Ohm Speakers, thoughts?

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.

It sounds like you do not notice any variation in tonal balance relative to position, is that correct?

If that is so, I may try experimenting in another room. Which would be quite an "exercise". 8-)

Tonal balance will vary with location based on room acoustics as is the case with any speaker. All rooms are different and affect sound differently.

I think I can say with confidence that the best results with tonal balance is most likely to occur as well if the speakers are not too close to the wall.

In my case, the upper midrange of my Walsh 5's (adjustable 300 drivers, see photo of the adjustments in my system section), which are 5 feet out from the wall in a much larger room is more "restrained" than the 100 drivers in the smaller room. This is intentional in my case in that I have the "perspective" adjustment set to "far". I think this setting attenuates or lowers the midrange level.

My Walsh 2's (100 driver) may be more analogous to your 200s in that, though smaller and designed for smaller rooms, there are no adjustments. I've had these in two very different 12X12 rooms which I can say confidently did affect the tonal balance to some extent based on room acoustics.

Mwr0707, do you recall if the soundstage of the F's was located primarily behind the speakers when listening straight on axis like the CLS series 3 drivers?

Maybe there is a difference here that you perceive as "more restrained" upper midrange?

With the Walsh 5 S3 drivers, the "perspective" adjustment, which corresponds mainly to midrange, I believe can be set to "close", "medium" or "far". The "far" setting seems to move the soundstage more back behind the speakers when listening dead on.

Unfortunately, I do not know which settings on the Walsh5 S3 match or come closest to matching the sound of the 300 or 200 drivers, which do not have adjustments.

You might want to pop John Strohbeen an email and get his input.