Ohm Speakers, thoughts?

Line, Sean,

Your welcome. As I stated before, I am just searching for the truth.

Line:

One thing I would like to say, is that the cans are not diffusion cans, they are as transparent too sound as grill cloth is.

Sorry, I have to agree with Sean on this one. I know of no grill (cloth or metal) that does not affect the sound in some way. (of course I have not heard all speakers with and without grills; I could be wrong, I could be right!) ; )

Sean:

As far as the Ohm G goes, i think that it is a Walsh driver by basic design, but i'm not sure about the flare rate on the cone. It obviously has a LOT less surface area than the Ohm A or Ohm F Walsh drivers. The "standard" cone driver that you see in the G cabinet is a passive radiator, not a driven woofer. I've never seen one of these in person though, so i'm kinda sorta guessing on this one based on photo's / technical info that i have.

Yes, the Ohm G does use a Walsh driver but is not a "true" Walsh loudspeaker since it uses the energy from the concave part of the driver to power that passive radiator. (I am being a stickler to the original parameters of the patent)

I also have some Walsh "tweeters" that Infinity made, but i've never tinkered with them.

I almost bought a pair of Infinity's with the Walsh tweeter back in '76. I wish I had, it would have saved me money on a Transcriptors Skeleton turntable! (They were both part of a system I was pondering at the time)

If anyone is curious about the Walsh Loudspeaker, I encourage you to take a look at the patent (see previous post). There is a lot of technical information there but there are also things such as:

" A single very large coherent-sound loudspeaker might be built to serve a stadium of 100,000 listeners with high quality music and voice. It might have a vertically oriented conical diaphragm with an angle of 60 to 80 degrees, a diaphragm diameter of approxmately 60 inches and a height of 60 inches. The diaphragm might be of a composite aluminum and elastomer to substantially attenuate 16,000 c.p.s. waves in a vertical distance of 3 to 6 inches, and 4,000 c.p.s. waves in 12 to 14 inches, to obtain good diffusion of sound vertically. It would inherently have uniform diffusion in all directions horizontally. Its frequency range might cover 60 to 16,000 c.p.s. and it could handle well an electrical input of 500 watts with extremely low transient effects and other types of distortion. Its uniformity of response might well be about 1 db over the rated frequency range."

I would love to see this become reality! Any takers?

Also, any takers on my question; is it ethically, morally, politically... correct to keep calling the line a Walsh speaker?

Very nice information being posted. Thank you.

Question - What is preventing a Manufacturer from building an authentic Ohm F again?

Is it the licensing?
Is it the technology?
Is it the patent?
Is it the cost of producing them correctly?
What is it?

It has been approximately 30 years since they first appeared with such great potential, but later proven to be flawed. Why hasn't someone taken today's computer based designing techniques and applied them to this speaker in an effort to make them a reality. IMHO, there would be a viable market for them in 2-channel as well as HT.

I would definitely put my name on the list of future owners if they weren't priced ridiculously. Heck, when I purchased them in 1974 I was just out of undergraduate preparing to go to graduate school. IOW, I was flat broke but had the foresight to scape enough coins together to purchase them. I now have a coin jar spilling over. LOL

Lngbruno, I believe that Ohm has claimed that their original technicians have all retired and that they could not find suitable replacements. German Physiks have done just what you have suggested. The German Physiks speaker line does deviate slightly fom the original Walsh description. Most are augmented with additinal woofer/sub-woofer(s) with added cross-overs. Some use mulitiple Walsh type drivers. Most would consider their offering on the expensive side.
All in all, I agree with you complelety. While I haven't actually heard them in decades and I don't trust my memory of those experiences, the Walsh drivers still look like the most promising design to date. I would imagine that they may even be more relevant today than yesteryear.

This type of design would have to be hand built using custom parts i.e. minimal off the shelf componentry. As such, it would be a relatively large economical undertaking for someone to attempt as compared to starting up a speaker company that uses off the shelf parts. On top of that, the market for such an item isn't all that big in the grander scheme of things, hence the lack of anyone jumping in with both feet.

Having said that, i can see this type of thing taking off if someone were to build "one off" products out of their garage. That is, IF they could achieve the type of results that we know this design to be capable of AND doing so with a high level of consistency. I have thought about this myself, but not too seriously. Sean
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PS... Due to their radiation characteristics, these speakers are more difficult to set up. They also don't have a high WAF due to the placements required. This further limits their marketability.

If anyone has any doubts about what exactly constitutes Ohm's new version of a "Walsh" speaker, check out John Strohbeen's Patent #4440259. It is all spelled out. (Click on the images button to see the drawings)