Lunch with Paul: The Walsh and MBL tweeters

[@RoaroftheTiger]

To the best of my knowledge; the Ohm speakers, now only use the "full range" Walsh Driver, up to 8 K . A dome tweeter, takes over, after that. The dome tweeter, is also Not set or mounted on "a traditional baffle". But rather, rests on a "carriage" near the Top portion of the Walsh. That allows the "complete" Dome Driver, to be approximately at a 45 degree angle relative to the intended "listening space". I hope that was helpful.

[@joppepeelen]

:( unfortunately the later (now available ones use tweeters) to me thats kind of cheating :)

[@laurentzduba1298]

Walsh type tweeters - due to their rarity - can be described as "...the best tweeter you've never heard of..."

[@manjulwalia1995]

Hahah lol , true marketing strategy .. It's rare that's why it's the best 🤭

[@joppepeelen]

well ,,, not to sure about that. would love to see some distortion measurements of these excotics !

[@donaldmackenzie2686]

Looking much more relaxed Chris. Kudos. You have the beast (camera shy beast) by the throat. Now hit the smite button. Your doing great. Cheers

[@AALavdas]

MBL speakers are really good, I had the chance to listen to them in the Munich high end show a few years ago, and I was very impressed.

[@stephenmead5488]

The different materials used along the various circumferences were also used to affect the rate of propagation of the wave as it traveled through the cone before it was launched into the listening space. The rate of propagation was affected at various wavelengths in order for the driver to present a coherent wavefront across the frequency spectrum.

[@lukes.345]

GERMAN PHYSIKS' loudspeakers use their own so-called DDD-Driver which is a modern advanced version of the Walsh-Driver. And they sound really fantastic.

[@Campo007]

German Physiks have take the Walsh design to the next level.

[@AllboroLCD]

I was extremely skeptical with omni's until I had the privilege one day to visit OHM Audios factory in Brooklyn going back. Their walsh series speakers really do sound incredible, though they suffer similar drawbacks as electrostats. You do need a good sub to properly fill the sound. Ohm also insists on giving them your listening space dimensions so you are matching the right model with your room as well. They are a great company and their passion is on the same level as PS Audios!

[@davehwang6815]

MBL speakers are awesome. USA economy has a V-shape rebounce of 33% in Q3 (the largest growth in history), the middle class can confidently buy a pair.

[@Mark-lq3sb]

Damn! ...and I just spent $143,000 on my new Focals Should have waited for the MBLs. 🤣

[@davehwang6815]

@@Mark-lq3sb Wow…you are wealthy enough to buy MBL 101E and even the subwoofer.

[@Mark-lq3sb]

@@davehwang6815 🤣 Just being sarcastic..

[@ronbradshaw7404]

Chris is ALWAYS interresting to listen to, he's a keeper!

[@stephensmith3111]

I heard someone (Steve Gutenberg?) say that the original full range Walsh speaker need 300 watts to come alive and 301 watts to be totally destroyed.

[@laurentzduba1298]

To my ears, Walsh-type tweeters sound their best if operated above 3,000-Hz.

[@JukeboxAlley]

I would be curious to know since he a speaker guru, what his favorite speakers hes ever heard and most anxious to hear of any other models.

[@turbo5483]

I’m also curious what speakers he owns

[@joppepeelen]

its funny you guys covered this !! im working on an omni directional planar magnetic. i thought they sounded.. well oke. but nothing special , but i got a few persons that go mad on omni. so i give it another go ! cool to hear Chris thoughts on how you think about the old walshes ! :) and how they work

[@charliewilliams9811]

I have a pair of Ohm Walsh 4s updated with new 5000 drivers. Super sweet. Great company. Also run Quad 57s and Dahlquist DQ10s - the Ohms stand their ground in that crowd. John at Ohm told me they used the Quad 57s when voicing the Walsh drivers for bass.

[@robertrogoff8289]

I have a pair of ohm Walsh F. Do you just get the drivers of the 5000 and that’s it?

[@sebastianpolcyn6358]

I think I've heard that the Kevlar midranges from B&W do pretty much the same thing - using a very stiff surround and taking advantage of the compliance of the cone material itself: The lower frequencies move the entire cone, while with increasing frequency the radius of the moving portion gets smaller and smaller, so you get wide dispersion across the entire frequency band of the driver.

[@KingOath]

I think many drivers with the bell shaped cone rather than straight sides are taking advantage of this concept at least to some degree. But obviously not as deliberatly as the ones mentioned. Of course I am speculating, but it seems like a bell cone would be stiffer in the centre and gradually less stiff toward the outside meaning the moving mass would be lower at higher frequencies. Possibly!

