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

Looking to upgrade my surround speakers.
My room is 24 feet wide by 26 feet deep with 12 foot high ceilings. A very large open rectangle; carpeted, one row of 4 home theater recliners.
Front 3 speakers are all Klipsch Ultra 2 KL-650's. Would love to get the remaining Ultra 2 set up of KL and KS surrounds, but can't afford them right now.
I sit 13 feet away from a 120"x67" AT screen.
My seat is approximately 13 feet away from all of the surround speaker positions. Almost dead center in this room.
I am looking for 4 surrounds that will fill this large room with surround sound, as close as possible timber match my Klipsch fronts, and make the hair on the back of my neck stand up during movies like LOTR, Star Wars, Hellboy, ect. I'm a big SciFi/Action Adventure fan!
I have the Onkyo 805 A/V receiver and Sunfire Cinema Grand 5x250 watt/channel amp running the show. The Sunfire powers the LCR and side surrounds, while the Onkyo powers the rear surrounds.
Now for the hard part. I have to find all 4 of these surrounds for close to $1000 to $1200? .
Thanks for the suggestions.

Welcome to the forum!

Four QS8s will run you a little under $1,000 if you get the from the factory outlet.

QS8s are considered by many to be the best surround available and the factory outlet speakers are all new, with very minor cosmetic blemishes at the most (yet many of us can never even find the "blemish"!

Well, you can easily purchase from the regular price, or via the factory outlet and save 10%, and still be at your budget.

My room is 30ft x 31ft x 9ft ceilings and the Qs8's are the best surrounds I've ever heard. No bookshelf can compare for surround purposes.

The question is where do you intend to mount them, on the ceiling 12 up, or do you already have locations run to your walls?

QS8s are a bargain at reg price imho. I'm cheap, I bought them through the FO.

Thanks everyone.
sirquack- your room is a bit larger than mine and I'd like to hear more about how the QS8's fill your room with surround sound. How far away from the side and rear surrounds are you?
Are you able to localize any of the surround sound, ie can you tell where the speakers are once the lights are off?
Any more info/experiences you could offer would be greatly appreciated.
I already have speaker wire run for the side and rear surrounds. The side surrounds are located directly to the sides of my prime listening position, just a tad bit back, say about 100 degrees or so. The rear surrounds are pretty much directly behind me and are 16 feet apart. All surrounds are about 8 feet high off the floor.

The QS speakers are amazing little jewels, just today I was listening to a concert DVD and heard a slight cough from somewhere to the back of me, thought for sure my son had walked in and coughed but it was actually from the disc.

I don't believe you'll ever be able to locate these speakers if properly placed and calibrated, they are unbelievable surrounds.

My 4 QS8's are on order. I LOVE to hear these kind of reports! I sure wish the M80 club would stop 'dissin their M80's though.

Who's dissin their m80s? Easily the highlight of my system. Also it's easy to over think speaker placement, but with the QS8s it's really pretty easy. Since it fires in so many directions, there's a lot of fudge room I've found. I just have mine up on their stands about 3 feet away from the sides of my couch.

My wife and I have run into our usual disagreements on where to put the surrounds (QS8's x4) in our work in progress basement, supposed "man-cave",(deep-sigh). I have to agree with StuntGibbon, as well as the majority of QS8 owners here, these surrounds are amazingly forgiving with placement. I feel confident that if i can find a reasonable place, maybe not ideal for placement they will work just fine.

Due to the usual basement limitations for location/placement in our last residence, my QS8's were in some cases, too high, too low, too far back, and too far forward (that's all four I think) and they sounded great regardless. When, however, the movie called for the sound to move sequentially around you, thats exactly what you heard. Not in a localized segmental fashion, but in a natural ambient flow of sound that just seemed natural and full. For (my favorite) music/video concerts, the concert hall sensation was there, including people coughing and talking around me, to the clinking of ice in a glass being prepared at the bar. Great stuff.

I'm confident that where ever I place these speakers, within reason, they will not disapoint.

Mr. U,

My HT portion of my room is basically 1/2 of the room, the other side is for the pool table, bar, drums, etc..

I have 2 rows of seats with 3 seats per row. From the primary seat, front center, the side surrounds are probably 9ft away, and the rears are about 7-8 ft, all 7ft off the ground. If I was to do it over again, I might go a little further back on the rears, for the folks in the back row. They would work fine further away, as you setup the receiver for distance and levels.

