Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Sony ES vs Onkyo

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Looking at your porfile you sure have one heck of a nice system. Glad to hear your Sony does a great job for ya.

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Thanks! The only problem I have is a lack of clarity in the dialog channel, but maybe only 20% of the time. This has been an ongoing problem since before I got the 4ES or the Axiom speakers, and I'm not sure if it's the center speaker, the receiver, competition with my subwoofer, bad equalizer settings, hearing impaired system operator (hope not, my wife also misses the same dialog with which I have problems), or what. I'll keep tinkering and one of these days I'll figure it out.

- Bill

I like the freaky avatar.

Thanks,

I geuss I screwed the avatar yesterday and had to have my daughter fix it today.I'm not to good at this computer stuff.

Bill

Have you tried it in the 8ohm setting.Like I said before the 4ohm setting severely limits the current available.Could your problem be that it is distorting.Just a thought.

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Have you tried it in the 8 ohm setting.

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I haven't, but I'm not so sure I'd be comfortable doing this. The manual very specifically says that if you have even a single speaker of less than 8 ohms, you must use the 4 ohm setting.

donaldekelly,

Generally they're being tested at 8ohm, it would suck even more if they were being tested at 4ohm and only put out 47w!! base on the THD rating it had to be running at 8ohm.

These Axiom and many many other speakers out there are pretty efficient, that's why it's hard to noticed when you severely under-powered them at moderate volume level, but sh!t will eventually hit the fan when you crank them up for extended period of time, just take it easy with the volume and back it down as soon as you hear those mids or tweeters distort and starting to break up, otherwise you'll burned up the voicecoils in no time. Underpower is killer....you do NOT want to drive your receiver or amp into clipping.

running your receiver/amp at 4ohm will raise the THD, lower damping factor, and components inside the amp will get much hotter than they normally were, try it and see if you can hear any difference, if your receiver/amp is only slightly warm to the touch after hours of playing and no audible difference from 8ohm to 4ohm, then you've got yourself one kickass powerhouse. :-)

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Looking at your porfile you sure have one heck of a nice system.Glad to hear your Sony does a great job for ya.

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I agree with wid, Mr. Bill: That's one kick-@$$ system you have there! I have home theater envy for sure!


BTW, a complement like that from wid is quite a complement! His system is certainly no slouch either!

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running your receiver/amp at 4ohm

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I'm not sure if you're suggesting that I run the setting at 4 or 8 ohm. But, I have been running it at the 4 setting for some time now as instructed by the manual. Tonight I'll switch it over to 8 ohms for awhile and see what happens. I'll report back here after all my testing is over.

Note that I originally said that about 20% of the movies we watch have dialog which is difficult to understand. Because of this, it might take me a week or two of testing before I decide if the 8 ohm setting improves things.

Thanks for the help!

- Bill

Bill, as Rick suggested, you really should use the 8 ohm setting. The statement in the manual is largely because of legal liability problems and the 8 ohm setting in practice is better in the vast majority of cases. The 4 ohm setting reduces the voltage which the amplifier operates at and therefore the maximum current and power which can be supplied. Since one form of Ohm's Law is that current equals voltage divided by resistance(I=V/R), when R is 4 ohms rather than 8 ohms the idea is to reduce the V so that the current doesn't get too high. But since Ohm's Law is also that power(in watts)equals voltage times current(P=VxI), reducing the maximum voltage and current available likewise reduces the maximum power available. Although the need for power is often grossly exaggerated by users, it should only be limited as a last resort(i.e. if the amp would continue to shut itself off). You shouldn't hesitate to try the 8 ohm setting. Incidentally, the fact that the volume settings aren't high in no way means that there's plenty of headroom left.