Ohm Speakers, thoughts?

My one-month comparison:

My perception in comparing the F and Series 3 drivers is that the new drivers have a more powerful low-end. The tweeters have a louder very high-end although directional. The 200s play louder than the F's could. I wonder what the 300s sound like.

I perceive the upper midrange on the new drivers to be a little more restrained than the original F's. But this seems to me like a small variation on the original character, which did not have in-your-face midrange either.

In the room where I spent a year listening to the F's they provided gut-punch air movement as well. However, this was the fully-enclosed living room of a small apartment. I'd be surprised if they could do the same in the room I'm listening in now.

This morning I was experimenting with repositioning. I ended up standing directly between the two speakers, and out of the direct path of the tweeters. I could still perceive the 3d soundstage arced widely in front of me.

Unsound, I guess the only way that you would be able to appreciate the significance of experiencing this "Walshness", the only "Walshness" that matters to me would be to hear it. Perhaps the sound of the speaker is less important to you than the implementation.

I wonder if anyone out there has ever tried to custom-build a 2-way, downward firing OHM CLS-like design using conventional drivers where the bass driver sits on top of the enclosure and fires downward, and if so what were the results? Has any owner of Ohm Walsh speaker cabinets, or someone who might build a custom cabinet from scratch, ever tried this?

Inquiring minds want to know! Pictures to go with the description would be a bonus!

Mapman,

I'm noticing quite a bit of "eq" difference as I move the speakers relative to the back wall. It seems to me that placing the speakers closer than 12-15 inches to the wall is related to the upper-midrange effect I was describing.

At 12-15 inches out, and forward of the 50" flat screen, it seems to open up quite a bit. Have you noticed anything similar? The shape of your room is quite different so this might not correlate.

With both my Walsh2 S3's in a 12X12 room and my f5 S3's in an L shaped ~27X20 foot room, I've found the soundstage and imaging is best defined with the speakers at least 2-3 feet away from any wall (proportionally further in a larger room perhaps) and the speakers maybe 30-40% closer together than their distance to the primary listening position. With this configuration, instruments are very well defined and locatable within the soundstage, which fills in nicely from wall to wall mostly from behind the plane of the speakers.

Currently, my Walsh 2 S3s are less than ideally located only about 18 inches from the rear wall in a 12X12 room due to restrictions placed by my wife in her sunroom. This reduces the detail of the soundstage somewhat but otherwise they still sound great.

My original Walsh 2s from ~1982, which I just upgraded this year, paled by comparison in a/b tests in most every aspect of sonic rendering with the S3s.

MWr0707,

One thing I'm realizing with the Ohms is that I think an easy and sound way to determine best placement is to think of your room as a concert hall and identify where in the room you would place the performers in the room if they were playing live and then where you would like to sit to listen.

Then Place the Ohms immediately to the front of the performance area. Avoid placing too close to the walls if possible. The soundstage should then cover the area desired as best as is possible.

Lean towards placing the Ohms closer together rather than farther apart when unsure. I've found the soundstage holds together better when the speakers are not too far apart.

With the Ohms, its like setting up a live performance. It becomes an exercise in placing performers within the room based on where you will listen from. Like a live performance, the best seats are usually front and center somewhere, but there are plenty of good seats in the house, unlike most conventional speakers.