Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Axiom 8 Channel amp or multiple 2 channel amps

I haven’t done much research on this yet. Just an idea I’m considering after I get a few other priorities, like curtains, cabling, carpet and possibly room treatment out of the way. I try to prioritize my upgrades based on what will give me the most improvement for the money at that time.

I’m already loving the mid/upper bass coming from my 3 M80s up front but they don’t carry the LFE channel, well unless I didn’t use a sub. My EP500 has no problem filling the room with sound and shaking both the furniture and the foundation but I miss that in-your-face feeling I’m getting from the M80s.

Right now I’ve got the EP500 near the back right corner of the room, mostly to keep the front open. My original plan was to buy an LCD (computer monitor) and a plasma (day to day TV watching) to go slightly behind my M80s on either side of the center. However, testing with my DLP has revealed that’s to far away to use as a computer monitor, colours the sound up front and I like having room to walk between the M80s.

I reconsidered my original plan to wall mount the LCD and plasma on brackets that swing out from the side walls but that is going to be at the limit of my visual acuity as a computer monitor and my eyesight aint getting any better. Additionally, since moving in April I’ve only watched about 10 hours of TV so when my year is up, unless something changes I’m dumping the DirectTV so no need for the plasma.

Which brings me to my new plan (always subject to change) of buying just an LCD and like I’m doing with my DLP right now just slide it in and out of the adjacent room as needed. By listening in stereo or switching to a phantom center I can still have perfect audio at the sweet spot even with the HDTV in the middle because I have a direct line-of-sight, with room to spare, to both mains.

This means for movie watching I now have room up front between the mains and center for the sub(s) or perhaps more effectively Mid-bass modules (I‘d need 2 for symmetry ). This quest in part comes from one setup I had in my apartment where the EP500 was right in front of the TV about 4 feet in front of my seating. This gave me the level of impact I liked for explosions (in the real world explosions are directional) but at the cost of the lower bass being boomy, and a twice re-broken toe (first broke it surfing) when cutting to close walking by the sub. EP500 beats the crap out of toe every time. So the sub ended up in back and I lost the directional feel of the explosions.

Since giving that directions feel seems to be exactly what the Mid-bass Module is designed for while minimizing room interactions. It seems to me it will be a better solution than just adding multiple subwoofers. My idea is to use the Buttkicker for the 40Hz and below, the Mid-bass Modules for the 50-80 or so and the EP500 to sort of tie it all together.

Not hard. Since they're different sizes and thus intended to reproduce different parts of the audio spectrum a crossover would be required. This could be done two ways: A single amp feeding into the crossover network which leads to each of the subs. Or since electricity is available an active crossover could be right after the input, and that feeds two separate amps which are in turn directly connected to their own subs. Both ways would work well, the second is obviously more expensive, but possibly provide better results. Since one maker would be combining all the components things could be tuned very accurately, better than a MBM added to an unknown sub.

I freely submit my idea (not that it is very original) to Axiom, please build this, please, please, please.

I've mentioned in previous threads that this was exactly what my dream had always been in car audio. Build a sub box with a 15 or 18, a 12 and an 8 or 10 inch woofers all pushing different frequencies. I'd be very surprised if to date nobody has every tried it. Although I have yet to hear about it if they did.

You're not making this any easier, this was supposed to be an easy one, everyone calls me crazy and tells me to get the sub

I've got to track down one of those Paradigm subs and get myself out to Markham to hear the SVS subs, if they don't completely bowl me over I may be calling Emotiva.

Now if I could just bill a couple of extra hours on this project I'm working on maybe I could swing both.

Here is another thought this message put into my head, the Emotiva amp would come into the house, straight into the basement and would go pretty much unnoticed... the sub on the other hand would be noticed pretty much immediately, so I like the unknown WAF on the amp

I sent you a PM.

Dean, I think you should try a seperate amp to drive the M80s, the bass I could get from them with the A1400 was incredible and it had alot of impact, much more than with the 3808 alone. The extra power from the seperate amp makes a much larger difference with the mid bass on the M80s than anywhere else, go for the A1400-2

I must not have been clear with what I was saying. The mid-bass of the M80s is fantastic right now with the Onkyo, not that more power wouldn‘t make it better. Where the mid-bass is falling short is from the LFE channel. Part of it is that I haven’t moved the sub back up front near-field since running Audyssey on the Onkyo which tamed the room down quite a bit. But I’ve still got a feeling that to get the mid-bass I want the EP500 is actually going to be to much because it goes so low. I sort of like the mid-bass running hot which has been pushing the low bass way over the top. So I still have some tweaking and probably room treatments but I’m not sure if that’s going to be enough.

So the mid-bass on the M80s if fine I’m just trying to get the LFE channel to catch up w/o everything getting to rumbly.

I see

The same consideration should go towards your hearing. Once you have damaged your ears its too late. Listening at levels of 100+ dbs can really do a lot of harm.

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Nah, the extra power does not change the sound. Well, not until things get loud, or more accurately, when the spl range gets real.

Then you notice the sound is not harsh or fatiguing at levels you once thought were the top of the comfort zone. At that thin margin of the listening experience you feel the bass guitar of "Come Together" as if you can fee each vibration of the strings as the pluck decays; same for a piano or a bluesy voice.

It is the change (in my room) from good, to the momentary suspension of disbelief needed to really fall into a performance you have "listened to" hundreds of times. (And holy cow, was Star Trek freeken loud!)

Dean, you probably fit the APB for the type of person that would enjoy the company of the pixies that come from an external amp. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave the pixies.