Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Rear ports of M60

I notice there are 2 ports on the rear of my M60s. I didn't receive any foam plugs with my speakers like some other speaker manufacturers use and I was wondering if one is not supposed to plug those to change characteristics.

Is the top port associated with the tweeter and mid while the lower port is associated with the woofers?

My M60s are pretty bright in my room and I was wondering if plugging the top port with foam or whatever would tame that some? Didn't want to plug'em if it is detrimental to the speaker itself so I'm asking here before I try.

Any feedback appreciated.

Room treatments would be my first consideration if the speakers were 'bright' in the room ... rugs, furniture or just about any absorbing accent.

Do you have tile or wood flooring?

I have wood flooring but this is a main living room area so it has furniture, etc. So the regular room treatments that hang on walls etc. isn't going to happen...can you say WAF That is why I was wondering if plugging the top port would help. I know that as a general rule the ports on back are plugged to tighten up the base when the room is causing base boom but wondered if the top port was part of the treble and blocking might help.
I know some will say "just try it" but if someone already knows the answer I don't want to waste my time going to the store and buying foam that I don't need.

Edmond, the midwoofers afaik, have their own housing within the cabinet(a cone/cones) and are not vented. The ports are there to extend the bottom end on the woofers, I don't believe plugging them up will do anything to the top end at all and as Rick implied, maybe your room is somewhat reflective.

Thanks for the info Adrian. That is what I was afraid of. My room probably is somewhat reflective but I can stand directly in front of the speakers and hear the same thing. When I am playing at a somewhat low volume they sound great as I hear every little cymbal tap, etc. It's when I start to put the volume to them that the highs i.e. cymbals, high frequency instruments and female (high pitched) voices are almost too bright to listen to for long so I was hoping one of the ports would affect that. It's probably just the metal tweeters and my ears but that is what I hear and was hoping to be able to "adjust" it some.

I've had my M60s for a couple of years so its not like it's driving me crazy I would just like to tweak it a bit without having to use room equalization to do so as I like to listen direct or pure direct mostly.

I have M80's and at -10 on my Denon, they start to overpower my room somewhat...also my ears! I have a 3/4 hardwood floor that is half covered by a 1" thick wool rug which I have found to be very helpfull.

I was reading an article earlier today and the author was talking about reviewing some speakers, I think epos 50 or similar and said he had to use "run in music and sounds" to try and tame the harshness. Does that make any sense and would that just work on tweeters and mids made from some sort of material other than metal? I've played quite a range of music over my M60s over the last 2 years but never really even heard of "run in" for speakers. I've heard a lot of talk about tubes needing to be played 100 hours or so before they start sounding good but speakers?

Run in or break in is bogus. Quite popular with reviewers, audiophiles, and certain high end companies, but the general (although not exclusive) view around here is that it's snake oil. At worst, it's a way of preventing returns...

Ports are pretty much exclusively for bass, so plugging them wouldn't do anything with the treble.

The run in (break in) is your ears not the speakers. The mids are crossed over to the tweeters at 2 KHz so they will not contribute to brightness.

If room treatments are not an option, does your avr have tone controls or EQ? you could try taking a little off the trebble to see if that sounds better to you.

you don't want to plug the port, as you would be defeating the whole purpose of the speaker to filter low frequencies into your room. You don't have to have wall treatments to improve the sound in a room. For the wife factor, just get a nice carpet/throw rug to place between you and the seating area, which will dramatically improve the "brightness" experience in a bright room.

My AVR does have room compensation but I'm trying to run as "analog" as possible. For my 2 channel music I'm bringing my flacs and some of them are 96k high resolution out via usb to my M-Audio Transit to keep them from being downsampled into my DACMagic and then analog out into a preamp with no tone contrlols to my amplifier.

I think Randy nailed it with a simple rug and a few extra throw pillows. "Furnished" means enormously different things in terms of acoustics if your choices run towards Ikea or Ethan Allen.

It could also be that your amp is straining at those higher volume levels, what amp are you using to drive the M60s?

