Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater What should I upgrade?

Hi everyone,

I am mulling over several options with respect to my theater/media room.(17 feet wide, 21 feet long, 8 feet high) I currently have an all Polk RTi 7 speaker setup (RTi 8, RTi 6 and RTi4) with a Mirage Omni 12 sub. This is all powered with an HK AVR 435. I like the sound of my gear but was surprised at how much I was missing when I heard a demo of Spiderman 2 (among other DVDs I used from my personal collection)at a local HiFi store. The system was powered by seperates (Pre/Pro and AMP)and included speakers that I was told were comprable to my Polks.

My questions is this....should I upgrade the electronics in my system or the speakers? I was shocked at just how much detail and clarity I was missing from my gear. I went home from the store and popped in the same scenes I listened to there. I was so disappointed at what I heard (or didn't hear). It was like a whole layer of sound was missing!!!!

My budget is such that I can only do one or the other ($3000-$3500).

My research has led me to the following options:

Axiom Epic 80 500 Factory Outlet ($3500)
-OR-
Outlaw 990/7700 combo w LMF Plus Sub
($3498)

I know this is a very subjective question and kind of open ended but I want to do something different than what I have. Any thoughts or feedback would be great!

Are there any Polk to Axiom converters out there who can chime in too??

You must upgrade all of it. It is scientifically proven to be impossible to just upgrade parts of your A/V system.

Speakers make the biggest difference overall, and there's nothing wrong at all with an H/K AVR.

I'd do the speakers now, prepro/amp later.

If you could stretch your budget by $500, you could also pick up an Emotiva LPA-1 amp and use your H/K as a prepro (if it has pre-outs). That might give you more oomph to your system.

Another tip, play with the placement and calibration of your system. Someone here gave me that advice a while back and it's absolutely true. Make sure you're using an SPL meter to get those Polk's calibrated correctly. It can make a world of difference and won't cost a dime (well, except for the $30 SPL meter, if you don't have one already).

Ditto what Peter said.

Also, consider room treatments and adjusting speaker placement. It's probably the room more than the equipment.

Most important - Is your current system calibrated with an spl meter?

Other - Was the dealer system running "hot"? Have you run you system "hot" to see if it sounds better?

Have you checked for audition sites near you?

We can spend your money for you as well as anybody. An Epic80-500 system with a new amp using your 435 as a prepro sounds wonderful.

I have not used a rat shack meter but have used the auto calibration feature in the HK. From there I adjusted slightly to my taste. I have also experimented with placement and ended up with the L and R mains about 1 foot from the front wall and about 9 feet apart. The center channel is on top of my 53 inch Sony CRT TV. I also tweaked the placement of my sub and found a good home for it next to my right front speaker with the driver pointing into the center of the room.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by hot. If that means loud, then yes I have listened to my system loud. The system at the Hifi store was running moderate to loud. I had them audition several different brands including Rotel, Sunfire and the massive Denon 5910 receiver.

Aside from the SPL meter adjustments, I think I have things calibrated pretty good. I'm wondering if upgrading the DVD player would help too??? I have a two year old Sony player that probably doesn't hold a candle to an Oppo or Denon player.

I appreciate the comments and suggestions. Please keep them coming!


Chris

You'll hear a much bigger difference in changing speakers than electronics!

My AVR doesn't have any of the fancy-pants auto calibration stuff, so I'm stuck in the stone-age and have to use an SPL meter. That said, I have read of others complaining that the auto calibration routines sometimes don't work very well. YMMV.

My opinion, FWIW, is that before I spent $3,000 on new equipment, I'd spend $30 on the radio shack SPL meter and double check the calibration. If the calibration is spot-on, and you feel the SPL meter unnecessary you can always return it.

Actually, I use my SPL meter for all sorts of fun things, like making sure I'm not overdoing it on the volume level, or testing how loud my motorcycle is, or seeing how loud my buddies can burp...

