Speakers, are John DeVore’s two newest apes. The first speaker in DeVore’s Orangutan line was the O/96 which has been the company’s all-time best-selling speaker. The O/Baby is aptly named as it looks just like a baby version of the O/96. 

DeVore Fidelity still makes every speaker by hand in their building at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. Box Furniture is their next-door neighbor, and they build all of John’s speaker cabinets. So, from start to finish, John can keep a close eye on all aspects of manufacturing his speakers.

Design and Description

John told me that for the O/Baby speakers, he tried an array of three 8-inch and three 6.5-inch drivers, all based on the original Orangutan recipe. He used the same type of paper, motor structure, and the same ideas behind keeping the impedance smooth and relatively high. John ended up going with the 6.5-inch drivers that use neither a Whizzer nor a phase plug in the cone. The bass driver has a single rear port and goes down to about 40Hz/.

One of the really cool things about the O/Baby is that it uses the same driver for the tweeter that John uses as a super tweeter in the Orangutan Reference, a speaker that costs over $80,000. John completely redesigned it by creating a new horn profile that he could mount into the baffle itself. So this tweeter mounts from behind the front baffle, which becomes a horn-loaded front for the tweeter.

John said that in order to get VIFA, a Danish soft-dome tweeter manufacturer, to make the super tweeter, he had to buy 1,000 of them. So that was a big motivation to use them for the core of the O/Baby’s tweeter.

Like the O/96s, the O/Baby speakers need stands. They are $5,600 without stands. You can use them with any 12-inch stands, or you can get solid oaks stands from DeVore Fidelity, that is a mix of Japanese and mid-century modern. While these are expensive at $1,000, when combined with the speakers, they make for a very eye-popping look.

The O/Baby speakers are 14.75” w x 9.75″ d x  35″ h, including the stands. While they are not as highly finished as DeVore’s other speakers, they are still very well-finished and are quite good-looking.

Setup

I didn’t find the O/Baby speakers difficult to set up. Like the other Orangutans, they could not be placed as far out into the room as my DeVore gibbon Super Nines. I ended up with them 7 feet apart, tweeter to tweeter. The tweeters were 36 inches off of the wall behind the speakers. My listening position was nine feet from the speakers.

Review System

For this review, I used two amps with the O/Baby speakers, the First Watt SIT-3 and the LTA ZOTL40 Reference+ Power Amplifier.  It didn’t take me long to choose the LTA  amp for the review. It is more fleshed-out sound was a very good match.

The rest of the system consisted of the Innuos Statement Music Server, the PS Audio DirectStream DAC, and the LTA Reference Preamp Level 2. All of the cables were Audience FrontRow. These were plugged into my HB Cables Marble Power Slave.

Getting the Essentials Right

When I unpacked the O/Baby speakers, I was surprised by how small the cabinets are. I shouldn’t have been. John performed a miracle to get this kind of dynamics, scale, life, and transparency out of such a small speaker. The tunefulness and lack of crossover distortion is amazing for their size. They get the essentials right. The sound defies their size by many times. 

In several ways, the O/Baby speakers remind me of the Teresonic Ingeniums ($20,000) single-driver speakers that I owned for so many years. The O/Baby speakers have that same incredible aliveness about them. They are a simple two-way design with the tweeter mounted very close to the midrange/bass driver. This design results in a coherency similar to that of single-driver speakers.

O/Baby, What a Sound!

The O/Baby Speakers have a raw liveliness to them that is absolutely intoxicating. They are also very articulate speakers, and the voices were very realistic and easy to understand.

Voices in the music also sounded very alive. They were very articulate but natural at the same time. When listening to Alison Krauss, the O/Baby’s ability to recreate the harmony and the interplay of the voices was just incredible. When I listened to the two new Patricia Barber recordings released on DSD, I was astonished by how alive a recorded voice could sound. It was astounding how realistic the upright bass sounded on these albums.

On live recordings, such as Peter, Paul, and Mary at Carnegie Hall, you will hear all of the air around the coughs, whispers, and giggles of the audience. Recordings have a very real sound, and this aliveness is intoxicating.

Pace, Rhythm, and Timing

When it comes to PRAT, the O/Baby speakers stand out in comparison to other speakers that I have heard. It’s stunning how well the bass carries the rhythm, momentum, and beat of the music. It was hard for me to sit still when listening to the O/Baby speakers. When they played music, it was almost impossible for me to take notes or write. I just wanted to listen.

Soundstage and Imaging

Another area where the O/Baby speakers rise to the top is in imaging.  They produce a more than adequate soundstage. Their soundstage, while not as wide and deep as that of my DeVore gibbon Super Nines. However, the imaging within that soundstage is spectacular. The O/Baby speakers produce images of instruments and vocals that convey precise spatial information. 

Conclusion

I hope I have managed to convey how great these speakers are and how much pure fun they are to listen to. The O/Baby speakers give you a big taste of the DeVore Fidelity Orangutan line of speakers.

Specifications:

Frequency Response: 38Hz-25kHz
Sensitivity: 90 dB/W/M
Impedance: 8 ohms
Dimensions: 14.75″ w x 9.75″ d x  35″ h including optional stands

Price:

5,600 USD without stands
1,000 USD stands

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