Best sounding speakers I have ever heard. Incredible durability.

None experienced

I purchased my pair of OHM Walsh 2 speakers in 1980. Amazingly, they have gone from Disco to Dolby Digital and everything in between, and they still sound as good as ever. Througout these past 20 years I have auditioned dozens of speakers at various price ranges. I have yet to hear any that sounds as good as the Walsh. I can best describe their sound as smooth, detailed, and as realistic as can be. Their are sweet to the ear. For home theater purposes I have added an OHM CAM 16 center channel and a pair of OHM Sat 2'S for the surrounds. I cannot be any happier. Thank you OHM!

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Have auditioned many other speakers over the years.

This March will be 4 months since I purchased and have been critically listening to the Walsh 5's. I am an ex-classical musician and an very critical of reproduction of acoustic recordings. My observations on the Walsh 5 are these:1. Absolutely seemless, coherent sound --more so than any loudspeaker I have heard. By the way, the Walsh driver is inherently radially omnidirectional; however, in the Walsh 5 the damping material has been applied to block rear field sound radiation. Hence, the Walsh 5 is more accurately described as a high dispersion frontal radiator. The great benefit of the Walsh driver is that it allows for perfect power transfer between the woofer and tweeter at a very high frequency (about 8 kHz I believe).
2. The Walsh 5's need a lot of power to open up their sound. John Strohbeen, the design engineer, told me that, when its settings are in mid (nominal) position, the Walsh 5 has a 6 ohm minimum impedance---which suggests a benign impedance. Nonetheless, when I converted my 60W stero amp to dual 200W monoblock amplification, the improvement in sound quality was dramatic: unrestrained dynamics, open midrange, enlarged soundstage, and bottomless bass. And that's in a modest 12' X 18' room. I will be moving the Walshes to a larger 14.5' X 22' room soon. Considering they are fairly efficient at 88 dB SPL, this change was surprising---in retrospect, the key here is bandwidth...
3. The Walsh 5's produce the finest, most extended and powerful bass I have ever heard. They simply blew by stereo Kinergenic subwoofers out of the room (dual long-throw 10" woofers per side; 100W high current amplification). They are flat, in room, to about 20Hz (anechoic ~25 Hz). There is absolutely no hint of intermodulation distortion when playing low pedals and high treble tones simultaneously at high volumes (>100 bB).
4. Imaging and soundstaging are what sold me on the Walsh 5. Simply the best imaging loudspeaker ever made. Ask anyone, even Walsh critics, and they will acknowledge the Walsh as THE loudspeaker for imaging (notwithstanding the new Radialstrahlers, which I haven't heard). The soundstage is HUGE, and defined, not diffuse and foggy. The combination of the Walsh 5's and any Mercury Living Presence or Everest Ultraanalog recording is synergistic; it recreates an acoustic so real as to suggest time travel. The phantom image is hands-down superior to a center channel.
5. The midrange has an open, extremely clean, yet non-fatiguing quality that reminds me of electrostatics or magnetoplanars. You get this type of transparency from very few box speakers (the B&W 801's come to mind). Vocal reproduction is wonderful.
6. Not especially placement sensitive -- in my experience. However, get them away from boundaries to optimize their extraordinary imaging. Room treatments have not impacted much on their excellent sound reproduction.
7. No audible breakup or distortion that I have been able to evoke---and I like my orchestral blockbusters loud! (that means Mahler, Bruckner, Elgar at Chicago Symphony Orchestra-in-Carnegie-Hall-realistic sound levels, baby!!). Yes, I have chased my wife and kids out of the house on more than one occasion--a little side benefit.

At this juncture, I, for the first time, have no interest in listening to another loudspeaker. I expect to own these Walsh 5's for many years to come--perhaps forever. At $7000 new, they represent an informed, quality purchase. At $1500-$2000 used, or therabouts, they are, in my humble and slightly verbaceous opinion, an absolute steal---almost obscenely so.

Crystal clear highs and great mids. Beautiful to look at

Heavy, awkward to place. Position of binding posts could be better thought out.

