Sabian 22″ AAX Omni (Crash and Ride) Cymbal

Jojo Mayer requested that Sabian design a cymbal that could be all-purpose, namely crash and ride. Of course, you can crash and ride any cymbal, but the sound that is produced is not often suitable. So, Sabian came up with the Omni. Currently, they are available in two sizes, 18″ and 22″. This review covers the 18″ version, and I have to say that the design not only works well, but the two versions make a nice set.

When crashed, it sounds like a crash, obviously deeper and louder than its 18″ cousin. As a ride cymbal, the outer region has a good wash, and the inner region is dry, similar to the 18″ Omni.

The bell is not lathed or hammered, and the region next to the bell is hammered with the hammering spaced very close together. The outer region of the cymbal is only lathed. This gives you not only the crash availability, but two distinct ride sounds. While the outer area has plenty of wash, the inner area next to the bell is dry, due to the heavy hammering. Both the 18″ and 22″ versions are hammered and lathed in this same pattern.

The crash spectrum has peaks at 450 Hz, 550 Hz, declines, and then rises again at 1.4 kHz where it remains relatively flat out to about 7 kHz. The response then declines to 40 kHz. Overall, it has a very different sound than the 18″ Omni.

The crash peaks at 0.15 seconds, a bit slower than the 18″ Omni, which is to be expected. The crash has a long sustain.

I also measured the spectrum of the first 0.5 second of a single ping (so that we are looking mainly at the spectrum of the ping and not the wash) on the outer and inner (next to the bell) regions of the cymbal. The first graph below is the spectrum from the outer region and the second graph is from the inner region. Notice that the inner region next to the bell has less lower frequencies than the outer region that is not hammered. However, unlike the 18″ Omni, the inner region rolls off sooner (beginning at 10 kHz) than the 18″ Omni does. Between the two Omni cymbals, you have four distinct ride sounds, and two crash sounds.

Click HERE to listen to an audio sample, which will include crash (when appropriate), ride, and bell sounds (these are 24 bit, 176.4 kHz wav files, so be sure your sound card is capable of handling these high resolution sound files). In this case, there are two ride sound samples. The first one is on the outer region, and the second one is on the region next to the bell.

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