Ohm Speakers, thoughts?

Unsound,

Ohm no longer uses the original Walsh drivers that were installed in the F's.

The new drivers are still mounted at the top of the box and fire down into it. The sound still radiates from the sides of the inverted cone. In the new design, this is not full range, and a front-diagonal-firing tweeter covers the high-end. The boxes are ported in the new design. For what it's worth, Ohm began using this new design in the 80s.

With my face close to the new driver, I can clearly hear the sound radiating from most of the circumference of the driver, except for the very high-end.

I still hear the same old deep, wide and realistic image that at this point, fills a very strangely shaped room, and is not focused at a single small sweet spot. No tilting speakers up or down, no adjusting chair position, etc.

Whether called the Walsh sound or the Ohm sound, this is the sound I was looking for. At this point I perceive the same imaging as with the old F's, but not quite the same timbre. The room the old F's were in was much smaller, more regularly shaped and had a carpeted concrete floor while today I am on wood floor. I suspect that may be contributing significantly to the different timbre I perceive.

We'll see what happens as they break in. They definitely play a lot louder than the old F's could. You also had to be careful with the old F's because they were easy to blow up with a bit too much power.

Unsound,

Some purists appear to not buy this, but Ohm clearly builds and uses Walsh design drivers. They are in fact not the same Walsh design as the original A's and F's, the first and somewhat legendary Ohm speakers to apply the Walsh design principles over 30 years ago.

However, there is no doubt in my mind that the current Ohm Walsh drivers are based on the same design principles as the originals.

Again, I could be wrong, but, I was under the impression that Ohm currently uses pistonic cones as opposed to the bending wave Walsh drivers.

Could you get good response off the back of a standard driver firing down into a cabinet?

If the answer is no, then they must be using something different than a standard driver.

If the answer is yes, then they've come up with a way to get "walsh sound" from a standard driver.

Either way is just fine by me. I only care about the sound.

I've never heard Ohm Fs.

I a/b compared the new Series 3 100 drivers versus original Walsh 2 drivers from the early 80's before I purchased the larger f-5s with the Walsh 5 series 3 drivers.

The original Walsh 2 drivers had significant and very noticeable sonic shortcomings when compared the the new Series 3 Walsh 100 drivers or even my "modern" Dynaudio or Triangle (with subwoofer) monitors.

Though inferior, I still enjoyed the original vintage Walsh 2s for many years still, mainly due to the characteristics of the Walsh sound.