Ohm Speakers, thoughts?

Bartokfan...If you were really interested in the best sound you would get a different listening room (or wife) :-) I never owned the original Ohms, but I agree with Sean that they are (alas, were) the best.

As I recall the driver was made of metal for a couple of inches at the top (near the voice coil) and this part of the driver supplied the high frequencies. In other words, the HF did not propogate all the way down the cone. So, although there is no electronic crossover, there is a mechanical crossover, a point that I stress for all single driver designs.

The difficutlty of manufacturing a Walsh driver is something that I believe could be resolved by good reengineering.

In my former life as an aerospace engineer, we worked closely with a university lab who were the primary designers of very sophisticated military electromechanical equipment. Our company's part of the design job was to refine their original designs, which often disregarded little details like "how do you make it?". The term used is "producability engineering" and it appears that the Walsh driver design never had the benefit of this kind of engineering.

I missed my chance to buy the Ohm speakers back in the 70s, but have always been interested (in an engineer's way) in the principles involved with the driver. I always knew that it was made up of several cones of differing material, but the complexity described by Dale is daunting. My concern would be performance changes over time and use as all the various tweeks age. Slits with sealant frighten me.