An SPL meter is not from the stone age (at least in my opinion). My auto calibration inaccurately sets the LFE level at least with my Yamaha YPAO. This is a very important aspect of any movie.

I would recommend an SPL over the internal processing and mic any day of the week. Its very cheap and it sets the speakers to a perfect level.

Speakers make a much bigger difference than the electronics. Room acoustics however are even more important than speakers. Was the demo in a separate A/V room and if so, was this room better treated than yours? If so, perhaps what made the difference was the room and not the speakers.

I think speakers are more important than room acoustics. That is my opinion, and I got nothing to back it up.

I was going to make that argument, but that's the problem with border cases (such as the comparison of using rusty baling wire vs using $5000 cables of solid silver)--they don't exactly get at nuances. For example, it's possible that in a truly horrible room, M80s would sound worse than, say, Paradigm Monitor 7s in a well sorted room. But then, that's also a border case. In 2 different average rooms (even in 1 average room and one well treated room), the M80s are going to sound better than Monitor 7s.

Speakers make the biggest difference without a doubt.

[quoteI think I tend to agree with this statement. Would you rather have a full Axiom System and no room treatments? or would you rather have a HTIB with all the room treatments available?

---

. I guess I asked for that one. The Polks should not really sound that bad compared to the Polk equivalents that he heard at the demo. Treating the room could make a big difference.

Chris, as most of the previous replies have indicated(and this isn't something that's merely "subjective")the speakers are the components that make a difference. One of the great things about today's audio scene is how we can get audibly flawless performance from players and receivers(certainly including your 435)at quite modest cost. Besides the speakers you have to consider that the acoustics at the dealer's demo were probably more nearly optimal than in your room at home. So, consider speakers and don't be overly concerned about the electronics, but also consider room treatments and be sure that your present setup is well-calibrated.

I'd upgrade your room acoustics so you can hear exactly how each piece of equipment really sounds, and how each piece makes a difference in your overall listening/ viewing experience. It is undoubtedly one of the last things folks pay attention to, but after they do, they are amazed how the quality of their listening experience increases. (some times dramatically)

Here is some good information on why acoustics and a properly tuned room are important, as well as some tutorials on how to DIY acoustic treatments on the cheap:

Home Theater Acoustics FAQ and Tutorials




my 2cents

It wouldn't hurt to experiment with room treatment before you spend a lot of money. The first reflection points can be temporarily treated with some heavier cotton blankets on the walls/ceiling/floor or a piece of soft (a cushy chair) or diffusing furniture (a bookcase) to see if this makes a difference to the clarity. With someone's help, first reflection points can be found in less than a half hour. You can do the same kind of thing in the corners by hanging some heavy blankets and leaving an air space behind them to act as a bass trap.

I tried this recently (my wife wasn't very happy by the way ) and was surprised at how much "tighter" my system sounded in the mid-bass region. I was also able to turn it up louder than just the few watts that I am used to without sounding muddied. Now I have to figure out how to make the room treatment more permanent without spending a fortune.

If treating the room this way gives an acceptable level of sound quality then maybe you can spend some money on materials and build the sound treatments yourself to save on labor. Now having said all of this, you should one day upgrade to the Epic 80-500 system .

Thanks for all the great comments/suggestions. I have considered the room treatment path. There are some fairly cheap room accoustic panels I found while browsing on the audioholics website. The company's name is not coming to me at the moment....I agree that every room is different in it's sonic characteristics. The demo room I was in was probably treated as this was a high end store that sells Runco, B&W and the like. It was dark in there so I didn't really have a good look at the walls. The assumption is most likely correct since they are trying to setup an optimal environment for selling the equipment to perspective buyers.

I have used Yamaha receivers in the past and feel that the HK has a much better calibration tool. That being said, I will "splurge" and get the SPL meter this weekend and tune up the good old Polks.

My room isn't too bad sonically as I have wall to wall carpenting, a bookshelf and plenty of furniture throughout the space. But, if I can find those accoustic panels I mentioned, I will grab some of those puppies. The WAF factor on those will be mighty low....but so is everything else I try to do with that room (recessed lighting, 106 inch Carada Screen, mounted projector..etc etc..)

