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

BTW, Ellington fans should cue up "Far East Suite" on the Ohms. Not only my personal favorite composition of the last century, but a great demo disc for the Ohms unique soundstaging capabilities.

Marty

Marty,

Thanks for the tip on 'Far East Suite".

I need to add more Ellington to my collection.

I have the "The Duke: The Columbia Years" box set that covers a wide range of Ellington stuff from early to later years on that label and it has top notch sound. Even the older cuts have been remastered extremely well and overall the whole set is just pure audio candy on the OHMs that is hard to match.

It's one of my "Desert Island Discs" and perhaps my single favorite jazz title in my collection, but I do not think "Far East Suite" is in there.

Another report from Ohm 100 Land...

The 100s are sounding terrific. One of my favorite "demo discs" is the LP version of Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms." "So Far Away," sounded wonderful... the thump and pluck of the guitars was enchanting. "Walk of Life" and "Why Worry," were also marvelous. Then, this morning, I had the opportunity to listen for a few minutes to some of "Promise," the LP version by Sade. What the 100s did with the opening cut, "Is It a Crime," was nothing less than jaw-dropping. I mean, this is a very highly produced, multitracked, studio recording... nothing "audiophile" about it, in the normal sense. But the effect of that "Ohm magical presentation" was really something. The track opens with a loud, raucous saxophone solo with lots of plucked electric bass and crashing drums underneath and around it, with lots of studio reverberation surrounding the whole package. The 100s really made it dance and come alive. Then suddenly, the track goes quiet and you are left with just Sade singing accompanied by leisurely chords on some sort of keyboard/organ. The organ chords reach out and envelop the room... you are just getting swept away in the music. I don't know how else to describe it. This, by the way, was one of my favorite albums when I had my old, Vandersteen 2C loudspeakers. As justifiably lauded as they are for throwing a large soundstage, they never brought this level of drama out of that album. Just marvelous.

I'm going to have a lot more time next week to play around with positioning. I'm finding this aspect of things a bit frustrating... I'm not always sure what I'm looking for. I'm not convinced that I've got my positioning optimized yet... the "phantom" center image seems a little skewed to the left... and I'm not sure I'm getting the best tonal balance out of the speakers. I will say, surprisingly, that as much as these 100s are considerably larger than the Micros, I haven't generally found them to be overly bass heavy in my listening room. They have more of what you might call "authority" than the Micros, but generally speaking they're not really "boomy." I started with them about 2 1/2 feet off the back wall, and I've gradually been inching them backwards toward the wall, because the width of the soundstage seems to bloom as I move them back. But, beyond that, I'm not sure I've got anything else quite right yet. Any speaker positioning advice any of you experts can offer will be warmly accepted! :-)

If you're soundstage/imaging seems skewed to one side or the other due to placement and/or room acoustics, try toeing out the OHM on the weak side only to direct more high end energy from the tweet towards your listening area from that side.

That is what I do with my 5's to help balance things out in my listening area in the long area of my very assymetrical L shaped room.

You can see an example of this in the "theBigOhms" photo on my virtual system.

The right F-5 is toed out more than the left to fire more forward than normal so as to balance out the sound stage which otherwise is skewed significantly to the left and extends well into the short length of the L shaped room to the left of the left hand speaker.

Map,

Ellington's extended compositions/theme albums are my favorites. While this is not "Take The A Train", I find the music readily accessible despite the more involved structures. My personal 3 faves are:

Far East Suite
Intimacy of The Blues
Queen's Suite

The last 2 I own only on LPs (Pablo) which sound great, but I can't comment on the CD versions, sonically.

All 3 are definitely worth having.

Marty