Came home Friday to find my Axiom factory outlet order had arrived. Again, as with the first order, a projected 5 week wait was less than 2 weeks. I got one additional M80, two M22s, and two QS8s with stands. All speakers were in perfect condition, I couldn’t find one blemish on any of them. The boxes were even unscathed, however not to sure about the no signature thing FedEx does.
I plan on trying several different configurations based on what others have posted here, and I'm open to suggestions on other things to try. So far I’ve only done some preliminary tests none of them are A/B comparisons since the order arrived before I could pick up a switch. Here’s what I plan to try and some preliminary observations.
M80 center sitting in front of the TV even with the mains. Awesome! Dynamic and seamless soundstage across the front. May even sound better when sitting in the sweet spot than a phantom center with M80s.
M80 center upside down above the TV. Almost as good as above just as dynamic but may not be as seamless. However, the vertical expansion of the front soundstage seems intriguing for movies. Massively better than a single VP150 above the TV.
M22 dual centers above and below the TV. Not as dynamic as the M80s but very big soundstage centered on the TV both horizontally and vertically.
M22 dual centers laying horizontally above the TV with tweeters in the middle. Can you say lobing. Not noticeable in the sweet spots but just move my head a little and there’s different SPLs at each ear. Feels very strange but does confirm that I never noticed any lobing with the VP150. I need to play with the distances between the speakers because when in a sweat spot the “wall of sound” coming from this configuration sounds very interesting with movies but I can already tell I don’t like it for music.
QS8s as surround back speakers. (I have only DD-EX and DTS-ES sources) with EX and ES sources rear soundstage sounds fuller and blends better with the front probably due to moving the surround L/R forward some. Not noticing any change with vanilla 5.1 sources but still have much experimenting to do.
M22s as surround back speakers. Haven’t tried it yet.
Back to playing with my new toys now that I have a switch to do some A/B comparisons.
Cheers,
Dean