A few forum members have had success with using separate amps when trying to listen at high volume levels as there amps/avr's were straining abit to reach those sound levels. The extra power cleaned up the sound for them.

we just got tile installed in the living room, which opens into the kitchen that is also tile. Thats about 800sqish of tile i think... we have 1 5X6 rug in the living room, about 5 feet from the speakers. it worked out great... i didn't notice the my M60's becoming to bright, i was kind of worried about this, but the rug and the other furniture in the room seem to be doing the trick.


I have an all analog system as well. Krell processor, and Krell amps.. 250W at 8ohm 500W at 4ohm.

I would think if anything the introduction of a hard floor surface would mean the room would be louder....?

Bobby, as the other replies have indicated, plugging one of the ports affects the bass, but has nothing to do with your situation. You have the means to at least partially correct the problem, but you appear to be handcuffed by a "purist" dogma which doesn't reflect the reality that source material, rooms and speakers are imperfect, but can be improved by processing.

I never use any type of "direct" mode; I want to use the processing features that I bought my receiver for. For example, the "Audyssey" (not the "Flat")equalization curve has a gentle treble roll-off, amounting to about 4dB at 16KHz which helps on material which has excessive treble content. Applying a 3-4dB treble cut with the tone control might help if you can overcome your reluctance to use the features that are designed to help you.

I use an Emotiva RPA-2 amp rated at 200W into 8 Ohms and 350 into 4 Ohms so it's not a problem with not enough power I don't believe. I drive my FL and FR with the RPA-2 and my center with a UPA-1 into a 4 Ohm load. I felt I was missing something using my Denon 3808 as a pre so I purchased a preamp. I was right, the preamp at about 9 O'clock is louder than the denon at half volume. The line out for the preamp is around 9 volts and the receiver is around 1.2 volts. It seems many of the avr's preouts run between 1 and 2 volts, at least that is what I was told on a different forum.

Well, I'm not going to go as hard line as John, but I would recommend you try the equalization. What do you have to lose? You can always go back to the pure direct route if you find you prefer that sound.

I'd also try playing with the placement--an inch or two this way or that can make a surprising difference.

That is my understanding as well, the preouts on many AVR's is truly low voltage, but with that much voltage out of the pre/pro maybe it is the problem? The fact the Denon would need to be at over half volume for the same output out of the amp is just due to the fact the input voltage is lower and I highly doubt you were missing anything, the signal quality was most likely not any less just a lower voltage. Maybe try the Denon back in the equation if you can.

I think the 9 volts is more like a headroom thing. You might be playing along at .5 to 1 volt and then the music demands more where you can swing to 7 or 8 volts. By having that ability you get everything in the music. I think that the low voltage receivers may be losing some of the detail by not being able to produce the needed voltage. Here is a quote from a review on my preamp pertaining to the 9 volts:

Home Theater HiFi

"The fact that it will output (a.k.a., "swing") 9 volts is important, because you might be using 0.5 volt on average, but along come those darn transients, and "boom", you need the ability to raise that output voltage significantly for a very short time. The USP-1 can do.

Edmond,

Be very careful about not overloading the input section of your power amplifier -- a 9-volt preamp output could easily overload the input section of many power amplifiers. It could well be the source of some of the distortion you are hearing.

There is a reason that the pre-out levels (which do vary somewhat from one receiver manufacturer to another) are kept to a couple of volts, because most power amplifiers are spec'd to be driven to full output by a few volts. Check with Emotiva to see what input voltage your power amp can handle before the input stage starts going into distortion.

Does your Emotiva power amp have input level controls that would let you "tame" the input level from the preamp?

Regards,
Alan

The amp and preamp are both emotiva and built to go together as a pair. I'm not really hearing any distortion it's just the high end is very fatiguing on some music, some call it bright or harsh.

I'll look at the documentation for the amp but I don't believe it has input level controls.

The brightness/harshness is most often minor distortion caused by the electronics being overdriven and mistakenly blamed on the speaker.

Or it could be that you just don't really like Axioms...

I think the brightness is more likely the source material than the electronics, myself, but it could also be that Edmond just doesn't like the Axiom sound. It happens...

