Ok first tell your camera to stop dropping acid.
Seems to me you have a handle on your speaker placement. I like the way you use the mockups.
If you haven’t already you might want to do some googling for primers on speaker placement and room acoustics. Not that we don’t like giving advice but you seem like the type of person who likes to roll there sleeves up and get into why and how things work. Here’s just one example of something to check out.
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-SFOQChOXcnQ/learn/learningcenter/home/speakers_roomacoustics.htmlWhile acoustics is technically a science once you start getting away from simple shapes and patterns it gets so complicated, quantifying things becomes difficult. Throw various listeners into the mix and it becomes even more of an art than a science.
2b) I'd love to hear more opinions on the degree of preference of an M22 vs. a VP150 center for my application.
I preferred to tonal balance between the M22 than the VP150. Something bothered me about the VP150 from the start but didn’t realize what it was because the VP150 didn’t sound perfectly balanced with the M80s in my room until I happened to experiment with a “phantom center” (using the mains to simulate a center speaker as in normal stereo). In some movies and all multi-channel music things sounded both richer and smother using the 2xM80s alone.
Once I got another M80 and M22s I experimented and found both were better tonal matches as centers for the M80 mains, however, because of the difference in position they still sound a little different but not as noticeable. Hell I can even hear differences between my mains because of their different positions in relation to the walls which is one of the reasons I‘m so uptight about symmetry. At the end of the day most people including an audio engineer friend don’t notice the differences (only one person has) the way I do. Based on a lot of reading I really do believe it has something to do with whatever has caused my dyslexia. Two possible symptoms of dyslexia are being easily distracted by sounds and hearing things not apparent to others. So take my issues with horizontal speakers with a grain of salt.
A couple things I noticed were that the farther away, my seating was only 6 feet, I got from the speakers the more balanced they sounded VP150 included. Also the farther, up to about 4 feet, they were pulled out from the front wall and/or TV screen the more balanced they sounded.
One sort of funny thing…when I called Noreen at Axiom to place my second order 1xM80, 2xM22s and 2XQS8s she must have wondered what the hell sort of 5.0 system I was creating because she hesitantly started to explain to me that people usually need 2XM80s.
Here are some articles to explain part of the theory and physics that my be behind why I prefer vertical to horizontal center speakers in general.
This introduction…
http://www.audioholics.com/education/loudspeaker-basics/vertical-vs-horizontal-speaker-designs…and conclusion…
http://www.audioholics.com/education/lou...evaluation.html…explain it a little.
Cheers,
Dean