I do know from experience that good room treatment can make even crappy speakers sound decent. My buddy built a full scale theater in his basement and fully treated the room for sound. But, there is a limit to how much performance you get. If you put say some Axioms or Rockets in that space I'm sure they'd blow his gear away. Because they are better speakers.

So, for now I will try the SPL meter and maybe a few accoutic panels. I will probably still upgrade the speakers but will see what these two items can bring out of my current system.

Thanks again for all the helpful comments. Even if you are living in a crappy room!!

Guys and gals,

Here is the link to the accoustic panels I was referring to. They are the GIK 244 absorption panels. Sounds like a no brainer to get these puppies. But like I said, they will probably have a very low WAF unless you can color match to your walls so they are less noticable.

http://www.audioholics.com/reviews/acoustics/gik-acoustics-244-absorption-panel-review

Enjoy!

This thread raises questions that make for interesting discussion but in my opinion the answers for same can’t be given as generalized firm conclusions. This is a “boxers or briefs” underwear question – and like all such questions the best answer in my view is as Bob Dole famously resolved: “Depends”.

I would grant as a premise to the discussion that your system can’t sound any better than your speakers – just as it can’t sound any better than the program material you choose to play.

Speakers are that fundamentally important. If you don’t pick superlative music to play, the output of the system, in the end, can’t be superlative, and by the same token if your output transducers are not superlative… well you get the idea.

I would further agree that program reading components [CD players], amps, and cabling can all be had in the current market for very low costs on a comparative basis versus the cost of pursuing excellence in speakers. This is not surprising given that all the gear upstream of the speakers has become by comparison trivial to produce to exacting tolerances and tight specs thanks to modern manufacturing techniques and the state of the art in electronic circuit design. Speaker builders at the top end of the food chain on the other hand don’t have equal access to the electronic wizardry and mass production advantages that for example a CD player builder does.

Because of the fact a speaker by definition must interact with the real world [move air in a controlled fashion] one simply doesn’t have the ability to short-cut around big problems inherent in the laws of physics with mass produced IC chips or a fat read ahead buffer.

If you want a speaker to produce tight controlled low frequency sound you have to use a high quality low frequency driver [not a trivial thing to produce], and you have to mount it in a very stiff box built to exacting standards… design a x-over circuit that matches the abilities of the LF driver, precisely mount HF elements, taking into account time coherence… and on and on... all the while implementing these design elements at a real world scale. In short, you can’t micro-process your way around the challenges of sound production at the speaker end of the system with anything close to the facility one can use such techniques further up stream.

As a result I would consider it silly for person to divide up their system budget on anything approaching an equal basis between electronics and speakers. The rational choice to me is obvious… you heavily weight your budget to getting the best speakers you can afford.

But when it comes to acoustic treatment of a space, one runs into a very similar set of choices. Your system can’t sound better than the room you put it in, and in small rooms [less than 7,000 cubic feet or so – on the order of 19x37x10’] the laws of physics leave you with conditions that electronic wizardry cannot address. For example, the modal density in small room results in the inability of an untreated space to produce smooth, tight-sounding low frequency resonances. And this is true no matter how much you paid for your speakers.

The example given above of a 19x37x10’ room has a 38 distinct resonances below 100 Hz [Axials=10, Tangentials=20, Obliques=8]. That’s 38 frequency zones supported by the natural reverb field of the room… alternatively an 11x12x8’ room has only 8 [Axials=4, Tangentials=3, Obliques=1]. In the smaller room you’ll never get your sound system to have anything approaching the smooth low frequency response it will exhibit in the larger room absent acoustic treatment. Therefore, it is rational to budget accordingly.

Fantastically elucidating post, Scott. You've set quite a high bar for yourself as far as post quality and signal to noise ratio goes. I hope you can keep it up.

See, I told you. They just think you are more cuddly than me!