I have an emotiva ERM 6.3 that I use as a center. It is a 3 way design but only 26 inches tall so can be used as a (tall) standmount as well as center. Since I was having trouble with the brightness on some music I connected the ERM 6.3 as the left speaker and the M60 as right speaker, put the preamp on mono so the same sound would come out of both and cranked it. The erm 6.3 just doesn't have the same brightness. Now the 6.3 has compensation switches on the back but I've set them for the "brightest" setting (not engaged) to ensure I wasn't hearing a speaker that was attentuating the highs. I was really hoping to be able to "tame" the brightness that occurs on some music because a lot of my music sounds great on the M60s. One of the differences in the 2 speakers is the tweeter on the 6.3 is a silk dome as opposed to titanium tweeters on the axioms. I've started obtaining high res music now (96kHz/24 bit) and am starting to get quite a few titles. Those are master studio quality, much better than CD redbook (44.1kHz/16 bit) so my hope was to be able to listen to them without having to process/filter anything out.

When those highs come out of those titanium tweets my old ears just might not be able to process properly. A lot of concerts in the 70s that were just too loud After a particular Grand Funk concert I couldn't hear for a couple of days.

On a lot of my music my M60s sound outstanding it's just that the ones that don't send me running for the volume control.

About 30 minutes ago I grabbed a couple of shop towels from the garage, the blue ones that seem like more cloth than paper. I trifolded them and taped directly over the tweeters and the brightness was significantly controlled. They don't sound muffled at all, that extra high shimmer that hurts my ears seems to be gone

BTW, it's not the titanium--silk tweeters can often be brighter than titanium, since they're not as stiff and are harder to control. It's that Axiom designs speakers to have flat frequency curves. Many other speaker manufacturers roll off the high end. Some people prefer that.

A veil has been installed and the highs have been tamed like no other speaker

Having done that test I agree with Ken's explanation, sounds like you are just sensitive to high frequencies and the real issue is the source, bad recordings. I think we all have a few cd's that are hard to take and do not play as often as the well recorded music.

I'm having similar problems with my on-wall M22's as edmond is experiencing with his M60's, although I've got furniture and a carpet. I have the Pioneer Elite VSX-21TXH avr and it has an option I just thought of that I haven't tried out yet. In the MCACC menu it's called X-Curve. It allows you to tone down the high end frequencies. (The + or - for Treble seems to only work while in stereo mode).

Here's what the manual says about X-curve:
"Most soundtracks mixed for cinema sound too bright when played back in large rooms. The X-Curve setting acts as a kind of re-equalization for home theater listening, and restores proper tonal balance of movie soundtracks."

I watched the movie "The New World" yesterday with the volume turned up a bit and the high end was making it a little uncomfortable to listen to.

Actually I'm playing some high resolution 96kHz/24bit music. I don't think its the quality I think it's just the highs. A high pitched instrument or a high pitched female voice is what gets to me, especially when the volume is turned up.

I like jake's insight but isn't it supposed to be the other way around i.e. "it's like a veil has been removed and I hear sounds that I've never heard before"

It's the mastering, not the quality of your FLACs. Not a whole lot you can do about that, unless you have a great deal of pull with the band and/or label.

What Ken said.

The speakers are just revealing more short comings when the volume is turned up. This is a trait I have exclaimed about the M60. It sounds more like the M80s when the volume is increased but when the volume is low the M60 is reasonably laid back and poor recordings are acceptable on them.

I recently listened to a set of Monitor Audio speakers. On my M80s and many other speakers Dianna Krall has a very noticeable sibilance on her discs. On the Monitor Audio RX-8(?) she had no sibilance what so ever, but to me this made her seem lifeless. The highs were subdued, yet still there, not very lifelike IMO. I commented on this to the salesman and he agreed and mentioned how he wished they wouldn't overdrive everything live and then said I need to listen to the gold series much more open and lifelike as I was describing.

Different speakers for different sound preferences.

the silk dome tweeters can make a HUGE difference... i auditioned a pair of boston acustics that were their top end model, they were using a titanium tweeter, they sounded alright, but like your saying the highs were just to bright for me... next i auditioned a set of Dynaudio speakers.... with a silk dome tweeter... the Dyn's sounded WAY better to me, and thats what i ended up buying. It was ALL because of the tweeter, so like someone before said, maybe the m60's just aren't for "you" or aren't for you anymore.. maybe you would be happier with a pair of ERT-8.3's..

one has to keep in mind this hobby is VERY subjective... you can show a bunch of charts to someone, but at the end of the day, EVERYONES ears are different, so no matter what the numbers say.......




on the M60's one thing you might try... get a piece of tissue paper and some scotch tape, and tape a piece of tissue paper over the tweeter, see if that does anything... I do realize this is not the most scientific approach, but I'm sure you have these items lying around the house, and it would only take 5 minutes.. worth a shot right?

