Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater rear speakers

LOL!! "The Girl in the Other Room"/"The Women Inside the House"

That is TOO funny!!

I am still laughing, sorry Diana, oh, thats so damm stupid, it's funny. I need a beer!! Jack BUY not "but" the album, I am otta here!!

Sounds like theme songs from "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas".

This entire forum is crazy today. Sounds like we've all been into the Christmas egg nog early.

thats not ridiculous. It all depends on what type of sound you prefer. Believe it or not, DD 5.1 was actually designed to be used with normal speakers. Like the m22s or m3 for example. The qs8s are more enveloping but (im hoping to avoid flaming here) not as precise as m3s would be. Ie: when a bullet goes off in the back of the movie you would hear specifically where it travels with a normal set of bookies, whereas if you use a QS8 it may not be as easy to tell which direction it is coming from.

Hi freesey and all,

Correction: Dolby Digital 5.1 (AC-3 in its original pro version) was designed to be run with direct-radiating surround speakers in cinemas and movie auditoriums. In that environment, rows of surround speakers on each side wall function perfectly because audience members are farther away from the speakers and the surround content (sound travels at about 1 foot per millisecond) bounces around the auditorium and creates the desired sense of envelopment.

The reason that THX advocated dipole type surrounds was to mimic the sense of envelopment you would experience in a large cinema but in a living room or small studio. In small studios or your own living room, the surround speakers are usually quite close to the listener. If digital delay were not applied to the surround signals, your hearing would default to the first sounds to arrive at your ears (from the surrounds). Typically there is about 20 to 30 milliseconds of delay operating in the surround channels in a domestic Dolby Digital home setup. The dipole surround increases the sense of envelopment, however dipole designs have some annoying placement idiosyncrasies.

So Axiom came up with a different approach. In its QS8 and QS4 surround speakers, Axiom uses a "quadpolar" design that uses four drivers, all in phase, radiating in four different directions. This effectively simulates the envelopment heard in a big cinema and does without sacrificing directional cues. Some other manufacturers have bipolar surrounds; and a few even have surround speakers with switchable patterns.

I prefer using QS8 or multipolar surrounds for SACD and DVD-Audio because of the more generous listening area if you aren't sitting in the sweet spot, which is difficult to duplicate in most living rooms. Moreover, without digital delay available in the rear channels, the image will collapse if you move out of the sweet spot for DVD-A and SACD. That doesn't happen if you use QS8s as the surround or rear channels for DVD-A or SACD.

Regards,