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


Hi,

I'd love to hear the impressions of people who've actually spent some time with these speakers to share their sense of their plusses and minuses. Mapman here on Audiogon is a big fan, and has shared lots on them, but I'm wondering who else might be familiar with them.
rebbi
My engineering experience tells me to believe what you actually measure and not what someone else tells you. Also, many magazine guys, in all fields, are typically writers first and technicians last. And I have first hand experience on that one.
Believe who you will, but in the end it is the result that matters and not the conversation that gets you there.
I love my used 4XOs, but was mightly disappointed in my new walsh 2.2000 upgrades so there is a variance in quality.
Thank you t8kc....

everything I have done it has been on the up and up as I really don't have a dog in the fight.  (just a bit) this is suppose to be for fun not a Paine in the rear end....
I started to deconstruct the spaghetti switch box, and finally removed the switcher  late this afternoon. And I will replace all the nasty cheap stuff  with  

copper or silver (all of them) and I'll replace them with  WyreWorlds  new OFC copper as I do care? I have capabilities of measuring FFT and laser interferometry if necessary. The top plate is now floating on top of the cabinet held down with wing nuts.
The plan is to make a constrained layer part with aluminum, silicon sheets and Finnply, this should be a exciting next few weeks.
I might even construct a 10 inch F clone from some  very cool materials as I was privy to at my last job in material sciences...

1/3 octave is like driving a Beetle, my preference would be a Porsche Gt 3 RS  that allows much much higher resolution...🇸🇪
PS. The McClaren 650 S is even better, lighter and cool as..s#*_!
Stereophile has been doing and publishing these measures for years so I would not discount them totally.

peter you should talk to JS then to figure out what is going on. Or maybe someone else here with expertise in this area could comment.

Obviously your results apply to your speakers only. But there is nothing to indicate they apply to any other pair so you should be cautious in public there.

I personally suspect you have a crossover issue at this point but I am no expert. JS could help you much better.

I am an engineer and have image processing background but not an audio engineer. 1/3 octave as I understand it is essentially a low pass filter that produces a more generalized output. That would be useful to enable a general comparison between data sets filtering details that matter for exact tonality but not for that initial purpose.

In any case you need apples and apples measures to compare at all. 1/3 octave apples apples comparison is only one possible with data and tools available at this point that is apples/apples. It would show general response with enough resolution to determine if two general response curves are similar or not. From what we know so far I would predict they continue to be radically different with yours still showing  large gradual dropoff all else staying the same.

The review mentioned a small tonality variation detected. It was not clear to me if that was detected by ear only or supported by other measures done but not mentioned. John Atkinson surely has/had good ears but I I would still hope the latter.

Also these were original OHM 5s reviewed. I had original Walsh 2s, same gen Walsh drivers and I a/b compared them to my newer series 3 models when I got them and I can attest that there were significant midrange tonal variations and the originals were nowhere close. Stereophile may have been generous with their assessment and not published unflattering info perhaps knowing JS would attempt to address which he did starting in series 2 models shortly after.





Without comment on the accuracy of the graphs supplied here...

I’ve measured my Ohm 100s with several software packages (including, among others, the custom designed, high-Rez Studio Wizzard package and Audyssey pro). I have never seen anything like the roll-off under discussion here. Different speaker, different room, different measurement hardware/software/operator = different result.

Whatever has resulted in the graphs published here should not be extrapolated to the Walsh/Walsh-like drivers that Ohm employs across their line.
Peter regarding the earlier charts of walsh driver alone, which surely must be different than stereophile reported results on the entire original Walsh 5 speaker, there is no data elsewhere to compare with so it is what it is. There is no way to know know if it is normal for these speakers or not. That can never happen with a single sample in any case.

But if your complete speaker with tweeters in play roll off as indicated, I am willing to bet there is something wrong with this patient.  Stereophile indicated virtual flat response to 20khz measured with the original Walsh 5's from early 80's tested.      Data presented as I understand it would seem to point to the crossover in that my understanding is all measures were done with drivers connected to crossover. If it is the crossover then the walsh driver alone measures might be affected as well. No way to know that for certain though with the data available so far that I can see.

Unless I’m missing something I’d suggest talking to JS and see what he has to say.