It's not so much the material of the tweeter, it is how it is implemented. I have heard some titanium tweeter speakers that are quite laid back, the M3 for example.

He already has, see his post a few back. He liked what it did.

Actually the music I've been listening to this morning is Steely Dan Gaucho, a 96kHz/24bit version and it is recorded exceptionally well. I understand that music can be well done or a big mess...I have some of both from compiling my music library for years.

Oh fine.

If you're listening to Gaucho and it sounds bright, then it's very likely your room in my opinion.

Yes, different strokes for different folks and we all hear differently from each other. Most (though certainly not all) that call Axioms bright are using poorly-recorded material.

But to feel that a well-known, excellent recording sounds bright... I'm really guessing it's your room.

I'm still not sure why you don't want to try turning down the treble 2dB.

Can you just try a throw rug temporarily to see if that helps? Even if it won't work as a long-term solution?

Dakkon, when the speaker manufacturer, driver manufacturer, crossover, electronics and the room are all different, how can you say that the difference was the tweeter...period?



Agreed...

In a previous post I stated that earlier I had actually taken a shop towel and tri folded it and taped over both tweeters, left and right and that knocked out quite a bit of the shimmer that seems to get to me. It was a lot more than just tissue

Mark, I'm running analog from DACMagic straight into a preamp. There are no tone controls.

edmond, sorry i didn't see the post where you tried the shop towel...

did you try the tissue? with the tissue you could still put the grills on and no one would know... shop towel, well not so much... Would be a good conversation starter though


MarkS, i said it was the tweeter, because the bostons, the highs were Ear piercing to me... when the volume was turned up, they literally hurt my head with the sharpness of them. with the Dyns at about the same volume, the highs were much more laid back,did not hurt my head and sounded better to me.

Still not necessarily the tweeter material as much as the total speaker design.

dakkon, the shop towels are more like a paper towel only more cloth than paper. My grills are back on and you can't see the shop towels taped over the tweeters

Concerning the x-curve setting in my Pioneer AVR. (See page 3.) I've attenuated the high end .5 db. This starts at 2k and gradually goes up to 20k hz. I'll have to wait to see if this helps any.

I wonder why amps do not have input clip indicators? My BFD 1024 does and I can very clearly see when I am getting close to clipping the input.

I think it would be worth a quick email to Emotiva to confirm what input levels should be set at for a short run of cable.

Fred, that's usually a "Pro" feature where upstream mixers, compressors and the like are pushing out non-standard levels and you have to work the levels from the beginning of the chain through to the end.

I'm going to go ahead and post here since this thread is about me needing to tame the high end of my M60s. I was looking through the forums and saw this quote about the new version 3 speakers

"As for changes to the performance we have redesigned our tweeter, all of our crossovers, and most of our woofers."

If they have redesigned the crossovers and tweeters then that would probably take care of the "brightness" I experience on some of my music. One of the "reviews" from a customer stated specifically that the highs sounded much better in version 3. Maybe enough people mentioned the bright sound (although not all heard the sound as bright) that they tweaked that a bit.

If Axiom would work with me would it be possible for me to replace my crossover and tweeter with the new style?

I think you might have to replace all the drivers, not just the tweeter, as well as the crossover. I would call Axiom and they can let you know what exactly you would need.

There is talk about being able to order all the parts online from the store at some point.

Hey Jake, I would consider that if the cost isn't too high. Don't want to do an upgrade/retrofit if it costs almost as much as the speaker itself

Another thing you can do besides a rug on the floor is put some damping material on the ceiling. You can paint/color it the same as the ceiling is already to make it blend, but this is something that isn't so noticable as other room treatments that might tame the highs just a bit that is also usually fairly WAF friendly.