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Home > About Me and Extras > HiVi-Swans OS 10 review
They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. Well I can't say for sure whether HiVi-Swans made this speaker to imitate the Overnight Sensations, but I can't help but wonder about the similarities. Is it just a coincidence that HiVi made a small bookshelf speaker using the same 4" Bronze cone and 20mm tweeter as the Overnight Sensations? Is it a coincidence that their speaker is essentially the same shape and size? Is it a coincidence that they named it the "O-S" 10? Why OS? Why not any other letters?
I was alerted of the existence of this speaker by some people in the community. They are easily available on Amazon, so I ordered a pair because I was genuinely curious how close the similarities might be. Come with me as we dive in together!
Packaging
The speakers came very well-packed. Triple-boxed, no less! The odds of anything happening to these during shipping are basically nil.
The outer box was Amazon's. Very standard.
Within that was the corrugated cardboard box that HiVi used to ship the speakers.
And finally, within that is the actual printed box you'd see on a store shelf. Very handsome, in my opinion. I love the handle at the top.
The speakers with some protective foam wrap
Bundled inside are: a proprietary 4-conductor speaker cable, a TOSLINK cable, and an RCA->1/8 adapter. Complete with Swans-branded velcro cable wraps.
A really nice remote control.
And now, the moment of reveal! A cute little pair of speakers that look oddly familiar.
The outer dimensions of the OS 10 are about 1" smaller in every direction (roughly 5"w x 7"h x 8"d). Also, you can't quite tell from the photo, but they have a subtle "lean-back" rake going on, which looks pretty cool.
Around back, we have approx. 1"d x 4"w ports. The right speaker has a bevy of inputs: TOSLINK, Coaxial digital, and RCA L+R. Below that is a proprietary 4-pin connector that carries a speaker-level signal over to the other speaker.
Getting inside
The wraparound fabric looks and feels awesome. I love it. Why on earth don't we do more of this in our builds?
Interestingly, the wraparound portion simply pops off, almost like a speaker grille. In fact, I'm pretty sure the nubbies that are holding the wraparound part on are grille fasteners.
What we're left with beneath that is a plastic speaker enclosure. Which, obviously is not as good as proper MDF, but still they are relatively thick for plastic speakers, and don't sound too bad in a knuckle-wrap test.
Underneath the grille fasteners are the actual screws that hold the baffle onto the rest of the enclosure. Unscrewing those reveals the inner guts. Damping is handled by a simple sheet of batting with some slits cut in it to fit around stuff. The drivers are rear-mounted. The tweeter is held in place by what is essentially a blank piece of PCB. The woofer is held in place by two really beefy pieces of sheet metal that clamp down on the frame from behind. Very clever; I like it.
Looking inside the enclosure itself, you can see that it is ribbed all around which (hopefully) adds some rigidity and cuts down on resonance. In the back of the Left speaker is the connector for the proprietary speaker jack.
The right speaker contains the brains of the operation. At the top of the enclosure is the touch panel to operate it. In back is the amplifier board.
Amplifier Board
I didn't want to completely remove the amplifier board, so I tried to get the best photo of it I could. On the bottom-right corner, you can see the mains power come in, feeding up to a Switch Mode Power Supply on the right-hand side. The DSP and amplifier circuitry is on the left. Exiting the board at the top are the L + R speaker channels, which are carrying both the tweeter and woofer circuits at speaker level.
The specs for the OS 10 claim that the amplifier is delivering 30 watts per channel. And here's where it starts to really diverge from the Overnight Sensations: this an active speaker. The crossover filtering is happening at the amplifier stage. This probably saves a considerable amount of money for the manufacturer, as they don't have to pay for large coils, caps, and resistors--nor find a way to safely mount them--as you would normally for a passive speaker.
The drivers
The Woofer
Now let's get to the part that's on everyone's mind: are these the same drivers in the Overnight Sensations? Let's find out.
The woofer is labeled "OS10W," which could mean anything, really. Note that it is labeled 4 Ohms, not 8 Ohms as the B4N.
But how does it measure?
I measured the free-air impedance of the woofer in the OS 10 (IN BLUE). I then measured a standard HiVi B4N from my collection (IN BLACK). As you can see this woofer in the OS 10 really is lower impedance, and I think it safely qualifies as Nominal 4 Ohm. It also appears that it has a slightly lower Fs.
Honestly, I'm kinda jealous that we don't have access to this woofer as DIYers. If I could use it instead of the B4N in the Overnight Sensations, I probably would have. That extra sensitivity boost from the 4 Ohm woofer alone would have been worth it.
As for Frequency Response, I measured the OS 10 woofer in its cabinet without any filtering. I didn't bother with an apples-to-apples comparison because I honestly didn't feel like taking the whole thing apart to try to mount a B4N in there. However even by looking at this one graph you can clearly tell we're dealing with a metal-cone woofer, and it is most likely the exact same cone as the one in the B4N.
