History on ohm A's and F's.

Lewis,

Without presuming too much technical knowledge of my own, I suspect that the opposite happens. Since the dispersion pattern of the Ohms is always (nearly) omnidirectional, there is a sense of "continuousness" to the speakers. Whatever discontinuity that might be a result of your observation seems to be subsumed by this effect. At least to my ear.

Also, I would guess that the transition may be gradual, with some frequencies being partially reproduced by both bending and pistonic motion. Such an arrangement would be akin to very low order (presumably well less than first order) crossover. Such schemes usually mask transitional issues, although they can certainly introduce other artifacts. By the time response is primarily pistonic, you may well be at a frequency low enough that most listener's sensitivity is reduced. Similarly, BTW, the cross to the tweeter is so high in frequency that -IME- most listeners will be relatively insensitive to that hand-off.

Maybe John S can comment further.

Spiked,

IIRC, the doppler effect is the pitch shift that results when a sound source moves toward (or away) from you (at relatively low speed). A train whistle is the usual example. If a speaker's driver produced this problem, I'd think that you would get a slight "quiver" around a vocalist's pitch. Given the short distance (and oscillating path) that a driver travels, it would be barely audible at worst.

I wonder why you are ascribing the "gargling" vocal problem you heard specifically to this? There are surely other possible wayward behaviors that would cause what you heard - a flaw in the surround comes to mind. I'm not sure that this is ever audible in loudspeakers, even if the drivers are pointed at you and "qualify" for doppler shift. However, since the Walsh driver moves vertically, it would seem even less applicable. The horizontal "travel" on a Walsh driver is virtually nil. What's your thinking on this one?

Marty