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


Hi,

I'd love to hear the impressions of people who've actually spent some time with these speakers to share their sense of their plusses and minuses. Mapman here on Audiogon is a big fan, and has shared lots on them, but I'm wondering who else might be familiar with them.
rebbi
Joefish,

I've always been something of a "soundstage addict," myself. I even owned in the 1980's (and still have in a box somewhere) a Carver Sonic Hologram Generator.
The theory was the the C-9 injected a certain amount of out-of-phase info into the output signal, so as to "cancel interaural crosstalk..." precisely, as you say, to create a "headphone" experience through speaker systems.

As I remember, the C-9 had only two control buttons, each with a Hi/Low toggle:
"Injection Ratio" controlled the intensity of the effect.
"Listening Window" controlled the size of the "sweet spot."

The pleasantness or unpleasantness of the C-9 depended heavily on the source material. Some material could sound artificially echoey and weird. Tracks that had voices or instruments panned totally to the left or right channel (think some Beatles tunes, for example) tended to really show off the effect: you'd hear sounds coming from way, way beyond the outer, physical boundaries of the speakers. It was not unlike what you get from the SRS processing in some boom boxes today.

In my setup, the Ohm "holography" is more subtle. It has more to do with retrieval of a sense of ambience, if that makes any sense. And some sounds/ instruments will fill the listening space in a very convincing and pleasing way.

John Strohbeen once said to me that the CLS driver's soundstaging characteristics tended to shine on two very different kinds of recordings: purist, live recordings with minimal miking, and heavily processed studio tracks where the engineer has deliberately manipulated phase artifacts to give the illusion of spaciousness.
Rebbi,
Thanks for your imput. I tend to agree that the carver sonic holography could be either wonderful or horrible depending on the character of the recordings. I had wanted to do the sonic holography again, but the $5000.00 price tag on their ultimate reciever killed that idea right away.
I followed all your threads, and have taken your suggestions on some of the best demo recordings to check out. Brothers in Arms and Steely Dan Gaucho left me pretty amazed. One of the newer recordings that you might want to check out is the new black eye peas "the end" which has some jaw dropping effects, and is a great demo when you want to show people what your speakers can do. Also, anything by Sade, I know that you mentioned Promise, but her later stuff has a lot more bass and bottom end in general, and are a real treat to listen to.
I'm blissfully happy with my micro talls, as I had Acoustic Research speakers in the past (I worked for them in the 70's) and also had experience with many other brands. The micro talls blow them all away. I'll never go back to conventional box speakers again. After reading your comments about your 100's, it makes me want to upgrade, but I'll have to wait for more $$$ to come in before I take the plunge. Take care and Merry Christmas!!!
I still have my Carver pre-amp with sonic holography around as a spare.

Agree about the ups and downs with sonic holography. I bought the Carverand used it primarily with Magneplanars back in the eighties. The Walsh 2s I also owned never seemed to benefit, nor the newer OHMs that I tried it with a while back just to see (hear).

The down that often ruined SH for me (other than the small sweet spot) was that I noticed it almost always tended to degrade the authority in the low end as a side effect of opening things up.
My wife hid the Walsh 5000s that I had ordered from John in early November. I assumed that I wouldn't recieve them until after the New Year since Ohm shuts down for a two week holiday at the end of December. Anyway, it was a nice surprise to get them on Christmas day. Of course I had to postpone setting them up until after entertaining family and neighbors.

I will give a full review after a few days of listening and utilizing a wide variety of genres. Let me just say that the news is good, very good. The Walsh 5000s sound fluid, dimensional and very dynamic fresh out of the box (unlike the Walsh 5 Series 3 which were tight-arse out of the box and needed several hard hours of breakin). There are two areas where the improvements/refinements are very obvious. I am very very pleased with what I am hearing but will wait before providing further details.

Merry Christmas all!