[@stephenmead5488]

The phenomenon you refer to happens on all center driven cone speakers to varying degrees. If the cone is constructed very stiff the effect will be to attenuate tones that have wavelengths less than the circumference of the driver. In addition, those shorter wavelengths tend to lobe and become more directional as the wavelengths become shorter. The longer wavelengths diffract off the edge of the cone because they exceed the dimensions of the cone. The edge of the cone is basically the maximum size of the aperture of a waveguide. Really long wavelengths couple to the cabinet which is why some designers adopt exotic shapes with rounded edges.

[@KingOath]

@@stephenmead5488 Wow great reply, thanks!

[@turbo5483]

I love the look of MBL speakers, I would love to listen to Walsh and MBL speakers

[@stonefree1911]

BIC also made 360 speakers in the late 70's/early 80's. Don't remember how they sounded. BIC soundspans I believe.

[@stonecoldcustoms]

Wooo, shout out to Mirage!! I'm a huge Mirage collector and own a pair of their last flagship omnidirectional OMD-28 speakers. Do we need to have a face off with the FR-30s?? I think so.. haha..

[@KingOath]

The Balanced Mode Radiator in my Cambridge Aeromax works in a similar way, but with a strong pistonic motion as well. It’s not an ultra refined sounding device but it produces astonishing sound considering it’s basically a 50mm piece of flat paper. It’s probably the best design of a wideband ultra-compact driver I’ve come across, not just for sound quality but for even directivity and sense of scale vs driver size. It’s like the cohesive and tight sound of a point source without the overly intimate and narrow sound that makes some point source designs sound a bit like headphones at a distance...

[@weizenobstmusli8232]

Just looked at the MBL. Wow.

[@rob_66]

In Sweden in the 60's - 90's we had Stig Carlsson constructing a lot of popular (Sonab and Carlsson) omni directional speakers. But they were called ortho acoustic (OA) and was built to interact with your room. Still very high regarded today albeit refurbished with new components and speaker elements. John Larsen builds a modern variant of his speakers obviously called Larsen speakers. almaaudio.com/collections/larsen www.larsenhifi.com/

[@Joshualbm]

Would be nice to hear about the Heil AMT here.

[@stephenvisk5615]

I love my 1970 Zenith Alegros.

[@mifang4037]

Monitor 2A from Infinity had Walsh. Sound is great.

[@bradhelms9408]

The first truly " high end " speakers I heard were Infiniti 2000 II's. They were sweet.

[@SuperMcgenius]

Infinity used that tweeter in the 70,s, the Ohm F used paper , Aluminum and I think maybe titanium or beryllium. I used to sell them, hard to drive . The never ones are much easier. They can be placed close to the wall with good results, but always best to play with placement.

[@williampearson4968]

I wonder what Chris thinks of the CUBE Nenuphar single driver speaker design? Nenuphar 10" F10 and Nenuphar 8" F8 Mini are single drivers and are touted as revolutionary for speaker design in the last 25 years. New PS Audio designs are based on 3 way drivers? Competition is stiff in the world of HiFi speakers!

[@livinaftermidnight9651]

Had a pair of Infinity Monitor IIa's Beautiful speakers but were gigantic

[@QoraxAudio]

I think omnidirectional speakers would give way too much issues with room acoustics in my listening room. I've specifically chosen directional speakers to minimize the impact of the room acoustics. The listening position in respect to the speakers needs to be very accurate though.

[@janinapalmer8368]

I am currently experimenting with a multi tweeter horizontal array .... I am of the opinion that the lower the mass and higher the rigidity and stiffness a diaphragm is the better. The phase compensated arrays are just under 180 degrees and have staggered planes. The types of drivers are similar in appearance to those found on B&W 800 series speaker systems

[@thunderpooch]

Well yeah, light weight while remaining extremely stiff is the holy grail for most speakers. 180 degree dispersion would only be a good thing if your room is quite large or if you like the omni directional effect (big sound from everywhere) and don't care about conventional imaging or sound staging.

[@janinapalmer8368]

@@thunderpooch Well firstly my room IS large and is pentagonal with vaulted ceiling and concrete floor....this helps enormously. so I had it purpose built. You cannot have omnidirectionality and that so called sweet spot ! There is no such thing as a sweet spot listening position when you listen to a live performance ( whatever form it may take ) .

