Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Comparing Speaker Configurations

Sadly I do have to keep the volume turned down which is why I haven’t bothered to buy any separate amps. I’m off work every other Monday when no one else is around so I do get to have some real fun then, especially now that the kids are back in school. However, while music does sound better a little louder especially classical I find that movies have a better 360 degree sound stage when played at low to moderate volumes in my room.

That's EXACTLY what kept coming up in my mind as I read down this post.

Sounds really cool though. I will second the nomination for Man Card upgrade.

Hmm... Thats the effect of DPLIIX and the rear surrounds?

Having experienced it a few times now I just love that 3 dimensional effect. It really pulls me into the movie.

Hmm...


Buy one. My brother just picked up a 10mpixel slr with a couple of lenses for a grand. The pictures are almost indistinguishable from film. I was quite surprised how much I could zoom in on his images on my 50" 1920x1080 display before it started to pixelate.

How well it expands the surround sound seems very dependent on the source to me. I have also noticed that I prefer the DPLIIx “music” mode more than the “cinema/movie” mode even when watching movies. It seems to expand and enhance the surround sound the most. I have yet to play around with any of the optional parameters.

So far my opinion of DPLIIx is that it does either enhance or at least not degrade the movies I’ve tried it on. However, using it on music is more of a mixed bag for me. On well made stereo recordings I think it makes them sound worse. The soundstage seems to get blended together losing the positioning of instruments and singers. There also seems to be a dynamic loss, not sure if it’s really compression or some other byproduct of the digital processing. I think it does improve the sound of poorly recorded stereo music. The expansion of the soundstage seems to outweigh whatever other processing artifacts it introduces.

Dean, what DPLIIx and the other similar ambience extraction modes do is to remove out-of-phase sound(representing reflections from directions other than the front)from the front channels in stereo material and steer it to the appropriate surrounds. The effect varies with the amount of surround ambience that has been mixed in to the front channels(the Dimension control can adjust for this to some extent)but I've found that it improves nearly all of my classical CDs and I always use it.

One experiment that might interest you is to disconnect all speakers except the mains, but still show them on your receiver, and then apply DPLIIx to hear the effect on the mains alone of the material being extracted.

Thanks for the information. I never read up on it and just thought DPLIIx just pulled out certain frequencies.

That test sounds like a really cool idea. Hmmm….I might feel a sick day coming on here.

Better late than never but here’s some pictures.



Yes you can put an M80 upside down above your TV, and can I say it totally rocks. No more puny center channel speakers here (said with a heavy Austrian accent). Normally I leave the grills on but they wouldn’t have shown up in the picture that way.



Three of the four QS8s. Curtains are open or you wouldn’t be able to see them either. Still playing with the setup of these. Probably be awhile before I settle on their configuration.



This is the equipment and media storage area. The curtains also close here to completely blackout the walls in the viewing area. I’ve found that the ceiling and carpet don’t reflect enough light to be visible from my seating area which is usually lounging on pillows on the futon.

My next project if I renew my lease and find the energy to move all that crap is to build a false wall extending out from the kitchen wall to fully enclose the viewing area. It will make the viewing room 12 x 19.5 feet the current viewing area. However the full room is 19.5 x 19.5 (not good). Adding a false wall will also give an extra layer of insulation from the very noisy HVAC system.

There are 3 computers there Linux Red Hat/Free BSD (dual boot), Debian/XP (dual boot), and Vista (sometimes boot). The HDTV is hooked to all three with a KVM switch. The far monitor is hooked up to the Vista box to monitor DVD/CD rips.

On the equipment rack (metal storage rack from Home Labyrinth) from bottom to top is:

cheepo Wally World TV for normal normal viewing, VHS to DVD recorder, Denon 2807, Buttkicker Amp, Xbox 360 Elite ,4way speaker switch, DSL modem, Linksys router, D-link network switch, Opo 981 DVD player, Monoprice HDMI switch, Direct TV HD DVR, Promise network attached storage device.

In the three media racks (out of space again) there are about 1500 DVDs 100 CDs 20 Xbox games and 10 computer games.

More comments on the various speaker configurations later. I’ve been experimenting a lot but haven’t had a chance to post since much of this weekend was spent in Microshaft Vista hell.




It’s staying right were it is unless I upgrade to a projector and screen, in which case I swap the positions of the TV and speaker) or there is an earthquake.

Cool pics.

M22 mains +EP500 subwoofer. These little things totally blow me away. I can barely tell the difference between the M22s+EP500 and the M80s+EP500 all crossed over at 80Hz. The only difference was that the M80s sounded a little “fuller” on some things like male vocals and bass guitar, but if I wasn’t A/B comparing them I don’t think I would have noticed the difference. However, my friend Fred (a part time audio engineer) could tell them apart instantly every time. We both felt the M80s sounded better at the lower end while the M22s sounded better from the mid to higher end.

With pop and rock music the M80s+sub sounded a little, I mean little better. For movies I couldn’t tell the difference when both were crossed over at 80Hz. However, when the M80s were crossed over at 60Hz they took command of the front soundstage during action scenes. While you may not be able to hear the direction of sounds below 80Hz you sure can feel them in the real world and I sit close enough to my M80s to feel the cannon blasts coming from each side of the screen in “Master and Commander” or the Balrog’s breath in LOTR FOTR.

The one place I think the M22s+sub beat out the M80s+sub was with classical music. The M22s just sounded more detailed and accurate.

95dB was the loudest I listened and usually it was around 75dB but got the feeling that in a larger room the M80s would have come out a little stronger over the M22s than they did here.

When I A/B tested them I put the M22s upside down on top of the M80s. One of the first things I noticed was that they had a wider more enveloping sound field than the M80s. To make sure it wasn’t the higher placement I moved the M80s each up a foot and noticed the same thing with them. This puts the tweeters just a little higher than ear level but it sounds better. Not sure why they sound more spacious higher up but for now they are staying on the milk crates until I grab a couple cinder blocks from my dad.

M80 center upside down above the TV. After moving my mains up a foot (their tweeters are still about 1/2 foot below the center) and angling the center M80 down I now feel that this configuration sounds better than all 3 M80s upright on the same level. Not sure it sounds as natural but better.

For movies the “wall of sound” this makes is captivating. However it never draws my attention up above the screen the way the single VP150 sometimes did, and pans are seamless. Music sounds like it’s coming from a stage and I’m sitting in one of the front rows. Classical concerts definitely sound better this way but I’m still not sure about other genres with discretely placed musicians and singers.

So for now the front will consist of 2 M80 mains about 1 foot off the ground and 1 M80 center upside down above the TV all crossed over at 60Hz and angled slight in.

More listening to do for the single/dual M22 centers and M22 rears before posting about them.

I just have to repeat how impressed I am with the M22s + EP500. I think it gives me about 95%+ of what the M80s +EP500 do in my medium size room at moderate volumes. On a pure bang-for-the-buck analysis I think it would be hard to beat the M22s +sub. One of these days I’d like to take my M80s into a big room and hook them up to a powerful amp to see what they can really do.

Thanks for posting your thoughts on your experiment. I agree with pretty much everything you said, in my small/medium size rooms the M22s work great even with out a sub. But having taken the M22s to Mojo's 4000cf room, they couldn't keep up to the M80s and they sounded much thinner in his spacious, open room. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the M22s/sub in a bigger room, just to see if they are similar to my findings as well.