Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Help needed on HT setup

So here is my situation. Due to my lovely bride needing more light in our living room, the 67” Samsung DLP is going to be moved from in front of the window of our TV room to the opposite wall. I had wired the room for 6.1 surround so I get to undo all that and rewire for the new mirror-image room.

I currently have an Onkyo TX-NR901 6.1 receiver, an HSU STF2 sub and a bunch of mismatched speakers. The other reason I am moving the room around at the request of my wife and not complaining is because, when I noticed that my center channel speaker had some “bites” out of the speaker cone thanks to my male Jack Russell, my wife says, “If you need new speakers, just buy them.” Um…. OK! Goodbye, mismatched speakers (which include a pair of Pioneer large fronts I bought from Jafco in 1991 – which have actually been pretty good!), and HELLO AXIOM!!!

The room I have for the HT is 14’ long by 13’ wide with 8’ ceilings. Once everything is swapped around, if you are sitting on the couch, the window will be behind you and the couch (due to room size) will be directly against the outside/window wall. There is another outside wall to the right (which has a fireplace on it so a no go for the TV), the TV and fronts will be on an internal wall opposite the couch, and there is no wall to the left as the room is open to the kitchen.

Since I have the green light, and want to future proof when we move to a house where I can have a dedicated HT (which may occur within 3-4 years), I want to go big and get M80s, the VP180, and QS8s, keeping my HSU sub in the mix.

Thanks for hanging with me for the questions:

1. With a room of about 1500 cubic feet (not counting the fact that it opens to the kitchen on the side), is that set up too much (ha – is there ever “too much”)?
2. From what I have read in these forums, my NR901 should provide enough power to run the system, but I am debating about upgrading to a 7.2 receiver – specifically the Onkyo NR809 which I think came out yesterday. Thoughts?
3. With my couch against the rear wall, what can I do, if anything, to help myself out in mounting the QS8 rear center (or rear centers if I upgrade my receiver)? This is really the main question I have – trying get the best rear soundfield when the seating position is against the rear wall. I am hoping the answering isn't: your room is too small and you are pretty much screwed. But if that,s true then that's true.
4. How do I figure out how far apart the rear centers should be (assuming I upgrade) and then how far forward from the couch the sides should be?

Thanks in advance for the help!

P.S. The front center will be above the TV, not below it and the fronts will have grills. No more "bites" in the speaker cones.

Welcome to the Axiom family, in advance. If you have no options but to put the couch against the wall, I would stick to a 5.1 or 5.2 HT setup. I would probably wait on the new receiver until after you hear how your current receiver sounds with the new speakers. You should definitely kiss your wife for giving you the green light on a new HT! I'm sure others will be here soon to give you some more advice.

For the rear surrounds, I would probably just put one on each side of the curtains. This may not be optimum for sound, but it sounds like it would be optimum for your room. I would not want to do this with a direct radiating speaker, but should work fine with the QS8's.

Welcome:
1) I don't think there is ever too much!
2) As mentioned, I would wait until hearing how your setup will sound.
3) Considering that your couch is on the back wall and the side QS8s will be aligned with your ears, that places them fairly close to the back wall. If you place them a few inches further back towards the back wall, they will create some kind of phantom rear speakers. The QS8s are really good, I have my couch against the wall and have no walls on the side so I have them at the back and they work very well. Since your sides are so closed to the back wall, I am not sure that you will gain much from adding the rears. So I would start with 5.1, see how it sounds and if you're not happy give a try to 7.1 or 7.2.
4) The sides should be aligned with your ears or a few inches towards the back.

So it sounds like no one has any issues with M80s and the VP180 for the front (which is what I wanted to hear - no pun intended!). I actually had been running 6.1, and had tilted the rear center downward, but always knew in the back of my mind that I probably was not getting much from that speaker due to the listener position being below it.

Since I have to cut some holes in the drywall for the sides (exterior wall - fireblock), I will probably run the extra wire for 7.1 while I have it open, but wait and see how it works out as far as going from the 5 to 7.

BDPF - did you get the Axiom ceiling mounts for the QS8s or something else? On the right wall in my setup, should I go with a wall or ceiling mount? And do you have yours angled downward at all or completely vertical?

Thanks again!!

Can you not mount the sides on the wall with the included T bracket? That's how I would/have go/gone.

I don't drive my M80s very hard (peak probably 80dB at most, usually more like 60-70), but they work quite nicely with an old H/K AVR525 (75 wpc! woo!) in a 19x18x8 room open to the kitchen.

The QS8s already come with T-brackets for flush mount against the wall. So my couch is against the back wall, an each QS8 is flush mounted on the back wall, about 7ft from the main listening position and the bottom driver is about 2-3 ft above ear level and it sounds really good. If you read a bit through the forum, you'll find out that the QS8s are extremely forgiving in placement and work very well in most applications, some people even have them at different height or different distance and they still work well.

