Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Are the QS8's the right for my room?

Thank you all for the positive reports.
You guys are great!
sirquack and cgrface - thank you for the details on your home theater rooms. It greatly helped me make the decision to go ahead and order 4 of these and give them a try!
I was initially concerned, and honestly a bit doubtful, that such a relatively small speaker could put out enough sound to fill a larger room. Sounds like these QS8's are a big speaker in a small package.
I'm excited to give them a try.
Thanks again all!

Stunt,
Tongue in cheek on that one! ;o) Just a little friendly josh for the very proud M80 owners around here. The M60, et al folks do not toot their tweeters quite as much, but are equally enamored. I get a kick out of the good natured ribs that go back and forth amongst all the Axiom owners (keep an eye on that Mark and Tom though! ;o)

I myself am not fortunate enough to own either 80's or 60's YET, but a pair of each are on order! BIG (OH, and 4 of them QS8ers to boot. :o)

StuntGibbon,
Your QS8 placements - are they directly beside your couch or beside and to the rear? The reason I ask is (when I get them) I will be in a bonus room with knee walls and a 60 degree slope to the ceiling. The couch is against the sloped wall - so unless I pull the couch out, the speakers will be directly beside. Not have experienced a true HT set up, should I look at how I can get the speakers slightly behind - in your (or other's) opinion?............Rob

Rob you will be fine with the pair of QS8s directly besides the couch, here's one of Alan's articles regarding placement of speakers in an HT environment...

Home Theatre Layout

I was used to having monopole surrounds at about 45 degrees behind me. When I upgraded to the QS8s and placed them directly to the sides (with the intent of adding a second pair in the rear at a later time) I noticed a change in the placement of sounds. When a sound was mixed into either the left or right surround it still sounded very natural. But when a sound was mixed equally into both speakers the sound seemed to come from above my head instead of behind me as I was used to hearing. This is with the QS8s mounted 3' above my seated position as recommended (which also gives 3' to the ceiling). Since then I've re-added my old surrounds to the 6th and 7th channels, and placed them on the rear wall of the room (spread apart to the width of the arms of my couch). I've set my receiver to always have the surround back steering logic enabled. This returns the sounds to behind me when equally mixed; even with the monopoles for the back, the QS8s lend a more enveloping sound field than anything I have ever experienced before.

And the QS8s will crank. Not everyone listens at loud levels, but I have beat on them with such test as Blue Man Group in 5.1 and Radiohead in 5ch Stereo and they kept up with SPL's exceeding 107 in a small room. I'm not saying they can independently make 107db in your large room, but they can run loud without distortion.

The only distortion I found is that when really humming along, the wall mount T-bracket does course some vibration where the speaker meets the wall, but it only happens on one wall. Likely just a difference is structure behind the wall. I love having them flush on the wall as they just disappear, but in the future I might opt for more sturdy mounts that decouple them from the wall.

If you search the forum, you will find many, many posts praising the QS8 in almost every configuration you can imagine. They are the only Axioms I own, but their quality and value has put Axiom on my short list of trusted speaker companies. You can't go wrong with them - and that is a rare event.

Thank you ClubNeon and Zimm!!!
Excellent reviews and information. You guys have helped remove all doubt about ordering these speakers! I was worried about their somewhat diminuitve size, but sounds like they can really belt out the sound.
Thanks again to everyone for the helpful advice and time!
Sean

Thanks for the input and the link to the article. I had read that in the past - it is always good to augment Alan's articles with real life testimony. I think I might start inching the couch out from the wall at a rate of one inch per week. That way, it will go unnoticed until I have sufficient room to place the QS8s slightly behind the listening position. That's the plan......

Argon you may want to experiment with your seating in the room, from what I understand with *most* rooms is that dead center seating placement isn't ideal due to room modes and nulls. I ran into that issue way back and ended up moving our seating closer to the front soundstage resulting in much better sonics ... I'd probably more concerned with that than the exacting QS8 placement, those guys will work perfectly fine in most locations with some calibrating and tweaking.

Just to further the 'savings', if you buy one more item over $30, speaker wire for instance, you will qualify for the HT discount and recieve and additional 5% off, even from the Factory Outlet.