Tony Minasian is the owner of two companies, Tonian Labs (a record label) and Oriaco (a loudspeaker company), in Southern California. He’s a person who deeply understands both ends of the audio reproduction spectrum. His companies offer solutions for capturing a live musical performance from the microphone all the way to your home speakers.
Oriaco, which Tony said stands for “origin of acoustics” is his two year old loudspeaker company. Although Oriaco is new, Tony has worked behind the scenes in the industry as a distributor for Supra Cables, PHY-HP and AER Loudspeakers as well as a designer of kit speakers for decades. Tonian Labs has been around since 2001.
This year Tony was back at T.H.E. Show for the second year in a row to unveil a new custom stand-mounted loudspeaker called the Oriaco G6 EM Edition.
The new model follows the smaller Oriaco G6, which impressed many at T.H.E. Show last year. Not only were the G6 quick and airy, but Tony demoed them with relatively modest electronics and custom made cabling; a Denon PMA-A100 Integrated Amp from 2011 and a Marantz CD-67SE CD player from 1996 (both discontinued) were the only other electronics in use in the room. The same partnering equipment was back this year and both models were on display.
Oriaco loudspeakers were quite surprising — in a good way. The new Oriaco G6 EM Edition grabs your attention, much like I remembered last year with a distinctive quickness to the midrange. There were no bleeding of notes and musical rhythms had a crispness that made them sound more real.
According to Tony, “The Oriaco G6 speaker began after our failure to find studio monitors that we could rely on to accurately assess our recordings. This realization led us to create our own speakers to deliver the real and natural sound we strive to produce.”
“Our challenge was to produce a point source sound without the pitfalls of the existing point source driver technology currently on the market. The current technology uses either a whizzer cone or concentric drivers. We believe that the physics of both of these designs are unable to achieve a proper balance of sound. For this reason, we broke away from conventional measuring methods and created our own. Through this process, we have finally achieved the sound we had been searching for.”
Although I only heard two tracks during my short time in the demo room, I won’t make a sweeping conclusion other than to say Tony is onto something. Each of his custom hand-built loudspeakers are certainly worthy of an audition.
I recall the original G6 to be priced around $3,500/pair and the EM Edition was listed at $6,300/pair at T.H.E. Show.
In addition to speakers, Tony also offers custom made cables through the Oriaco brand that can be purchased separately at the following prices:
- 16g speaker cable (8ft) – $850
- 18g speaker cable (8ft) – $650*
- RCA cable (1m) – $500
- XLR cable (1m) – $450
- Power cable (1m) – $500
- Optical cable (1m) – $300
*Very thin 18g speaker wire were used as part of Oriaco’s demo at T.H.E. Show to prove fancy thick cabling unnecessary.
Comparison
| Oriaco G6 | Oriaco G6 EM Edition | |
| Frequency Response | 57 – 30 kHz | 55 – 40 kHz |
| Nominal Impedance | 8 ohm | 8 ohm |
| Sensitivity | 91 dB | 90 dB |
| Power | 30 watts | 60 watts |
| MSRP | $3,500 | $6,300 |
For more information: tonianlabs.com
Continue reading: Show Reports from T.H.E. Show 2022
