Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Correct mounting height for QS8's

Trying to get the wiring done prior to the speakers showing up. What's the proper height for wall mounting them (going to fish the lines through the wall). They'll be on the side of the room in-line, slightly behind the seating area.

Thanks

The QS8's are very forgiving speakers, if I'm remembering correctly I believe about 2' above the seated listening position is optimal. Mine are a little higher than that and they sound great.

Mine are 3" below the ceiling(kids in the area) and still sound great, but do sound better when I am standing. I would go for the 2-3 ft above your seated height.

Major,

If possible it is best to experiment a little before hand. Many people get out a few ladders and try different heights and placements in relation to the seating area.

As Rick mentioned, they are very forgiving and will work in most positions. Alan has mentioned a minimum of 2ft above your ears or higher. Mine are about 7ft and work great.

Thanks RickF. Think I'll go with 5 feet up on the wall. Sweet setup you have - very clean looking.

I'd read some things saying that mid-field placement of a sub is not recommended....how have you found this to sound. Thanks again.

Be sure to give yourself a little room between your ceiling and the top of the QS8s Major, again if I'm remembering correctly I believe about a foot down from the ceiling is recommended ... I'm old, so I could be wrong.

Thanks and regarding the sub's location, after doing the sub-crawl and recommendations from knowledable secret sources along with various room placements, the mid-sidewall has been the best sonic location for my particular room.

no problem....room has 10ft ceilings so 5 or 6ft up should be good.

Should work out great for you then Major, good luck and again, congrats.

I'd go at least 6ft up from the floor Major.

one thing....about 8ft up the wall slightly angles in up to the 10ft (starting at 8ft the wall angles in 2ft, up to the 10 ft limit. Thinking the 6ft height will provide enough height from where the wall starts angling in to have sound radiate around. Does that change anything.

No problem.

Mine are about 6 feet off the floor and sound great

Yeah, Rick has one of the most inviting rooms I've ever seen. I suffer from room envy. (I find my self wondering if the fact that the room is in Florida has anything to do with that )

At your age aren't you suppose to be down there?

The stands that Axiom sells for the Q's are only 38 inches, any height at ear level or above should sound great.

If the stands were any taller they would tip over.

Thanks Jack, whenever you get moved down here we'll hopefully have a chance to watch (& listen) to some oldies but goldies with some cool beverages and a hot grill. I'll be looking forward to it.
And yes, the fact that the room is in Florida does make a difference, just for good measure we placed the 80s and the TV on the southernmost side wall of the house ... just to make sure they never had a chance of getting too cooled down.

Major, you do know that pictures are a prerequisite for staying around these boards for any length of time don't you? Just ask Amie.

no worries. As soon as I have everything hooked up I'll be posting some pictures of my room.

As I sit here watching the snow come down, knowing I have to go to the grocery (bad planning on my part ) you can bet the answer is

HELL YES!

Ditto that, Rick!!!!!!!

What a coincidence, I too have to make a trip to the grocery store today Jack and I'm sitting here wondering what T-shirt I'm going to wear ... I already know the shorts will be of the blue jean variety.

OH BUZZ OFF!









I'm so jealous

That wasn't too nice on my part, was it. I apologize Jack. Just remember though, for every month of this weather, we have two months of unbearable sweltering heat and humidity.

Major, another prerequisite around these parts is to totally steer off topic on all threads. Again, ask Amie.

Ask me what? I've already done my grocery shopping

Yes, the off-topic is what keeps us guessing, for sure! In fact, those of you who missed the shoutbox comments last night missed out on some good miscommunications!

Yeah, if I'd been quicker, Amie would have sent me some blue Audiobytes. But no, I had to be honest...

LOL . . . I assure you, they went to a good home Ken!

ok, I've been playing around with my setup. (FYI mounted the speakers just over 6ft up on the wall. I was having some receiver issues and not getting any sound to come out of the speakers (or hardly any at all). Had to do a complete reset, then manually had to bump the surrounds up +10db (fronts are at 0db, center -1.5db). Also set the sub to +10db. Does this make sense that I needed to bump the surrounds up by so much. They do sound good right now. (Going to have to take up WhatFurrer on his offer to come over with his SPL meter and Avia disk.)

