Loudspeakers

Andy Payor, chief designer at Rockport, says development of the Orion began in 2019 with the aim of creating the ‘purest expression of a full-range, dynamic driver loudspeaker’, albeit one that could ‘fit into home listening spaces where a larger speaker might be intrusive’.

Larger would include Rockport’s Lyra flagship, which has a similar cabinet construction. ‘However’, says Payor, ‘in order to hit our price target, it could not be as expensive to produce as the Lyra’s cast aluminium and machine profiled outer shell. Given our previous experience with carbon fibre [in Rockport’s earlier Hyperion and Arrakis loudspeakers], we knew this would be the ideal high-tensile strength outer shell for the Orion’.

In 2024, Rockport followed the speaker with the Lynx, another three-driver tower. How closely are they related? ‘There is certainly an unmistakable family lineage between the Orion and the Lynx, and we’re quite proud of that’, says Payor. ‘There are differences in the construction of the two products in order to hit two distinctly different price points. And while it might seem a relatively simple exercise to “scale down” a loudspeaker design, this isn’t the case when you’re trying to achieve 95% of the performance for 60% of the cost. Concessions need to be made.’ These, says Payor, are mainly around low-frequency performance. ‘It won’t play with the same dynamic verve in the first octave that the Orion can achieve.’