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

Hey, everybody,

Well, I finally got all my new electronics set up a few days ago.

I have to say that the combination of the of the Manley Shrimp preamplifier and the Bel Canto S300 power amplifier seems to have a lot of synergy to it. The bass is tight and controlled, midrange frequencies sound very nice, and the highs are light and airy.

I'm wondering, though, if any of you have ever found that a change in your electronics caused you to reposition your speakers.

When I first hooked up the new electronics, I was struck by the increased sense of "texture" in the music, particularly on orchestral works. Violins, for example, sounded "woody" in a way that they hadn't before. And everything had a sense of "air" around it.

But something was kind of missing, and I realized it was that the soundstage that I was used to have kind of collapsed... center fill was still very good, and there was a sense of depth, but that "energized room" that you get with Ohm speakers with the right source material was missing. What fixed it was simply moving the speakers back about 6 inches or so closer to the wall. Everything sprang back into place.

I called John and asked him about this, and he said that he'd never heard of imaging being affected by a change in electronics this way. I'm curious to see what you guys have found in this regard.

In any case, I'm very, very pleased. I think that the speakers have responded very well to the change in electronics, and I'll continue to report back as I have more time to listen.

"I'm wondering, though, if any of you have ever found that a change in your electronics caused you to reposition your speakers."

Yes, I had the same experience when changing amps and to a lesser extent digital source.

It may be a psychological thing more so than anything technical. The sound changes and a change in speaker location can help tweak it back more to what you had been used to.

Hello gang. I've been working with my Walsh 5000's and although I thought I was on the way to getting their performance right it's turned out to be a no go. The 5000's are inefficient and need high current and high power, particularly to play them and get good bass-fill at lower volumes. As some of you know I have the McCormack DNA-500 and a VTL 2.5 preamp. The DNA-500 is high current and 500 per side at 8 hohms. I like to play my setup at low volume sometimes and enjoy the music, thus the high current amp. At low volume the bass weight and fullness is not there and it should be with a high current amp. Now, you might say, "it could be your room or it could be speaker placement issues.". But I've heard the Walsh 5000's play with bigger bass in this room and in their current position in the room. The problem is that I've only heard them play with bigger bass when I've reconfigured some interconnects or power cords within the system. (When I powered up the system and the cables and system were settling back in after a reconfiguration) In other words, while the system was settling in after cables have been moved around there have been times when I heard these speakers play with the kind of low end weight I'd expect from speakers this size. But in my experience, the sonics of a system are never stable while cables and gear are in the process of settling in. Once everything in the system settles downs after reconfiguring cables, the sonics then stabilize. This can take a day or two. During that time I've heard the 5000's move more air and play with more bass weight, but as thing settle in the low end weight decreases. This has happened several times as I've experimented with cables and configurations and has been disappointing. But what this experience revealed to me is that the speakers have the capability to produce more and bigger low end weight in this room and in their current placement. So it's not the speakers, the room, or their placement holding back the low end. The question is, what to do? Change preamplifiers, power cables, or interconnects? I find it hard to believe that this high current amplifier could be the problem. I know that amp speaker matching is always a key to performance, but it does not seem possible in this case. I'm looking for answers.

Foster_9,

I'm at a loss. This is one for Mapman to figure out! ;-)

Foster 9:

The DNA-500 has more than enough power and current to drive the Walsh 5000s. This must be a placement issue, I have measured (and heard) substantial differences in the bass output of my Walsh 5s in the main power band (~40-60 hz) with movement of the speaker a mere 3 inchs. You need to pick up a Radio Shack sound meter and a test CD with tones from 20 -100 Hz and run scans for different loudspeaker positions. Believe me, a mere few inch adjustment can do wonders for sorting out the bass.