Often, at the beginning, we all tend to put the surrounds louder so we can "hear" them. Also, depending on distance, it can be normal. If I remember correctly, it's 6db every time you double the distance.

not sure if it matters now, but mine are also 6ft from the floor (to the top of the QS8 speaker)

Major, it's rather unlikely that a +10dB adjustment to the sub and the surrounds would be necessary to properly calibrate them to equal levels with the others. It may be that you want to "hear" that money that you spent on them, but a sub shouldn't be audible as a separate source and the surrounds likewise, except when something in a separate surround channel in a 5.1 source is meant to be. Yeah, you should take Steve up on that calibration offer; you might well find that you've got both the sub and surrounds too "hot" now.

Seems kinda high major for both the surrounds and sub. Are you running the receiver test tones and adjusting to around 75dB with an SPL meter?

was this using test tones on the reciever? Your surrounds had no sound coming from them compared to your other speakers?

the test tones from the receiver would come out fine...same volume as all of the others. It was when i put on a dvd that I noticed the lack of sound until I bumped it up by +10. Tried saving private ryan (gunfire, explsions, rain), Forest Gump (mainly for the rain scene), Incredibles - good to show off surrounds. It sounds good now. Last night noticed that the surrounds almost sounded too strong in certain situations, so I may end up backing it down now. Just thought it was strange that I had to play around (not sure if it was a receiver issue).

I would calibrate them equally with your test tones. The source material you are testing just doesn't have very loud surround sounds. The surrounds are suppose to enhance the movie watching experience by placing you 'in the action'. Generally, you should not be able to destinctly pinpoint sounds comming straight from your surrounds.

I think some people like to up the surrounds/ sub a little above calibration levels but I would not increase anything above the calibrated level by more than a couple of db at most.

Make sure your DVD player is outputting PCM if using an HDMI cable or 5.1/7.1 analog connections to your reciver. If you are using an optical Toshlink or digital coaxial audio connection, then make sure you are NOT using PCM in the player, but rather set it to bitstream. If this is not set right, then you will not get the correct surround and sub output. Hopefully your receiver has an indicator to confirm if it is decoding the correct multi-channel signal.

can you not have it set to bitstream with hdmi?

Major,

The test tones are what you want to use when calibrating your system.

I would suggest calibrating all your speakers to sound the same with your test tones, then throw in Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the rings and the first 30 minutes of that movie has some great surround effects, especially bilbo's party with the fireworks.

You are right, you can. The important thing is just to make sure the receiver indicates it is decoding the signal properly. Just be sure you aren't using PCM with optical or coaxial.

Sorry, my mind has been clouded by the HD-DVD/Bluray discussions on Dolby True HD and DTS-HR/Master Audio. In which case many need to use PCM over HDMI unless they have a reciever and player combination that supports it.

Major,

If you are mostly having trouble hearing ambient background sounds like rain and wind you might be having the same problem I had with the background noise of my appliances was drowning out the more subtle sound on movies. If you turn up the surrounds to make up for this other more intense sounds will be way to loud. Not sure if you have any control over background noise but if you can tame it some it will help everything sound better.

I’ve also noticed that many movie soundtracks are mixed differently with various channels at different volumes when switching from movie to movie. For one of the Matrix movies I had to turn up the center channel about 3db just hear it over the mains. I second Hutzal’s suggestion to test your system with “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring,” many good scenes throughout the movie. One I particularly like to use are the scenes in the Mines of Moria. Very cool echoes for the surrounds and nice bass when fighting the Balrog.

I generally leave my surrounds turned up about 3db above calibration levels for movies and about 5db for most games, sometimes a little more or less depending on the source. For my favorite movies/games I keep 3x5 cards in the case with the speaker level settings for that movie/game. This may sound excessive but found it necessary to avoid having to recalibrate by Buttkicker for each movie. As an added benefit I also started tracking the other speaker level settings.

In the end the best thing about home theater is that you can do whatever works best for you.

Dean

That's a good idea with the index cards.

Great idea with the cards its far better than trusting my failing memory.