Marty,
You may be right about the front to back imaging in that the mbl demo was as good as I have heard in that regard, particularly with a state of the art reel to reel orchestral recording as the source, but I would have to hear both, probably larger 300s or 5s on the OHM side, in the same larger, acoustically conditioned room that I heard the mbls in to be sure.
I'd attribute the mbls exceptional performance in this regard somewhat to use of omni drivers for the high end whereas OHM Walsh speakers are not omni in the uppermost frequency range that most people can hear. Original Ohm As and Fs were.
OHM speakers also use a single Walsh driver for most of the frequency range (all of the frequency range covered in the case of original As and Fs) which gives them an edge in overall coherence I believe.
OHM and German Physics use similar technology based on the Walsh driver concept but their Walsh driver technology and speaker designs are quite different, I believe.
GErman Physiks uses the Walsh driver for the top end and supplements that with conventional woofers on the low end in most models (except the horn loaded Unicorn, I believe), as does mbl with the exception of the 101s.
OHM does the opposite. The omni Walsh driver covers the low end, mids and some highs but supplements that with more conventional cloth dome tweeters for the high end in the newer series 3 models.
Interestingly, we were informed here on another A'gon thread recently by John Strohbeen, the man behind OHM, that they now have a distributor in GErmany, mbl and German Physiks home turf.
I wonder how well they will do there?
