Ohm Walsh Micro Talls: who's actually heard 'em?

Interesting that Austin seemed to equate extended highs with excess, or unwanted ambience.  The Ohms are anything but tipped-up iin the treble.  I think they might even be a tad rolled off in the highs.  To be sure, the Ohm room did not sound as good as my own system.  I have a better front end, better acoustics, better amplification, and I have dialed them in as well as my space permits, including giving my 2000s more space than John had in the hotel room.  In my fantasy, John Strohbeen visits my man cave and opines on my system setup.  I bet he might have some positive suggestions, but I also think he would like what he heard.

My Ohms were dialed in pretty well in my room. I continued to fiddle with placement, but consistently returned to the same position time and time again.

Honestly if I were to fault the Ohms it would be a tendency to have instruments sound like they are radiating directly off the tweeter, a lack of full resolution like a ribbon or Heil driver, and build quality which is just not up to snuff for a speaker at the price of the Ohms. I have seen other internet direct vendors build speakers for less than a quarter of what I paid for the Ohms that are built twice as well. An abundance of ambience would not be something that I would suggest. There were recordings that sounded large or chambered, but it was the recording and the same effect was present on other speakers in my room.

I continue to wonder how could my Walsh 2000s would sound if they were built to more exacting standards.

The sound of either pair of mine is totally detached from the speaker. Cannot tell where they are exactly with eyes closed. They never show any signs of strain and no noise that should not be there no matter how loud played off 500w/ch amp. So based on the overall quantity and quality of sound delivered, I’d have to say they are very well built and hard to match in their price range based on that alone.

Both of my pair use older refurbed pyramid shaped cabinets. Perhaps that helps.

I don't think the "ambience" that the author referred to in the linked article was speaking to excess treble or brightness.  I think he was likely referring to the sense of "body" or "weight" created by off-axis reflections in the omnidirectional dispersion (ambient energy) of the Ohms.  I think some people also describe this as "reverberance".

Mini-monitors often have that bright and "lean" presentation that highlights recorded detail.  My guess is that this writer had that in mind when describing what he found missing in the Ohms.  That type of SQ rarely sounds musical to me, but I admit that it can be more revealing of the recording.  In one sense, it's a fair point - because that's not the obvious strength of Ohm speakers (IMHO).   However,.....

His point about "listening through" the ambience and his idea of the "recorded room" sounding confused in the "actual listening room" are kinda old school audiophile philosophy.  An abstract idea of "accurate" SQ over convincing musical reproduction.  I want to argue the point, but - why bother?

In another way, I don't want to argue the point...because it's not IMO a right vs wrong thing.  Listening "through" the music is part of the audiophile experience for many purists.  For some folks, I guess it's the whole hobbyist's raison d'etre, but I personally find it tiresome these days.  

To to each their own, I guess.

Looking at the Stereophile photo of the Ohms in-room positioning, I find them to look a bit oddly toed. Although Ohms are fairly unfussy, this still looks a bit strange. Also not getting a bit more spread between the speakers could have possibly helped some. All of this of course me saying and thinking out loud-without me even being there, mind.....Okay, will get my coat now....

Regardless, I am still glad John and Co. did do the show, and hopefully good came out of it. If nothing else awareness that Ohm was indeed still alive and well! I can surely see though how a show environment can be tough and quite taxing.