The Tweeter
Now, at first glance, we would have assumed that the tweeter would be the HiVi T20-8. From the front, it appears to have the same clear silk dome material with some sort of black damping behind the dome. However, around back things start to look different. I placed a T20-8 next to the "OS10T" as it is labeled. The T20-8 has some sort of buttonhole-vented-pole-piece-looking thing on the back, whereas the OS10T is just plain flat. So is the motor on this tweeter different?
I overlaid the impedance measurement of the tweeter from the OS 10 (IN BLUE), and the HiVi T20-8 (IN BLACK). The OS 10 tweeter seems to have a slightly lower impedance, say 5.5 Ohms, whereas the HiVI T20-8 is higher at around 7.5 Ohms. Also, the Swans OS 10 has a slightly lower Fs.
So again, Swans has chosen to use a slightly different driver for this speaker than the one they sell to us hobbyists. In this case, though, the difference seems arbitrary.
System Frequency REsponse
Finally, here is a summed Frequency Response of the OS 10. I made it using Gated MLS, so the data below 200 Hz is worthless. Overall, pretty good; we have essentially a flat FR within +- 3 DB.
So let's talk about the sound.
Listening Impressions
And now, the big question: do they sound like the Overnight Sensations? And the answer is: yes. I set the OS 10 side-by-side next to a pair of Overnight Sensations, and did some A / B comparisons. I invited my wife and kids in for some second opinions as well. I closely level-matched both speakers, so you really wouldn't know which pair was playing unless you were the one doing the playback.
My wife and kids all pretty much concluded that they couldn't tell the difference. To me, it was always pretty obvious each time, but hey I ought to be able to recognize my own creation! The OS 10 are a slightly smaller cabinet, and as such, the Overnight Sensations can reach just that few Hz lower in bass extension. So to me that was always the first giveaway.
Second, the OS 10 just have a slightly more "forward" soundstage. Yes, the overall timbre was pretty similar, but they lacked the sort of 3D soundstage I like to incorporate into my designs. Also, imaging wasn't quite as precise on the OS 10 as it is on the Overnight Sensations.
At the end of the day, the OS 10 are good at playing back music. They are good speakers. But to me, they are just "playing back music." I know I risk sounding like a pompous ass when I say this, but I design speakers that are meant to "draw you into the music." I don't feel like the OS 10 hit that particular mark.
Final Thoughts
First things first: it blows my mind how much you're getting for $170 shipped! You are getting a self-powered pair of small bookshelf/desktop speakers that you can run off basically anything. It has Bluetooth 5.0, but if that's too new-fangled for you, then it'll ALSO let you drive it with line level RCA, or coaxial or optical digital inputs. Yes, you can select between the inputs. The touch panel you're supposed to use on top of the speaker kinda sucks, though. Many times I had to touch the buttons several times for it to register something as simple as "Power On" or + or - on the volume controls. But hey, it comes with a really nice remote control, so that makes up for that in my opinion.
They look nice! Like I mentioned earlier, I LOVE the fabric that wraps around the back of the enclosure. It does a fantastic job of masking the fact that these are just plastic speakers, and classes things up quite a bit. So they should look quite sophisticated on a desktop or bookshelf.
Finally, they sound pretty good. Do they sound as good as the Overnight Sensations? In my opinion, no. But still, definitely pretty good for the price.
So why DIY?
The pill that's tough to swallow here is that there is no way in hell you could ever DIY a speaker at this price. The cost of materials alone is essentially the same price as the OS 10--and you still have to supply your own amplifier! So it raises the essential question: why DIY? Because it's more satisfying.
In fact, I'll go on record and say that DIYing your own speakers is a whole order of magnitude more satisfying. Let's look at it from 2 difference scenarios.
Scenario 1: You press the order button on Amazon. The truck arrives 2 days later. You open the box, set up the speakers on your desk, and listen. You enjoy the "new speaker smell" (for lack of a better term) for a few days. After those initial few days, the novelty has worn off. You start to notice things you wish they did better. At that point, the only question is: are these "good enough" for you to keep long-term? If yes, then you keep them, and enjoy listening to your music on them. If no, you're back online, reading reviews of other small bookshelf speakers, looking for the next best thing.
Scenario 2: You invest your own time, tools, and energy to take a pile of parts and convert it into a working speaker over the course of several days or weeks. During that build, you had to use your hands and brain in ways that you probably don't during the rest of your week. Once the cabinet is done to your liking, you bring it into your listening space and are wowed that, not only does it make a sound, but it makes a GOOD sound. Holy crap! You made that thing, and it works! Over the following weeks or years, each time you look at those speakers you built, you may remember the goofs you made in the process; maybe you sanded too far in one spot, or a screwdriver slipped and made a gouge somewhere. Most likely no one notices these flubs but you. But they are your battle-scars, and you can be proud. In other words, you have a personal connection to these speaker boxes that you simply never could with something you pulled out of a box and plopped on a shelf. You are more than just a consumer, you created something.
And that is what keeps me doing what I do. I love that I can give you a project where you can take a pile of parts, and with your own blood, sweat, and tears, you can turn it into something that sounds really good. At the end of the day, DIY speakers can't be about trying to save money (at least not at this price point). But it can be so much more rewarding!
Paul Carmody | last updated January 14, 2024
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