Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Why do my QS8s sound better than my VP150?

JamieG,
Yes, I reallly did it. My only disapointment was I never heard anything about it. At the very least I was hoping to vent to someone who got as upset as I was when dealing with their customer service.

I came across this post and wanted to find out if your new VP150 sounded any better. I am currently going through your problem with the vp150 pretty much verbatim. I noticed dialogue sounded really muffled and not detailed, And Ever since i got the speaker it sounded different from the rest doing pink noise but i figured that was just because it was voiced differently or something, Until i got back from vacation and watched a movie and got so frustrated with the sound i just ended up setting it to phantom center channel and was able to enjoy the rest of the movie.

I took the speaker apart to try and find the problem and a couple components in the xover appear as though they had gotten quite hot, Which im not totally sure how because I havent ever had the theater up at levels I consider to be unreasonable. And to my knowledge either has anyone else.

Upon further trying to diagnose the problem with a toner i found out one of the midrange drivers wasnt working so i took it out and Axiom has already sent me a replacement but that still didnt help my original problem. Like you say my tweeters DO work but unless i have my ear right next to them its hard to hear anything over the midrange drivers.

I hooked the center channel up to an amp and just played music through it and honestly i would have rather listened to my alarm clock radio because it sounds soo dull and muddied and like you said, wrapped up in a cardboard box.

Im not sure if this was a defect from the factory or something else that happened while i was gone for nearly a month or what but I never was really satisfied with the vp150, looking back i wish i had just gotten a 3rd M80 for the center channel. I didnt remmeber being very dissapointed before with the speaker, only when i returned from vacation did it really start to bother me. I didnt even notice one of the midrange drivers wasnt working until i had the speaker apart and put a signal to each driver seperatly.

Im starting to wonder now if when i return the Vp150 for diagnosis if i should just try and trade it for an M80 instead since most people arent really that happy with the vp150 anyway. I even started to wonder if there was really anything wrong with mine after doing some reading on here but theres just no way axiom would sell a speaker that sounds that bad. Just no way.

Oh and then i went and did the stupidest thing of the week, Went and jacked up one of my M80 tweeters while taking it out to test the vp150 tweeter with some music vs just the toner to further check the drivers. So I just left the nice unsmashed tweeter in my beloved M80's and put the smashed one back in the center since its gonna stay with the house when we sell it anyway, whereas my 80's are coming with me. So now I have a Vp150 with a dented tweeter (which still works fine) that sounds like its wrapped in a blanket in a carboard box

Hi Brandon,

I can tell you that my VP150 works great. All of my drivers work and Patricia Barber comes through like she's in my basement.

What do you mean by "a couple components in the xover appear as though they had gotten quite hot"? Can you post pictures?

The air core inductor as you can see has melted the plastic forming shell thing, and you can kinda see in the pics that the enamel is much darker than the iron core. Also you can see the hot glue around the one resistor has gotten hot enough to turn it brown.

I also tried measuring the electrolytic capacitor on my DMM but only got an OL, Im not sure if the cap is bad or if its because of the rest of the circuit components. I didnt take it out because of all the glue. And my DMM can read caps with much higher values no problem.

How did you try to measure the capacitor? Do you have a capacitance setting on your meter?

The plastic bobbin doesn't look good, I agree, but this is just poor manufacturing quality control. Functionality/performance is not affected.

Actually, now that I think about it, whatever method they use to apply the glue could have very well caused this kind of damage. And maybe the electrolytic got affected too.

my meter has a capacitance function.

The inductor wasnt melted by the hot glue it was obviously melted from too much current through the inductor, As you can see its only melted in the places where the wire is, And you can tell by the way it has been formed around the wire that it was melted due to that.

I don't trust cap meters. If you really want to do this, you have to remove at least one cap lead. It's probably easier to just remove the cap if you really want to get into that.

The other thing you can try is measuring it on the high Ohms scale. You should see the cap charging if you apply the leads in the proper polarity. The resistance should increase until it gets up near infinity. If it's shorted, it will never charge. If the resistance is infinite immediately, then it's open. It's leaky if the resistance is low.

Ive actually found this fluke meter measures capacitance quite well. My old cheapie one on the other hand well... no.

measures from 1nf to 9999uf. Axiom is fixing the problem so Im not going to bother with disassembling the xover. But I am utterly sure thats got to be the problem because I have already tested all the drivers after having first narrowed out all other equipment and settings. Theres nothing else it could be.

Let us know how it turns out, ok?

Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
One faulty component does a bad speaker not make.
Yoda say bad speaker not.