Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Choosing speakers Paradigm or Harmon Kardon

...or the Onkyo HTIB #770? 4770? I dunno. Whatever it is, it's less than $500 US and comes with a receiver.

BTW, you mentioned HYKS-7, I'm guessing you meant HKTS-7 ?

The 7's have been discontinued by HK and replaced with the HKTS 8's although for the life of me I can't see any difference between 7s and 8s. The HKTS 7's were ~699 but are being cleared out now so you got a good price for them. I stopped by a couple of FutureShop stores today hoping to hear the HKs but only one store had them (Ajax) and they weren't set up. FS seems to be pushing Athena and Polk right now.

How big is the room you will be using them in ?

I second the Hsu Ventriloquist system

I realize this doesn't help the thread, but FWIW I did solve my purchase dilemma -- configuring a real cheap HT system that would sound OK in a 5000 ft3 family room.

Figured my cheap towers (currently serving as surrounds) would figure into the solution somewhere. Problem was that they essentially had mid-bass and upper midrange and not much else (2 drivers = 2 ugly peaks, glad it was only a 2-way ). I found that hooking up the VP100 center made an incredible difference in sound quality since it carried a lot of the vocals and really filled the holes in the L + R frequency response.

I was about to donate my VP100 to the cause when I remembered that Future Shop had Quest center channel speakers on sale for half price -- $49.95 CDN. Hmm... I wonder. 4 stores later (the things we do for family) I picked up the last QC5 in Toronto, in a torn-up box no less.

Same driver complement as the VP100 (2 x 5.5" plus a central tweeter) although obviously not the same quality of drivers. The cabinet appeared to be ~3/8" plywood painted black although the brochure said MDF. Rapping the cabinet wall made a noise a couple of octaves higher than the VP100 (sort of a "tick" vs. "tock") but nothing rattled. Binding posts were OK -- basic 5-way angled 45 degrees.

Set everything up with the VP100 first and listened to a few DVDs & CDs for reference then switched over to the QC5. Better than I expected -- more forward than the VP100 and a bit "edgy" but I think some of that was higher output -- I had to take the center level down 3-4 dB to match everything up again.

Overall, I have to say "not bad". Not in the same league as the Axioms but I can enjoy listening to music on them. I guess the deficiencies cancelled out pretty well. Will still need to find some surrounds to go with the towers & Quest center but brother-in-law is in no rush to install surrounds and mess up their nice new walls, maybe I can sneak some QSs in later when they're not paying attention.

I'm going to be needing some QS's anyways since I was using the towers as HT surrounds. Ain't it great how these things work out ?

Check out the Athena Point 5 system.

Big bang for the buck. Nice sound ... and they are silver.

Oneair67, if your interested in purchasing Axiom speakers how about buying a new pair of m2's, or m3's, or m22's to start out with. Then add a component every few months (or longer) until you've got a 5.1 system? Or if your a factory outlet kind of guy, you can get a pair of m2's and a vp100 almost right away for 567.00 CAD. That would be a great start towards a 5.1 system.

Absolutely. Don't skimp just so you can have 5.1 right away. You'll only end up buying all new stuff again down the road.

Get what you can afford now, and add to it piece by piece. I'd suggest a pair of factory outlet M22ti's as a start.

The room is not very big it is 14*16 and the ceilings are about 11ft high.And yes the style is HKTS-7.I took back the Paradigm until I could decide wether or not I wanted to go with them they only have a seven day return policy at the store where I bought them and I did not want to get stuck with them.I have also considered other manufacturers but with the Canadian dollar customs and shipping it means the US prices are alot,higher.I grabbed the Panasonic SAXR50S Dolby Digital Receiver for 299.00 Canadian and the Panasonic DVD-F87S Progressive Scan 5-Disc DVD Player 135.00 Canadian so all I need now is some good speakers at a good price.Good luck with your purchase.

Sounds like your system is coming together pretty well. I haven't seen much better than the HK speakers for the price yet -- only concern is that your room is definitely "medium sized" so any of the small speaker sets (including HK) are going to have trouble really filling the room with sound.

Do you have enough cables and bits to start hooking up speakers ? You're really going to have to listen to them in your room at the volume you want before you're going to know for sure.