This review is actually for the Walsh2's and Walsh4's that I own. I got the Walsh2's from a girlfriend who was going to sell them for "whatever she could get" at a garage sale because they were "too big for her living room". I did a little research then swapped her my old JVC's even up (before you go howling about me being a thief, I'd already bought her a new receiver, tape deck and CD player I think this is fair). I used the Walsh2's as my mains in my HT hookup matched with an Onkyo787 receiver, Klipsch C1 center, JBL PB12 subwoofer and SB3's as rears.

This was the sweetest sounding system I'd ever had. The Walsh's are bright, beautiful, the crossover's work marvelously and with absolutely NO problems for speakers at least 15 years old. I was fine, happy and cool with my purchases (or lack thereof) till I saw a set of Ohm Walsh4's for sale of ebay. Guy was looking for $900.00 for them and that was too steep for my blood so I didn't bid. Auction was a no bidder so I ebayed the guy and got them for $818.00 delivered. I sold the Klipsch rears and moved the 2's to the back of the room. I know use the 4's as my main's. You couldn't ask for sweeter better sounding speakers. A little big and heavy for easy movement but beautiful sound. Fads in speakers come and go.... Ohm's just keep on trucking, timeless design, timeless quality.

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Ohm Walsh2's, Walsh4's Klipsch SB3's

Imaging, Accuracy, Impact without being tiring

Needs lots of power if you want to play very loud.

This is a review for the Ohm Walsh 5 Mk II. The price is with trade in.
I am a long time fan of the Ohm speaker sound. I enjoyed my vintage Ohm Is and I was shocked at how much better the Walsh 5s were. The highs are accurate without being tiresome. The midrange blew away the Ohm I. The spatial imaging is stunning ! When I first listened I wondered if the bass portion of the speaker was not connected. Apparently, the bass requires braking in, and after 2-3 weeks it became more and more noticable. Id say 90% of the final result in 6 weeks. Overall the speaker is quite outstanding. At about 95 lbs and 48" high, they are large, but are on caster wheels. Customer service excellent. I took advantage of the Ohm trade inpolicy and got over 90% of my original cost for my old Ohms applied as a dicount on the W5/IIs. There is a 120 in home trial, so there is low risk to try them out.

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Ohm I, H

I actually don't own these anymore, but feel compelled to write about them anyway.
They are the flagship model in the Ohm line. At $7000 new they are monsters weighing in at about 110lbs each standing just shy of 4ft tall with a footprint of 17" x 17" on rollers no less. The very non-conventional omni-directional driver sits atop an nice looking cabinet and looks much like an outdoor air conditioner, and then with a grill cloth box placed over it.

The Walsh 5s are also power mongers. At 4 ohms and a recommended amp min of 100 watts these will suck the juice right out of the wall socket. What they do with that is the critical point.

These are exceptional speakers. However they are different, unexpected even, but in no way disappointing. They throw a remarkable, and eerie depth with the music. Its almost like having 200lbs of earphones around your head; and that's the "different" effect I would say. They do not emulate a conventional box speaker sound. I would compare them more with the Gallo speakers (abundant reviews at this site).

In short, the soundstage, and imaging is absolutely beautiful. For chamber, jazz, and all the way over to techno, the performance is scary.

Bass: with authority! Down into to the 20 hz range. I used a ARC D-60 (60 watts, but the ARCs have a lot of oomph), and the bass was powerful, but a more suitable amp would have been appropriate.

In summary, these were $7000 new, and probably a very good buy. At the $1000 - $1500 they sell for, you just can't go wrong. For home theater, 2 channel will do simply because the soundstage is so wide and accurate you won't need the center channel. But you must meet three essential criteria: room size needs to be relatively large (not that they will sound bad - just that it will be overkill), 14 wide x 24 long is probably right for these. Power: you need it, don't start without it, 100 watts minimum and solid state only. I tried a tube amp with a potent 75 watts and it worked, but its a waste of time unless you have one of those mega tube amps with 16 6500s. Lastly you need a very accommodating family, or neighborhood.

They are a very solid 5 star speaker.

Incredible sound stage, tight bass, realism, and great customer service

takes a while to fully break in. The speakers don't have their fully potential until the break in period is over.

This also is a review of the Ohm Walsh 5 Mk-2’s since there isn’t yet a separate listing for them.

