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

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.

JWC,

I was not referring to clipping, though that is certainly always something to be concerned about. I was referring more to dynamic headroom, the drivers ability to pressurize the air in the room highly at higher volumes, especially at lower frequencies. The assumption is the amp is NOT clipping and not the bottleneck. Bottom line is I have never found the OHMs to be the bottleneck in achieving this, even with my current 500 w/ch Class D amps, which throw the most power and current the OHMs way of any amp I have ever used with them.

You hig the nail on the head I think regarding the way the driver operating in Walsh transmission line mode rather than pistonic helps utilize surface area better and reduce excursion magnitude. That is exactly how I think it works. Just not sure I could point to anything concrete or documented to support that theory.

2's and 2XOs are gen 1 Walshes. More recent revisions are much more refined, including at low volumes. I can vouch for that in that I actually compared my original Wash 2s to my newer 100S3 based Walsh 2 models in side by side a/b comparisons when I still had both. Night and day!!! Soon after I traded in my old Walsh 2s towards my current F5s.

I will second Mapman's post. My 2000s sound wonderfull at lower volumes. So good, that when they are playing at moderate background levels, I will often stop to listen, even though I have things to do. And that's usually with low-res Pandora or internet radio! I did try my 2000s with an older Onkyo AVR, rated at 80 watts/channel, and even full range, the sound was surprisingly good. That said, my 150 watt/channel amp is clipping on sustained peaks in the midrange, and I am totally focused on upgrading to something much more powerful. But financially, that's about year away.

Jwc,

I also have a pair of small Triangle Titus XS monitors. These have been acknowledged by many over the years as champions at low volume and I would agree. They convinced me that dynamic speakers could be as fast and detailed at low volumes as planars like the Maggies I had had for years, which were also low volume champs. I had the original Walsh 2s also still at the same time, and in comparisons of the Walsh 2s against the Maggies and Triangles at low to moderate volumes, the Walsh 2s left something to be desired.

The newer OHM Walshes at lower volume are pretty much the darn equal of the Triangles at lower volumes I would say, although of course the overall way the music is presented is night and day, the usual OHM/omni versus more directional design thing.