Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo I moved house and now my speakers sound bad, help?

The TLDR is just what the title says...

The long version is, I have a pair of M60 Ti towers and I love them. They sound(ed) fantastic, completely satisfied by their performance, no reason for me to pursue anything better. Then I moved house. Now they sound markedly different... and not very good. They're still strong and clear, it's just that they've lost the sharpness and "sparkle" on the upper frequencies, and the depth isn't there at all. One of my friends described it like "it sounds like you threw a wet towel over them." He also owns a pair of M60s, and his, at his house, sound exactly like mine did at my old house.

All of my equipment is the same down to the speaker wires and interconnects. The listening distance is also the same. The room is smaller than before, but it's still larger than the room my friend has his M60s in. I ran the calibration sequence in my AVR but that did little to help. I'm thinking the difference in sound has to be because of the construction of the house. The old house was a concrete foundation with tile flooring and concrete exterior walls. The new house has a concrete floor downstairs and wood upstairs. The room where the speakers are has a wood subfloor with "floating" vinyl plank flooring, similar to laminate, and the exterior walls are also wood frame.

I'm guessing the wood subfloor has to be the problem. I got my M60s second hand and they came without the original feet so I did a bunch of research on speaker feet and read all about acoustic isolation and different kinds of things that can change the sound of a speaker, including odd things like putting sand bags on top of speakers, or placing speakers in a pot of sand to "decouple" them. Some people described different methods of isolation as having a profoundly positive effect on the upper frequency range and even the mid range. Well it seems I'm having the opposite experience.

My question is, has anyone else had this problem, or had any experience with acoustic isolation/decoupling with Axiom speakers? I don't know where to start other than pouring some 80lb concrete "tiles" to set the speakers on, hoping to mimic having them sitting on a concrete floor. That would raise the speakers up some, which may or may not be an issue.

Any advice or input would be very welcome. I very much want the amazing Axiom sound quality back.

You're reporting lack of depth of soundstage and rolling off of the highs.

Things to try:

1. Move the 60s away from the front wall and into the room. Does the soundstage get deeper?

2. Experiment toeing the 60s inward so that the tweeters are facing you.

3. Cover the floor in front of you with a rug.

Make sure the shorting strap between the terminals on the back is in place.

My personal experience is that concrete walls and flooring like a basement make for a bass heavy listening experience, but not a concrete floor-only build like a highrise condo. My last 2 listening rooms have been with wood balloon frame construction, with excellent results. I'm not sure isolation stands will help.

It could be the room and speaker placement is bass heavy, making it sound like there's not enough treble. Maybe try fixing the spectral tilt by dialing down the bass and raising the treble a bit to see if that helps.

nvm, I reread the post and if anything, the construction might lead to a room that's maybe bass shy and strident. One thing you can check is to run the mains in Direct mode. That bypasses any internal crossovers and sound processing circuitry, and will disable any connected subs. If it still sounds off, it might just be a room issue that needs to be tinkered with.

Sharpblue, I can attest to the change you are experiencing. I had my m60ti in my old place, it had 8 foot ceilings and I sat approx 12 feet away in a 700 sq foot area, thick wood floors and this was all on the second story. Things sounded really to me in there with my Yamaha reciever. I moved...it all changed and it was frustrating, super frustrating. But it led me into more learning about acoustics and my system.

My new space is very different. I've been here 2 years approx. It is a very large open space and has wood floors. 12 foot ceilings and an open 1100 sq foot area. So it sounds VERY different than the old place. This is all over a concrete basement. The overall sound was still the m60ti's I remember but with very reduced bass impact and didn't seem to go as low as if the bass was getting lost somewhere. As we added furniture and carpets and thick window coverings it all improved. I added a subwoofer and it helped alot, in fact it's better now than the old house and the space I have here allows me to move the speakers way out in to the room and I get a deep and wide as the speakers are soundstage.. Here's the part that I hope helps you, I moved it all down in to the concrete basement just to give it a go. Concrete floors and concrete walls, open 1200 sq foot basement, 8 foot ceilings, all the walls are covered in 2 inch thick open cell rigid insulation. Without the sub woofer, it sounds sooooo good down there. I added the sub and blended as best I could and it really sounds great.

