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

Jock,

I've found (and measured) the Ohms (I use S100s) to be very neutral. That's sometimes evident in the lower midrange/upper bass where some high-end designs are goosed a bit to sound richer or in the upper mids where extra energy gives some speakers more"jump". IMO, neither of those approaches is a cardinal sin if the speakers' overall balance is appropriate and the deviation isn't too extreme. Notwithstanding that wiggle room, the Ohms just don't meaningfully go there.

Further, the top end of my 100s rolls off less quickly than some competing designs. The 100s also lack full range bass extension (as do most speakers at that price point). The overall impression may be "thin" sounding to some, but I'd call it pretty close to dead neutral.

I don't know your Kefs, so I can't speculate as to the issue you've ID'd. I can only note that the Ohms are quite neutral in my room.

As to Mapman's comments, Ohms are relatively rare speakers of unusual design. Mapman probably has more experience with Ohm designs than the rest of the board members combined. In this corner, his comments are always appreciated.

Marty.

I am not equiped to do such measurements, but what you relate is consistent with my observations.

I did a lot of research into headphones recently and looked at a lot of phone measurements online. I've always thought the OHM sound to resemble Sennheiser, which some often cite as "rolled off".

What I recall noticing is that most Sennheiser phones measure relatively flat whereas many other leading competing brands have frequency respones seemingly designed to compensate for teh well documented non linear frequency response of human ears. As I noted above, human ears frequency response drops off at the extremes even more so at lower volumes. So transducers taht are "flatter" may not sound as right at lower volumes as a result.

Joek, my brilliant Ipad spell checker changed my spelling of your name into "joke" and I did not notice until after posting. My apologies if that came across improperly. For some reason this is one of those threads that does not allow me to edit posts afterwards.

Here again is the invaluable adio frequency chart that shows what music occurs at various frequencies as well as the frequency response of human hearing for comparison. I always find it most useful to help understand what I am hearing and why.

Audio Frequency Chart

Hey Mapman!

I've been seriously into headphones for the past 3 years, and for me the planar-magnetic models from Hifiman also have similar sonic qualities to my Ohms, especially in the midrange and treble.

The Senns are just too rolled-off in the upper midrange for me, and I always experience a 'veil' in the details that I don't experience with my MWT's.

Which Sennheisers? Just curious.

A lot of the better Senns are said to benefit from good quality amplification. OHMs are teh same way.

I have portable Sennheiser Momentum over ear phones which are said to be somewhat easier to drive than teh "audiophile" models, but I find the amp used makes a huge difference still in terms of clarity. They sound best by far to me so far with the Bel Canto c5i I picked up recently and I hear the same results off teh C5i with my OHM 100s3.

OHMs are similar I find. The amplification and source used makes a similar difference. They can become somewhat veiled if things are not going right, but not so at all when they are.