Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Presence Speakers? Timbre Match?

Still some rookie questions.

I have a pair of spare old Musical Fidelity speakers sitting around and am wondering if I can add them to my present 5.1 system.

1. What is the benefit of pressence speakers?
2. Assuming those speakers are in good conditions, what are the steps to determine if they can "blend in" well with the Axiom speakers.
3. I know timbre matching in simple terms. What parameters should I be looking objectively? Or is it something determined subjectively by the audience?

Thanks for any help.

My understanding is that "presence speakers" are those placed between the mains and the surrounds in a 9.1 system. I don't think this kind of implementation is very widespread because not many processors support it.

It seems like going to 7.1 by using the Musical Fidelity speakers (or QS8's) in the REAR would be a more logical next step.

I would think that - since they are part of widening the front sound stage, matching the presence speakers to the mains would be fairly important. But I have no experience in this area. If I were going to 9.1, I'd probably opt for M2's as the presence speakers.

Just use your ears to decide if you like it or not.

For Yamaha the Presence speakers are located above the front speakers and spread out further. This way the front sound stage is wider and it adds ambience. For my yammy if I used the Presence speakers I could not run 7.1 for rears, something to keep in mind.

I tried M3's as presence speakers as I had them around, however I did not have them in the ideal location. It was neat but I did not like the way the M3's were with the M60 and the M3's are too big for my set up. I would like to try it again sometime in a different room and with M2's though.

If you have the speakers and the extra wire give it a shot.

I think the presence speakers are really only used for the yamaha DSP listening modes, right? I seem to remember them not being used for any of the standard movie sound formats. I have a 7.1 and I just can see the use of putting more speakers in my living room...well, I CAN, but I my wife is already a little tired of how much speaker cable we've got all over the place...
but if you do it, let us know how it sounds!

-mike

I have a Sherbourn (currently up for sale) and it has what they called "side axis" speakers. The channel was derived from FRONT RIGHT W/SURROUND RIGHT and FRONT LEFT W/LEFT SURROUND
It created an extremely wide front soundfield that was very impressive - especially with a film's music. In this setting music has a more open and richer frontal soundstage. Instead of being simply FRONT LEFT, CENTER and RIGHT it had spread more akin to an ochestra laid out in front of the viewer.
I don't know if this feature is the same for all companies but that's how it was on the Sherbourn.

I have M80s and a VP150 center so I chose to use a pair of M2s for the "side axis" channel and the sound was seemless.

You're right Mike, the Presence speakers is a Yamaha thing like Logic 7 is for Harmon Kardon. You can select it though while watching any material as far as I am aware. I used it for a few Dolby Digital 5.1 movies.

Waitaminute...

The Emotiva DMC-1 had outputs for "Left Side Axis" and "Right Side Axis" for what amounted to a 9.3 system. As to whether the chip used by Emotiva is the same one - albeit programmed differently - used by Yamaha or HK, I would have no idea.

So, yes, I believe there is no discrete multi-channel format that uses those speakers, but there are apparently several different processor manufacturers that are employing chips that will matrix something like that.

Scope creep, baby. More pixels. Bigger screens. More subs. More speakers. More watts. It is endless.

But at least you don't bash your knuckles on the manifold when the wrench slips.

The H/K doesn't have presence speakers; Logic7 is a decoding mode similar to DPLII or DTS:Neo6.

I'm aware that H/K does not have presence speakers. My post probably wasn't clear, I was referring to a proprietary sound format(s) that each company came up with. Like Yamaha's "Presence".

Oh, I was talking about Tom's post, not yours.