P, welcome. The speakers will be fine for your room and you'll have plenty of distance from the M80s for their sound to spread. As to the possibility of a 7 channel setup, it wouldn't really be helpful, not because your room is too small, but because you'll have almost no space behind you for a rear sound field to form. Your QS8 side surrounds should be mounted on the rear wall about 6' up and separated as widely as possible. They would add a small amount of "phantom" rear effect by being slightly farther back than your ears.

If 7.2 was the only reason for getting a new receiver it wouldn't be a good idea, for the reason explained above and considering that your 901 should have plenty of power capacity for your setup. If you'd like to add the most current features to your receiver, however, such as Audyssey MultEQ, the 809 would be an excellent choice.

Well, I guess then I am back to 5.1 using my current receiver (which is OK since it saves me a few $$ right now on a new receiver). I will put the QS8s on the back wall on either side of the couch. What would the minimum recommended distance from the side wall be for the QS8 to the right of the listener that is mounted on the back wall (I hope that makes sense)?

The QS8 on the right, which would be near a side wall, can be as close as 6" to it, just so that the outside tweeter would have some room to bounce sound off the side wall.

Thanks for all the help! I will hopefully be ordering the Axioms this weekend. I just have to figure out what movie I want to watch first!!

To show off the QS8s I'd recommend "Master and Commander" or perhaps "The Patriot".

M&C is a good one, the Dark Knight, 9, War of the Worlds, Valkyrie......

There is tons of movies to show off your system. For obvious surround I like to show: Heat (the shooting scene and the airport scene), Star Wars the phantom menace (pod race), The Matrix (from the lobby scene to the explosion of the helicopter), The Matrix Reloaded (car chase), The Matrix Revolution (fight against the machines), and so many more...
For ambiance surround, LOTR trilogy, King Kong, Avatar and one of my favorites is Seven (the New Line Entertainment master), the surrounds are active throughout the whole movie filling the room with ambiance.

For both picture and sound quality.

Inception (Blu-ray), Avatar (Blu-ray), Kung Fu Panda (Blu-ray), I-Robot (Blu-ray), Die Hard: Live Free or Die Hard (Blu-ray), Iron Man 1&2 (Blu-ray), The Dark Night (Blu-ray).

Terminator 2 (VHS), Gone with the Wind (Hi8), Top Gun (Laserdisc), Flight of the Navigator (Betamax)

If you like westerns 'Open Range' is a good flick with an excellent shootout scene that really shows off the capabilities of the QS surrounds ... in VHS, of course.

What, no 8mm?

my W7 installation disc is on 235 cassettes.

Grok smashes Kagons (Stone transfers), This Magic Mud (Slime smudges), 100 Eat Big Tarantula (Acid smears).

Update to situation and more advice needed:

As mentioned, I have 8' ceilings. When my TV is set on top of the new low bookcase style Ikea units we bought as an entertainment center, there is 26" left between the top of the TV and the ceiling. We also have an upper set of storage units that are 15" tall and 16" deep that will mount to the wall above the TV. I was looking at the specs of the VP180 and needless to say, did not realize how HUGE it is, especially relative to its littler brother, the VP150.

With the storage units being 16" deep and adding in the space for the wall brackets, the front of the storage unit will be about 17" from the wall. The units on which the TV will sit will be farther from the rear wall to accommodate the rear of the receiver and all the cords (although they are also 16” deep). Therefore, I can bring the lower bookcases and thus the TV out as far as I would need them to at least have the front of the TV even with or slightly behind the front of the center speaker.

Here are my options, in order of what I would like to do, knowing that the VP180 should be at least 2-3" from the wall behind it (according to a review I read that was quoting Alan's recommendations):

1. Mount the upper bookcases almost directly above the TV leaving 11" of room between the top of the upper storage and ceiling. I will have to tilt the VP180 (9.25" tall) down toward the listener area and since the VP180 slopes down as it goes toward the rear of the unit, I should be OK. I was thinking on putting some brackets near the rear of the 180 on the bottom to hold it in place to the storage unit since the front of the center channel will be about 3" over the front edge. I hope that makes sense.
2. Mount the upper bookcases to the ceiling to allow for 11” of space between the top of the TV and the bottom of the storage unit. I would then either have to mount the VP180 to the underside of the storage unit or build some type of shelf to support the 180.
3. #1 with the VP150 (for size reasons only, not $$)
4. #2 with the VP150
5. ???

Let me know if I have not explained anything well enough and I can try to elaborate.

Yet another question is about my sub. Once again, I have two choices. I can put the sub to the right of the listener’s couch so it is between the couch and the wall basically in the right rear corner of the room (open space – couch – sub – wall) or I can put it on the opposite side of the couch (open space – sub – couch – small space – wall). I will obviously try both positions but I am just wondering what people’s experiences have been if one works better than another. Due to space, I cannot really put it in either of the front corners behind an M80.

Thanks!!

If there's no possible space in the unit to mount the VP180 underneath the TV, then I'd prefer to use option 2. with a shelf supporting it above the TV. Although higher up and tilted down would work, it'd be better to have the center as close to the same level as the screen as possible.

As to the sub location, in general the best location for a single sub is a corner farthest from a large opening. In your case, if I followed your description, the right rear corner would be the "tighter" spot.