Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater qs8 positioning

got a set of speakers. along with the qs8's. I have been trying to figure out placement of them. Heard they need to be against a side wall and not a back wall. If i do this one speaker will be about 2-3 ft from a back wall but the other will have no wall at all just open space behind it. Will this make a big difference in the sound from one speaker to the other? Should i try and rotate the speaker without a wall to bounce off of a bit towards the room?

Panhead, if your listening position (couch, chairs...etc) will be placed up against the back wall I don't believe you'll have any issues with mounting the QS8s on the back wall, due to the QS8s being very forgiving regarding placement.
We had the QS8s located on the back wall in our first setup and they sounded great.

If you decide to hang them from the ceiling Axiom offers a Full Metal Ceiling Bracket and they also offer a an FMS QS Stand that you may mount the speakers on for placement within the boundaries of the room if you do not want the ceiling mount.

Full Metal Ceiling Bracket...FMS QS Stand...

Pan, although they're side surrounds(if you're talking about a 5.1, rather than 7.1 setup), they don't necessarily have to be placed on the side walls. A good spot for the side surrounds in a 5.1 setup is on the side walls about 2' farther back than the listening position(to give a little back surround effect in the absence of back speakers). If you mean than you'd be sitting about 2-3' from the back wall, then putting them on the back wall and widely separated almost to the side wall position would work well. If you're going to be sitting a lot farther than that from the back wall it'd be better to put one on the side wall, back about 2', and the other possibly mounted on the ceiling above where a side wall would have been(or possibly placed on a stand).

You will find that "official" specs for surround speakers in a 5.1 setup say to put "dipole" speakers directly to the side of the listener. Real world experience shows that while this may look good on paper, it doesn't always reproduce the type of surround field that YOU may particularly like. This the recommendation to look at putting the speakers 2 feet behind you. That advice does help to put the surround sound more "behind" you.

Now, add the fact that the QS8 speakers are NOT dipole, but are quad-pole. I think that they are the only quad-polar speakers out there, and they create a very large sound field, which also means that it is possible to "fudge" the speakers back behind you a little bit to get more of a surrounding effect that is not always good with a dipole from someone else.

Anyway, now back to the back wall idea. I had my rear speakers on the back wall of my setup with the seating right against that same back wall. There were no side walls within a reasonable width, so this was my only option. The QS8's did great. If you click on the link in my signature, you will get an idea of my placement. I had to turn the audio levels up for these speakers a bit, and looking back it would have been nice to have them a little lower and closer, but again, as you will see in the pictures, there were windows in the way.

I have since moved everything into a dedicated room, and the speakers are on the side walls. It sounds a LOT better, but I think that a majority of that is because I now have a smaller air volume to fill with sound, so the audio doesn't "leak" everywhere else in my basement.

Hope that this helps to some degree.

I do actually have places on the side walls aobut 2 ft behind the seating area to place the speakers. Its just one side wall placement the speaker will be about 2 ft from the back wall. And the speaker on the other side wall will have no back wall just goes into the dining room. Was just trying to find out if there will be a big defference in sound since one speaker will be bouncing off the back wall and the other speaker will be going into another room and not bouncing off the same wall as the other surround. I do have room if i wanted to ceiling mount them behind the listening position also. Just can't wall mount them since there is no wall allthe way across.

Panhead, placement on the side walls about 2 ft. behind the listening position would be fine. IMHO, any differences caused by not having the room's back wall to the side of one of the QS8s should be very slight, and could be compensated for by proper calibration.

Panhead, in my HT room, my left Qs8 is the only one that has a wall behind it, the two rear Qs8's and the right Qs8 are open to the rest of the room behind them. Things sound great.

Here is another pic showing how the room is open behing my Q's...

do they sound pretty good on the ceiling like that? I wasn't sure how well that would work. I have 10ft ceilings also. figured around 6 ft was about right. thought it wouldn't sound quite right it they were on the cieling. But i am a newbe so have no clue.

With the brackets I used from Menards, there is plenty of room for the top driver to breath, sounds unbelievable.

According to the Dolby Digital 5.1 system reccomendations (you can view them here: Dolby Digital 5.1), the rear surrounds should be from a 90 degree to 110 degree angle behind the primary listening position. I am choosing to put mine at the farther end of the spectrum, mabey around 110 degrees.

In reality this will put my QS8's farthest tweeter (the tweeter facing the back wall) at an estimated 1ft. behind the main listening area.

I noticed some of you are stating 2 feet will be fine but its all in retrospect with how much room he has and how far the primary seating is from the QS8.

Please take note I have not heard my prefered setup yet, this is what I am doing based on the dolby digital 5.1 recomendations (I think they probably know what they are doing

-Hutz

The Q series speakers are a quadpolar design which gives you 4 drivers all in phase. This is different than direct radiating or bi/di pole design speakers. Yes, for the most part you want to consider Dolby recommendations as Alan does here http://www.axiomaudio.com/home_theater_layout.html , however, even Alan and others will tell you the Q's are more forgiving/enveloping than other designs. This is done to simulate what you see in theaters, when direct radiating speakers are lined along the back/side walls.

You want them to be at least 2ft and higher, above your ears. Many of us have them 5-6ft and higher using DIY mounts or omnimounts. Also, per Dolby, with such a design, you can goe 15degrees in front or behind a horizontal line from your ears.

A qoute from Alan "The QS4s or QS8s are extremely accommodating to eccentric or asymmetrical placement. Even Dolby Labs says a range of 15 degrees forward of or to the rear of a horizontal line drawn across your listening area is quite acceptable. Nor do they need to be at identical heights or distances from the listeners."

I realize this is an old thread, but if 2' above the ears is optimal, why is the FMS QS only 38" tall? That's about ear level when seated on a normal couch/chair.

That's actually an excellent question. I imagine it has to do with stability. If the stands are too tall, they could tip over.

Mine are a 2-foot tall platform (fancy name for a small stool!). I have to admit that my experiments with having them (the stands) directly on the floor worked quite well for the back surrounds (HT application), but not as much for the side surrounds. For some DVD-Audios, the difference between ear-level and 2 feet higher was enough for me to move them higher.

Anthony,

Ideally, you want the speakers wall mounted, however, this is not always possible for every situation. When you go to the movies, the surrounds are not on stands.

Yes, I asked brent from axiom the same question- just a stability issue. If the stands were any taller they would tip over! (They're already top heavy at the current height IMO.)

With the QS8, they are top heavy. If I had kids or even just lots of visitors (like a maid or something), I would probably find them on the floor quite often.

The hollow tubes can be filled with heavy stuff to make them a lot more stable. Anyone did that? Anyone used Axiom's "balls"?

I think a stand of that height in the middle of a room would look rather odd as well, kind of like a flag pole in the middle of a room.

Surround sound you can salute.