absolutely killed my "GAS" for speakers?
Might need to explain that to me. (GAS)
I assume the detail/transparency is good too?
How big a room & how long have you had them?
What others (speakers) have you listend too, before you sprung for the Ohm's?
Jeff
Sorry about that. In pro-music world it's known as 'Gear Acquisition Syndrome" (GAS), where you obssess over buying gear.
Anyway, I've had the MWT's for 4 years now. They replaced Deftech BP-2006's and a set of Pinnacle Classic Gold Towers that I also had.
The room I'm moving from is an open-floor living room/dining room/kitchen that is about 1500 sq feet. Massive room (for me) with 8 ft ceilings. I listen near-field at 6 feet way. On their own, they more than do the job I need. I use an Emotiva Ultra 10 sub to fill-in the bottom octave, and the sound is pretty impressive. I can easily reach 105 dB, although I tend to listen at about 90 dB.
The original room they were in as about 250 sq feet. Sonically, they were pretty similar in both rooms. The quasi-Omni design takes advantage of the room instead of fighting agains it. It is very hard to describe.
I'm moving on Thursday to North Carolina, into a house we've lived in before. The 'Guy Room' is 4 walls of paneling on a slab floor, with seriously bad reflections. I cannot wait to put these babies to that test! The Deftechs performed OK, but nothing all that great. I think I favored the Pinnacles in that room.
Imaging, soundstage, presence is also incredible. I have them set in a 2.1 system. I swear, the center dialogue is perfect, even in the sense of scale. The stereo imaging is what I think of as 'locked', like sitting in between a set of Apogees or Maggies that are perfectly positioned, except you can actually move around and the soundstage does not collapse.
Detail and transparency is very good and natural. They are not the last word in detail, but then they don't emphasize the upper-treble frequencies that sometimes passes for'detailed'
When shopping for speakers, I compared them to various Tannoy, Magnepan, Martin Logan and B&W Diamond series speakers. A very close second was the Sunfire CRM-2's that I heard in Wilmington, NC. But the off-axis of those were pretty poor, even if the sound quality was outstanding.
I am thinking about upgrading to the Ohm 1000 speakers, just to get a bit more 'heft' with the larger driver. But honestly, the MWT's could remain my main speaker without complaint.
What I want from a speaker is high-end quality sound that does not force me to sit in a sweet-spot. I have really good headphones for that kind of listening. There are many speakers that compete against or exceed the Ohm's in transparency and detail. But I have yet to hear anything that can do what they do, anywhere in the room.
I hope I answered your questions. I do not have the cache of a lot of the members on this forum, and I have yet to hear a set of specifications. My knowledge is centered around professional bass gear, fiddling with parametric EQ and all the things that make bass amplification fun. In home audio, I look for the simplest, most direct route with a minimum of processing or treatments. The Ohm's are the one speaker I've heard that exceeds my criteria.