The take away is it's probably the house and the construction and adding some de-coupling could go a long way to improve bass performance. As for everything else sounding like it has a veil over it, that could be the reflections of the room and your position relative to them but that's just me spitballing there. Bottom line differnet rooms and spaces sound different which I have experienced first hand. Having the speakers a bit higher with de-coupling under them shouldn't be an issue i don't think, again you'll have to play with that and see where the best height is, as you may not be ableto adjust the speaker height as the de-coupling platform would dictate that you may have to adjust your height at the listening position.

Maybe sharing some specifics about the size and shape of your room, furniture and windows and covereings etc along with more about your system will help to futher analyze it.

Thanks for the replies and suggestions.

I tried adjusting the EQ to compensate for the wet towel effect but that was terrible. It sounded so grating on my ears that I had to stop the first song half way through. I didn't even adjust it that much. These speakers really just like it flat. And so do my ears.

Then I moved things around a bit and pulled the speakers out from the wall and it made a noticeable difference with the high frequencies and a little with the depth. It's not the way it was before, but just doing that is a positive change. Before the speakers grilles were maybe four inches in front of the TV but the back of the speakers were around a foot from the wall, maybe a little more. In the new space the TV sits in a bay window with the speakers next to it so the angled parts of the bay are very close to the back of the speakers. And to make it worse, since the bay window is like a giant recess in the wall, the face of the speakers are actually closer to the main part of the wall than would normally be physically possible. On top of that, there are pieces of furniture next to the speakers that sit directly in line with the face of the speakers. Now I have them pulled about two feet out and set slightly wider apart. It looks dumb but sounds better, so they'll stay there for now.

I did used to have a rug on the floor in front of the speakers at the old place. That's in storage now but I intend to put it back.

I have been planning to renovate a larger room down stairs and make that the TV room and move everything down there. That room will have a concrete subfloor with laminate (or maybe tile if I feel like hating myself) instead of a wood subfloor like upstairs where they are now. The walls will still be wood studs but I think the larger space combine with the solid floor will help a lot. I may also do double drywall. It may be six months before all that is done, but I will report back how it sounds when everything is finished.

Good. Glad I helped. Pat, pat!

Regarding EQ, did you try to bring down the bands below 400Hz?

You might want to consider QuietRock for around the same cost. I'm skeptical whether it solves acoustic problems any better than carpeting and a suspension ceiling, but apparently it's price comparable and half the install time of double drywall. I think it's appropriate if you're trying to keep ambient outdoor noise out.

https://soundproofnation.com/quietrock-vs-double-drywall/

If the basement is humid, I'd go for luxury vinyl plank over laminate, and don't skimp on the underlay. They're both photographic images of natural materials anyway. But a rug or carpet would be acoustical heaven.

I didn't try any other EQ adjustments after the terrible effect it had on the high frequencies. In the old house, I was at first unsatisfied with the low end performance, feeling that two 6.5 woofers in a dual ported enclosure should do better than they did. I tried adjusting the EQ to compensate back then and similarly did not get good results. I think perhaps my AVR does not process EQ adjustments well or something.

Nobody local seems to carry QuietRock. I think ever since hurricane Ian they've just been focusing on keeping as much of the regular stuff in stock as possible for people to rebuild.

My downstairs isn't a basement, it's just a regular "downstairs," I don't have a basement, though I wish I did. I have vinyl plank upstairs and I don't like it. It came with the place so maybe it was cheap but it is not holding up well at all. There are a couple boxes of vinyl planks left by the previous owner, which is good because the floor needs a large number of repairs. I used to sell and install regular wood laminate for work so I'm familiar with flooring, and while this stuff is very heavy and feels good up close, the lock on the edge is not very good in my opinion. Well, it's good for me that the lock disengages easily so that will make it easier to take up to do repairs, but it also causes lots of loose edges and then the edges chip because of that. I would imagine that not all vinyl flooring is made this way, just like not all wood laminate have the same lock system, but jeeze, even the cheap wood laminates have a better lock than this.

I'm loosely considering doing tile on the concrete floor because that's what I had in the living room where the speakers were before and they sounded fantastic on tile with a seven foot rug in front of them. I'm going to put the rug back to test and see what difference that makes. But also I have/had a giant ottoman that goes on top of the rug and nearly covers all of it. Only maybe a foot of rug sticks out in front of the ottoman, and maybe two feet on the sides. Currently the ottoman is in place in front of the speakers but the rug is not, but since the ottoman covers so much of the rug I'm not sure how much difference it will make. Will find out soon though.