Axiom's design of the Q's was to simulate the lined speakers on the side/rear walls you see in theaters. Because of the quadpolar design having tweeters firing to the left/right, and 2 woofers firing up/down, all in phase, the sound wraps around you. It is not like a bookshelf speaker that is directed right at you.

So, if you surrounds are 13ft from you, your saying the left/right surrounds are 26ft apart, and the rears are 13ft behind you, and 16ft apart (5ft from the side walls?). The rears might be spread out a little to far, but I'm sure they will work. My rears are spread out about the same distance as my mains are apart, around 12ft or so.

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.

I was actually disappointed when I got the boxes. I thought they must have sent the wrong speakers - they were so small. But they are dense and feel like a solid brick - the oldest of audio tests! Once up, I could not find a reason not to like them. At that point, the size became a huge plus because it gave me mounting options that I could not have with a larger speaker. In short, I know what you mean.

Mine are slightly to the rear. I'd say the middle of the QS8s line up to the very back of my couch (so really no more than a foot behind a seated ear level.) I don't believe you'll experience that big of a difference moving them another few inches closer (if you're directly beside you instead of a few inches back like mine).

Alan also posted an article on this here: http://axiomaudio.com/surroundtheory.html

And to me, it looks both of our plans fit in the suggested target angle. Also, remember since your surrounds are going to be close to your back wall, that rear firing speaker will probably give you even more of a phantom "rear" sound as it should be bouncing from behind you too. (and maybe even more from the top speaker hitting your slanted wall.)

People here prove you can tweak forever, but my bet is if you're in the ballpark they're going to sound good for you.

Thanks for all the advice, guys. My bonus room is about 18 feet wide by 27 feet long with 4 foot knee walls and an odd jut out into the room near the door. We set TV against one knee wall and the couch opposite against the other. Works out ok for now and there are no disturbing echos like in the great room.....Rob

Placed the order for 4 QS8's! I went ahead and ordered new so I don't have to wait 4 weeks! Should be here next Wednesday.
I've been told to rest assured that these speakers will fill my large room without question. Fingers are crossed!
Thanks again all for the advice and experiences.
I'll post when I get them and test them out!

Congrats Mr U, you won't be dissappointed, by all accounts these are amazing speakers, compact, powerfull, detailed and give you that 'envelope' of surround without being obvious.

Someone told Underhill about the secret thread on the real problems with the QS8s right?









Never mind, I forgot, that comes 32 days after purchase. My bad. Disregard this post Underhill.






I crack myself up.

Was that the thread where they spontaneously combust or the one where they picked up Russian Submarine signals?

Zimm, you had me there for second!

This thread will self destruct!

Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da...

Doooda dooooo ....Doooda dooooo .... Doooda dooooo ... Do do

Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da...

I started Operation Inchworm last night while watching the ACC Tourney. Moved the couch out from the knee wall ever so slightly. I need to calculate how tall the QS8's will be on one of the stands - run a tape to determine how long the op will be active.......

Is it ok to set the crossover at 80Hz for the QS8's? I have a Pioneer Elite 94, and it has just one setting for all speakers.
Thanks.

80 Hz on all channels is the recommendation of THX. It seems to be a good fit for most speakers.

80hz appears to be the ideal XO for the QS8's, at least according to Audyssey in my room on the 3808.

Is 60hz too low? I don't have them yet so I can't experiment. I will be getting the Paradigm studio 100's soon and would like to cross them at 60. I have a Pioneer Elite 94, so it's just one crossover for all speakers.

MM, since you can set only one frequency, make it 80Hz, which is better for the QSs. The fact that the Studio 100s can do well to at least 60Hz doesn't mean that a good sub crossed to them at 80Hz won't be able to handle those bass frequencies more loudly and with lower distortion.

That's what I thought, I just wanted to check. I got an email this morning that my order has shipped. The waiting is killing me. No tracking info available yet, but I hope it get them by the weekend.

I received the QS8's on Thursday, and finished installing them Saturday. It was a little tough running some wire, but with my brother-in-law's help, it wasn't too bad. I watched a movie last night and I really think it's an upgrade from the in-ceiling speakers I was using before. The sound wasn't coming from the ceiling anymore. I am very happy with the purchase.

Congrats. I made a similar move and have been very impressed. If you are like me, you will find that they are more impressive the longer you have them. After the initial "difference" wears off, they just disappear, no more localization of sounds unless the studio designed it that way. Enjoy.