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

Thanks Bondman. I've never been clear on the meaning of "energizing the room." Not being much of a bass head, I have to say I've pretty happy with the low end with my original 2s and the 2XOs, especially within my listening zone (sitting all the way across the room is a different story). My room has a hardwood floor over a crawl space that seems to be conducive to bass. It is also a very live room with lots of wall space to the sides that tends. To broaden the soundstage beyond the speakers. Bookshelves and a fireplace serve to break up the rear reflections.

My vintage Sansui with 90 wpc (@ 8 ohms) handles them with no apparent difficulty. John S told me that this amp should do fine with the 2000s, which are a slightly easier load, but that the bass would be subdued in a slightly oversized room. I haven't heard trace of clipping, even if I play them loud. Old Sansuis had killer power supplies and were allegedly conservatively rated.

Coot, don't overdo it on toeing out. I've found the toeing out the Ohms very slightly improves the treble further away without detracting noticeably from the soundstage or image. You can barely notice, unless looking carefully up close, that the cabinets are not perfectly squared. I suppose the relatively wide dispersion of the tweeters allows for this.

I have NEVER heard ANY OHM Walsh speaker flinch at any volume level. THat's a unique aspect of them all since day 1. I once set up my original Walsh 2s outside on a farmhouse porch for a party going on in a field extending 50 yards or more in front. That was the BEST I ever heard the Walsh 2s sound, literally like Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, UB40 etc. were performing live on the porch. That off my old gorgeus and classic 80 watt/ch Tandberg TR2080 receiver.

The reason the walsh's do so well at high volume are:

1) simple crossover design at relatively high frequency limits what the tweeter is asked to do

2) The Walsh drivers used tend to be larger than most drivers used in most speakers for comparable price. The driver in my current F5 series3 OHMs are the largest I believe and look to be about 10 inches in diameter. Back in the 70's selling stereos at Tech Hifi, 10" seemed to be the right size for most speakers capable of going loud and clear in larger rooms. 8" was good for smaller rooms. Drivers nowadays are improved and smaller to achieve similar performance to most back then I think.

3) The OHM CLS Walsh driver operation seems to lend itself very well to achieving high output levels with minimal stress or breakup compared to typical pistonic dynamic speaker operation, though why this is the case is not totally clear to me.

Map, if the problem is clipping, that would be be amp flinching rather than the speakers. Still, the difficulty in driving Ohm Walshes--even the originals (but not the A or F)--is often exaggerated.

The great high volume performance may be due to the way the surface area of the speaker is used to radiate sound. The physical excursion of the cone material should be shorter and perhaps the effective surface area (or the efficiency of its utilization) is greater.

But the OW's ability to go loud may be the flip side of a weakness of the design--I've found that my 2s and 2XOs sound best when played quite loud and tend to lose more detail, resolution, and reproduction of spatial cues at low volume than I'd like. This is, in part, recording dependent, but I don't get the same loss of detail, etc. at lower volume with my conventional speakers. I'm hoping an upgrade to the 2000s helps to address this limitation of the early OW models. It would end an endless family battle for control over the volume knob! I'd like to hear others' impressions of later series' performance at low volume.