[@thunderpooch]

@@janinapalmer8368 good deal

[@jaymorin7131]

Until you have setup some Ohm Walsh speakers and walked around them, you have no idea what they are truly like. I had some Walsh 2s back in the 1980s and wish that I had nerver sold them.

[@boyalexandergriffioen2485]

Have a look at the bloomline omniwave for a development of such an Idea.

[@Mark-lq3sb]

Does the Boss buy lunch on these outings?

[@claudebbg]

Let's listen to this video on the MBL 101s… (they don't like youtube a lot). Well, they seem to like Chris Brunhaver voice, not the background, I had to get up to find where the kid was ;-)

[@markfischer3626]

The Ohm speakers using the Walsh driver still have forward firing tweeters. The MBL design like the Walsh design are not true omnidirectional speakers. The MBL drivers can be thought of as slices of a melon rind where the bottom is fixed and the top moves up and down. As the equator pushes sound waves out the top is pulling it in. so the equator and north pole are always in opposite phase and at some angle between them there is a null point. What's more the way the enclosure is structured high frequency sounds in the vertical plane are blocked by the system itself. The same effect can be obtained far more easily and economically by creating circular arrays of drivers. So these are nothing like pulsating spheres by any means. Around the 1950s Harry Olson of RCA postulated that the ideal speaker would be a pulsating sphere. A lot of people took that as the gospel truth. Analyzing sound fields that reach listeners this is clearly wrong. To achieve the most desirable sound fields the speaker has to be designed and adjustable in a way that it works in conjunction with the reflection of a particular room to make the best use of them. This means that design considerations must address the variables of room acoustics and not by just a level adjustment on a tweeter or an equalizer. Those are not nearly good enough. The most regrettable trend is to use single tweeters that beam their sound in a cone that becomes increasingly narrow with increasing frequency. Ironically the invention of the dome tweeter Edgar Villchur of Acoustic research created it for the widest possible dispersion. His tweeter was a full hemisphere and was not recessed at all. It was further improved by Roy Allison with the development of the 3/4" tweeter first used in AR3a and AR2ax. It was further refined with AR 10 pi and AR 11 with another innovation, ferrofluid cooling. A single tweeter wasn't good enough for Allison, hence the AR LST also sold as the Cello Amati that use for AR3a tweeters, two facing forward and one on each side angled at 45 degrees. This is the second best dispersion single tweeter, Allison's later design being better using an elaborate trick that pulled the equatorial rim of the dome in while the forward firing dome cap pushed out with an elastic connection between them, again like the MBL the equator being out of phase with the center pole. For many reasons IMO the best design is a multidiectional arrays of 3/8" tweeters similar to Audax Aw010e. There are a zillion of them out there and they are inexpensive. In bulk I've paid as little as five cents each.

[@ThinkingBetter]

I don't like my room to contribute too much other than making the soundstage complete and the position of my speakers disappear. If some music lacks a live ambient atmosphere, I don't want my room to make an artificial one. I rather prefer my KEF LS50W2, where you hear what was on the recording.

[@RickMahoney2013]

What is the most common speaker used today

[@lynnpoole7830]

@Fat Rat Blows

[@PooNinja]

MBL mmmm 😋 that’s my dream system 😀

[@jeremyhughes6485]

Bending lamellas or cones has its own set of problems - best avoided if you seek a nice clean waterfall plot.

[@rainman3269]

You keep telling us these speakers are coming ... The question is ... when ... ?

[@bilguana11]

The Ohm F had titanium not paper.

[@geraldmosley2195]

No no this guy is all over the place with the Walsh design. 1) The Company he is TRYING to describe is OHM 2) The first design which was their FLAGSHIP was the OHM A which radiated sound down the side surface of the driver. 3) the next Model was the OHM F It shared the same design principal as the A. Both speakers had two types of metals utilized in there design titanium and aluminum On the Model F paper was used on the wide flair of the cone with slits Cut into the cone. Both designs did not have a crossover. The A had a size of a 18 inch driver loaded into the cabinet and the F was a 12 inch driver, both drivers required enormous amount of power to drive. Start with 50 watts and go up too 350 watts. The NEW design is not in my opinion a true Walsh design, only a woofer turned upside down into the cabinet with a tweeter glued to the magnet and that is where this gentleman is trying to explain to you. I have both pairs the A and F in my collection and they are INCREDIBLE SOUNDING SYSTEMS for a design that dates back to the 1970 the A the F's 1972 to 1984

[@quant2011]

Bayz Audio and ZetaZero beat all these to he ground with their omni ribbons. But american reviewers only care about american products - thats how it is

[@realitykicksin8755]

"Newer" MBL omni tweeters ...