Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater My theater/living room

Hello fellow Axiomites,

I have been tweaking and tweaking and I finally got a pretty flat response from the room. I still have to add a few reflection panels and maybe a bass trap but it is REALLY sounding nice.

I have had the Axioms in this new room for about two years but I never took the time to study room acoustics and speaker placement vs. image and response. After visiting a friend who is building his own speakers and studio, I came to realize the importance of the room layout. I downloaded some test tones and went to work.

In short, or is that even possible, here is what I did so far.
1) Move the sub to the right front so that it fires towards an open part of the back wall minimizing bass reflection on the rear corner.
2) Spread out the front mains to form a nearly equilateral triangle to the center listening position.
3) Experimented to find the right amount of toe.
4) Adjusted crossover points, speaker distances from the back wall, sub distance in the Onkyo, and sub volume to get all the test tones as flat and even as possible (by ear I found alot of cold and hot spots and virtually eliminated them or moved them out of the sweet spot)
5) Listened to lots of different music, Jazz, Orchestra, Rush R30 Live DVD, and other stuff.
4)Again
5)Again
4)Again
5)Again.....

I have to say the system sounds so smooth right now. My wife can tolerate so much more volume than before. The sound stage is unbelievable! The dynamic range of these speakers is simply stunning. I can hear breathing violin bows contact the strings as if I were sitting on the stage. Snare and bass drums are tight and deep at the same time.

Here are a few photos of the setup before I started tweaking. The room is 8'H x 23'W x 18'D. I think the wideness of the room really works to create a nice soundstage.






I have (8) 2'x4'x2" rigid 703 fiberglass panels that I am going to experiment with soon. Any suggestions for placement and good use of the panels?

Thanks -Dave

Hey Dave, I think you struck upon one of the most overlooked components of this hobby--speaker placement and room layout. Best part is that speaker placement is ultra inexpensive and just requires a bit of patience. Even expensive speakers can sound horrid in a bad room. Glad you had fun experimenting and were able to get the most out of your Axioms.

Wow, more and more often there seems to be some very nice Axiom systems getting posted.

Dave your home and system is absolutely beautiful, the finish on your speakers fits in very nicely with your very inviting surroundings and it's great to hear that you have the system dialed in, and I know it takes time.

The home-made bass traps in the corners are actually patio chair cushions. They will be replaced with something more significant soon. Thanks for the compliments. By the way, it cost me nothing to download test tones and tweak the room arrangement. The payoff was HUGE.

Sure. Here is a link to the page that has the file. http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2004/09/audio-test-cd You need to download it, and burn the image to a CD-R using CD burning software that handles "BIN" and "CUE" image files. You also need WinRar (similar to winzip) to extract the file.

It has 63 tracks on the CD each track is 5Hz higher than the next. It covers a VERY wide frequency range.

My friend told me that I should use warbling tones instead of flat tones but I got good results with this CD.

I would recommend that people use the Realtraps CD free download, especially for handling bass response. It covers 10hz to 300hz in 1hz increments, a much better representation. Even 5hz increments will not give you an accurate measurement of the peaks/nulls overall. You will be amazed at the difference found in 1 or 2 hz, which will be hidden by some other test cd's.

The problem is correcting a room to the 1Hz resolution may become pretty cumbersome. I am going to try it anyhow. Thanks.

Exactly my point, people may think they have a pretty flat response using a 1/3 or 1/6th octave test, however, there really not getting the entire picture.