I became an Ohm customer 25 years ago with the audition and purchase of a pair of Ohm H’s from my local stereo store. I used them for a small while and then decided to somehow scrape the money together to get the speaker that I really wanted, the legendary Ohm F. When I listened to the Ohm F, I didn’t hear the Walsh driver, I heard the unrestrained music for which the F was famous. Besides looking like no other speaker in the world with its 12-inch inverted cone driver on top, it sounded like no other speaker. The bass was deep and strong and the highs clear. Needless to say, I was the envy of my audiophile friends.

I enjoyed my speakers until 1993 when the surrounds on the original Walsh drivers finally gave way. Since Ohm was now factory direct, I called Ohm directly and much to my horror, the original F driver was no longer being made, but they had adapted the newest Walsh 5 driver to fit my cabinets. Since I had not kept up with new speaker technology, I decided to see what was in the market place before spending the $1295.00 to upgrade. I heard speakers costing four and five times the amount of the upgrade but they didn’t come close to the sound of the F’s. Now convinced of the bargain, I ordered the F-3 upgrade. I placed the new drivers on the cabinets and there was the sound of my F’s back again, only with a much more efficient driver and with even more extended highs. Even with a 15-year-old receiver, the speakers could now play CD’s even better than the F’s. They played at louder levels while keeping the deep base that I grew to love.

I kept the F-3’s until 2000 when the allure of the new Walsh 5 Mk-2’s beckoned me. I wondered how much better they could sound and contacted Ohm to ask about the new speaker. They assured me that I would hear a significant difference. After some thought, I traded in the F-3’s (Ohm is famous for supporting their products and allowing upgrades and trade-ins for speakers over 20 years old, this being one of the reasons Ohm customers tend to be very loyal) on the new Walsh 5 Mk-2’s. When they finally arrived (they took a few weeks to build since I ordered them in a mahogany finish), I was excited as when I had taken my original F’s home 25 years prior. I hooked them up, configured the controls in the rear of the driver, and turned on the stereo and wow! The bass was strong and tight, the highs even more open and clear than the F-3’s, and the soundstage even larger than before. The shape of the speaker changed from my beloved pyramid to a more rectangular configuration, but the insides were pure Walsh. But there was something missing in the sound. They sounded good but in my mind, they should have sounded even better. After a few weeks of listening I finally figured it out. The new Walsh 5 Mk-2’s were now showing me that my now 25 year old receiver (yes, the same one I used for my F’s), was now the weak point of my system and a definite bottleneck. Deciding that this quality speaker needed high-end electronics, I opted for Mcintosh components including their MC602 power amp with 600 WPC and the Mcintosh C40 preamp. The first time I powered up the new system, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and not hearing. The bass of the new Walsh 5 was now earthshattering. The mid and high ranges even more unrestrained and the soundstage increased by a factor of at least two. The speakers loved the new power and headroom of the Mcintosh components and now really opened up to their full potential. Even on very loud passages, there was no distortion and the soft passages were whisper quiet. I finally felt that I now had sound that surpassed my Ohm F’s in every way. With the right components mated to them, the new Walsh 5’s easily outclass speakers costing 4 times their $5,000 price tag. Placement is not a problem and with the 81 position controls on the back of the driver, they can be set up in any room. Mine are actually still breaking in and sounding better with each session. If you are in the market for a true audiophile speaker, you owe it to yourself to audition the Wash 5 Mk-2’s. It is without a doubt one of the best bargains on the market today and a speaker that you will probably own for the next 20-30 years.

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Ohm H, Ohm F, and Ohm F-3's. Auditioned a number of other speakers in their price range

SoundStage scares you--close your eyes and you are "There"!

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I purchased a pair of the "Limited Edition" Ohm Walsh 5s in 1986. 14 years later nothing at any price has dethroned them in pure sound reproduction. The soundtrack by Peter Gabriel for "The Last Temptation of Christ" will make you second guess where you are when you listen through the 5s. I have them in a 15'X12" room with a half cathedral ceiling. I place them 3' from the wall and about 7'-8' apart and let it rip through an Adcom amp putting out 300+ watts a side through 4 ohms.
As I stated, ALL of my friends compare their "deals" to my 5s until they come over for a side-by-side listen.
The radial firing driver is the key to the genius of the imaging and total lack of distortion. Buy a speaker with cross-over between drivers and listen at your own peril!

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Every friend I have uses them as their listening benchmark