Is anyone here running their AVA gear through OHM speakers? The newly revised speaker lineup looks pretty nice and the cost is reasonable, along with a generous money back in-home trial period. I was aware of this brand back in the 70's/80's, but had forgotten about them until very recently. The design certainly is unique, as far as I'm aware. I've always had multi-driver "standard" speakers with crossovers, but the latest OHM-Walsh single driver with "super tweeter" intrigues me. I'd appreciate any first hand experience with these speakers, particularly with AVA amps if possible. Thanks! aa
I have Ohm Walsh II's with the Walsh 100 Mk2 "upgrade". Really, it' s not an upgrade, any more than an AVA Omega 170 is a "upgraded" ST-120. All the active parts are replaced, the only thing left are the cabinets.
The imaging and sound field is fantastic. The extension of the bass, with the new drivers and the port tuned to a lower frequency, is absolutely startling - very much deeper, very much tighter, tremendous performance for the size. The high end is pretty good, not nearly as clean or high as the B&W's I have, but very good. The tweeter dispersion is not very good by comparison to other amps, particularly the B&Ws with the separate free-floating "teardrop" enclosure A very good improvement on both ends compared to the original Walsh II.
What is not as good, and was not an improvement on the original Walsh II, was the midrange. The ends seemed tipped up pretty significantly compared to the middle. It was clean enough, but it was rolled off in the middle to the point that it was noticable. I ran mine just about every day for a year and a half, and it got a lot better, but not "flat" response. At least not yet - one thing that was clearly obvious was that it was changing very rapidly and drastically towards a flat response as it mechanically loosened up. When I first modified it, I was very disappointed in the change, because it sounded like I had thrown a towel over the drivers. Over the course of a few hours, it got a lot better but dear God, it was still changing 6 months later, and never stopped in the year and a half I ran them. The entire time, the midrange was coming up, and it was getting close at the end. But it only took a quick comparison to the B&W's I have (DM110, DM602, and 803S) to hear it still wasn't there. As I had way more speakers than I could use, I loaned the Walshs to my friend for his second system. Last time I was up there, they were still closer but still not done changing. I may not have run them hard enough to get everything working and loosened up, but I eventually just got tired of waiting. So there is good and bad. They are very competent speakers, and even the dinky little Walsh 100s have really unbelievable bass extension and punch in appropriate rooms. They aren't kidding when they say you don't need a subwoofer.
The service it absolutely top-notch. On the topic of subwoofers, I also had an old Ohm N2 subwoofer than the same friend took to run with his teeny little main speakers. I had never had much luck with the subwoofer with my original Walsh IIs - all it did was make the same bass frequencies louder, it really couldn't play significantly lower than the main speakers. I tried high-power rheostats in the input line, and also changing poles in the crossover to lower frequencies, without much luck. I futzed around trying to adjust the relative output, and ended up thinking everything was best with the sub turned all the way down, or disconnected entirely.
When I got the upgrade, it was clear I didn't need any more extension and the subwoofer was completely superfluous so it just stayed in the closet. Once my buddy started using them, they were clearly helping. although nothing to write home about. But the drivers had foam surrounds, and after sitting in my closet for ~25 years, and playing at his house for a few weeks, they just fell apart. We called Ohm, and got the president of the company (John Strobheim?). They had replacement drivers for a reasonable price, but we also mentioned the initial experience with not enough extension and the various mods I had made to reduce the output. He suggested putting the wiring back to stock, and instead retuning the enclosure to a lower frequency with a lower cutoff. He even made some inserts to put in the bass reflex ports - no charge. We changed the drivers (which were of much higher quality than the originals), and yeah, it worked OK, more or less, but still not impressive and had way too much overlap with the mains just as I had found in 1985. Then we put the inserts in the ports and it was absolutely incredible! Very much deeper frequency response, and very little output WRT the main speakers. Nothing seemed overdone anymore, overall very nice balance, and exceptional bass (maybe not "thundering" with the cheesy Arcam integrated amp but very solid). That the company president was willing and able to dramatically improve a product that they haven't made in 25 years and he probably had never seen before, just from phone conversations, was far above and beyond my expectations. Good people there at Ohm.
The prices are excellent for the quality. These are top-notch high-end speakers - no compromise type items. They won't try to upsell anything - they want to know your room volume, select the model based on that, and that's all you need. A lot like dealing with Frank - who will also try to give you what you need. If you only need 120 watts/channel, that's what he will recommend.
I ended up not finding them perfect (hate to break it to anyone, but there's no such thing as a perfect speaker) but certainly good enough to keep around instead of returning. They didn't quite out-do the B&W 803S in my main system but the B&W's cost 4-5x as much even with a "deal".
So, you really can't lose. Get them, try them out, and return them if you don't like it.
Brett
