Are Ohm Walsh Speakers the Poor Man's MBLs?

Marty,

Just curious, no need to create work for experimentation, especially with a holiday weekend coming up!

After hearing the mbls, I did do some experimentation with my F-5s to try to reproduce the front to back imaging I heard with the mbl 111s. I'm a bit handicapped in my room to emulate the mbl setup I heard, but I did find listening near field does move the OHMs F-B imaging more in the direction of the mbls.

I only enjoy listening nearfield as a switch off, not the norm. I prefer to listen far enough back to geometrically simulate what I would chose as an optimal seating location at a live performance. I usually do not like to sit in the front row.

I did find the mbl F-B imaging to be of benefit mainly with large orchestral works, where there is greater distance between the players in the front and the players in the rear. They did an exceptional job of reproducing that, perhaps the best I have ever heard.

I have found that this aspect of mbl sound can be simulated pretty well with the OHMs, perhaps better than could be with may speaks, but perhaps not to the same extent as the mbls in the room they were in, at least not in my listening room. The room the mbls were playing in had a good 12-15 feet of wide open space behind the speaks. None of my rooms at home are a reasonable approximation of that.

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Here's a post I did to my system page a while back shortly after hearing the mbls that addresses listening location and perceived soundstage:

"I've been doing some experimenting listening to the big OHM f-5s from various locations in my listening room.

The one thing only omni's that I have heard, like OHMs and mbls, can do, is enable you to listen from most any location in a room forward of the speaker location with the noticeable change being only the perspective from which you perceive location of recording elements, much like what occurs if you listen to a live performance from various seats in the venue.

Tonal balance/timbre, size of sound stage and location of recording elements within the soundstage remains essentially the same.

Normally, I listen from a not so unusual sweet spot location when I can, about 8-10 feet in front of the F-5s.

The last few days I have been listening near field, from about 2 feet directly in front of the left speaker, and up close to left wall.

The main difference is that it is easier to perceive location of recording elements from the front to back of the soundstage and these also tend to occupy a larger area within the overall soundstage and the soundstage extends from directly behind the left speaker to the far wall directly across from my listening position.

Everything remains very focused and more holographic in that the sound seems even more completely disassociated from physical speaker location, very much like sitting in the front rows of a live performance.

I tend to like to listen from a bit further back, still the speakers ability to allow this is very cool and makes for a nice change of pace on occasion!"

Map,

MBL likes to demo the 101 at trade shows with an electric blues recording (don't know the title) played at ear shattering volumes. Standing in the crowd about 15 ft from the speakers, the entrance of the solo guitar jumps forward in a "touch it" kind of way. I've also noted this effect on big band and orchestral music demos of this speaker at 2 dealers and, to a lesser extent, on demos of the 116 (or possibly 111, can't quite recall), and 121 at another dealer. Very cool, but I'm not inclined to build my system around this.

Way back when, I owned Tablettes and, as you noted, the effect was more prominent on orchestral fare. My gut instinct is that my Ohm 100s won't really pull this off regardless of positioning, but one day I'll try your experiment and see what happens when the speakers move into the nearfield.

Marty

Marty,

I do think the omni sound radiation pattern is a key for image depth and acoustic dampening of the Walsh CLS driver in the wall facing directions would tend to limit this somewhat compared to what I heard with mbl.

Maybe John Strohbeen is out there reading these posts and might chirp in?

I wonder if other true omnis like Dueval and Morrison can do what the mbls do?

ohm helped write the book..the other guys read the book.

Does anyone here know if the Ohm MicroWalsh Talls are bi-wireable. I'm going to get some new speaker cable and need to know if I should have it terminated bi-wire or not.