Same Width, £6,800 Apart: OePhi at Ber Street, 20th November
Put a tape measure across OePhi's Lounge 2, then across their Transcendence 2.5, and you will write down the same numbers twice: 18.5cm wide, 30cm deep. After that they part company. The Lounge 2 is a 35cm standmount at £2,695 a pair. The Transcendence 2.5 is a 100cm floorstander at £9,495.
A reasonable person would like that explained, and on 20th November the person best placed to do it will be in the building.
Joakim Juhl, founder and designer of the Danish company OePhi, is coming to Norwich for three sessions, at 11am, 1pm and 3pm. Each one has a presentation from Joakim, demonstrations of both systems and a Q&A, with around seven or eight places. Steve Forrest of Airt Audio, OePhi's distributors, will be here as well.
Where the money goes
OePhi's own specifications show where at least some of it goes, and very little of it is visible. The Lounge 2 has a paper-cone woofer and a point-to-point soldered crossover. The Transcendence 2.5 uses two Purifi woofers, and its crossover gains DC-biased capacitors along with low-DCR copper foil and toroidal inductors. Its cabinet is a dual-chamber, dual bass-reflex design, and it weighs 20kg to the Lounge 2's 6.5kg. OePhi's in-room bandwidth figure drops from 45Hz to 30Hz at the bottom, while power handling climbs from 75W to 500W. Some of that is simply the step from a standmount to a floorstander, and some of it is the climb up the range.
None of that tells you whether the difference is worth £6,800 to you, and we should be clear about what the day can and can't settle. The two speakers will be in two different rooms, with different sources and amplifiers, so this is no controlled comparison. Each system makes its own case, with the designer on hand to tell you where we have it wrong.
In the shop: the Lounge 2 and the digital half of the day
The shop system starts with the Lounge 2, cabled with OePhi's Lounge loudspeaker cable, which uses silver-plated copper conductors in a cotton-damped air dielectric. Electronics come from Gold Note: the IS-10 streaming integrated amplifier, PA-10 power amplifiers run as monos, and the CD-5.2 CD player and a power supply.
You can stream something here, or put a disc on.
OePhi's loudspeakers were only officially released in early 2024, and plenty of people still know the name from cables. A crossover is a lot of signal path in a small box, and anyone who has spent years trying to stop wire interfering with music is likely to have views on it.
In the demo room: a record on the turntable
The demo room is all about vinyl on the day. The source is a J.Sikora Aspire turntable. From there the signal goes through Cyrus's 40 PPA phono stage, powered by the 40 PSU, and on to a Vitus RI-101 Mk II integrated amplifier, which is rated at 300W per channel into 8 ohms. The Transcendence 2.5 finishes the chain, connected with OePhi's Transcendence speaker cable.
This system is the one to bring a record for. OePhi talk a great deal about timing, which is a difficult thing to argue about and an easy thing to listen for, so choose something you know very well. If you need a suggestion, try Kind of Blue, which a lot of you will own. In "So What", Jimmy Cobb hits a single cymbal crash just as Miles Davis comes in for his solo. Listen to how quickly it arrives and how long it takes to die away, then compare that with what you remember from home.
Who should stay at home
OePhi's stated aim is to add as little as possible to the signal. We take that to mean these speakers make no promise to flatter a record, so if you want a system that makes everything sound agreeable, you may be shopping for something else. And if you are certain that cables make no difference, you should know that you will be sitting in a room with someone who has built a company on the opposite view, and who has presumably heard your argument before. Come anyway.
OePhi make the speaker and the cable, so ask Joakim which to change first if you can only afford one. The rest of the OePhi range should be on hand too, so if your question is about another speaker or a power cable, the thing itself can be put in front of you.
Getting a seat
Sessions start at 11am, 1pm and 3pm on 20th November. They are informal, so come with questions and allow a couple of hours. With around seven or eight places in each, there are not many seats to go round.
To book, call 01603 627010, send a WhatsApp to 07554 687137, or email info@martinshifi.co.uk. Dave and Chris can help you choose a session, and can tell you which of the two systems has the most to say about what you are running at home.
Bring a record. We have a tape measure.
Martins Hi-Fi
85-91 Ber Street, Norwich NR1 3EY
01603 627010
info@martinshifi.co.uk
