Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater My QS8 vs. M3ti for surrounds review

First let me start by giving some background into my setup.
My system is as follows:

HK 230
M60 Fronts
Paradigm CC-370 Center
M3ti surrounds
QS8 Surrounds –arrived today
SVS 20/39PC+ Subwoofer

Well I received my qs8’s today and began testing. Thus far I have a few immediate things I have noticed between the 2 and will elaborate much more as my testing continues.

I think I should point out that I have also tried the M22’s and the VP-150 but this is a comparison of the M3’s to the QS8’s for surround purposes.

I have watched what I consider to be my reference movies and listened to what have turned into my Reference CD’s

Bad Boys 2 – Chapter 5 thru 7 with the gunfight has incredible surround action going on.
U-571 – Various chapters
I-Robot – Various Chapters
X-Box – Halo2 (optical input into receiver)
X-Box – Burnout 3
Norman Brown CD – West Coast Coolin
David Benoit CD – Shadows
Jeff Beck CD – Guitar Shop
Kim Pensyl CD – 3 day weekend


Now for the nitty gritty:

I find for the movies the QS8’s are definitely more enveloping and harder to detect an actual placement. I did find that for the gunfight scene in BadBoys2 the m3ti’s definitely won out because of their placement abilities. Using the QS8s on the same scene I found it lost much of its impact. With the m3’s it almost makes you jump at reference level.

For U-571 the QS8’s were much more in their element, the sound was much more enveloping giving a true sense of environment.

I robot was a good with the QS8’s as well as with the M3’s, it all depends on the scene.

Halo2 was a treat with both but I again think I have to give the edge to the M3’s because it was easier to place the enemies, this can be important in online multi-player.

Burnout was better with the QS8’s due to the crashing sounds enveloping you.
Now for some CD music, the music was played in 5 channel stereo.

Without exception the music sounded much better with the M3’s, especially all of the tracks with piano. The piano lost all of its tonal character and vibrancy with the QS8’s.

On one of the last tracks of the David Benoit cd there is a track with female vocals, this again was much less pronounced with the QS8’s.

One though I would like to share is if the QS8’s could play lower I think for my tastes they would be about perfect. If I could suggest something it would be to take the enclosure and enlarge it, fill it with the 6.5” driver and use the same tweeters it currently has (standard axiom tweeter). I think this would be an awesome combination, you would have a much broader frequency response and things like the rainfall in U-571 would come out sounding much more realistic. That was a big issue when watching those scenes in U-571, the rain, while enveloping was just not realistic sounding, the pitch was just too high, I think the 6.5’ driver would shine here.

For music I think most would be hard pressed to favor the QS8’s in lieu of the M3’s in this type of setup.

What does all of this mean?
Good question, I guess what I have found is the QS8’s are great for creating a sense of environment but lose something when the sound needs to be placed in a more specific direction. The M3’s really have an advantage for 4-5 channel music, and for the lower frequency response they achieve.

I want to mount the QS8’s higher on the wall to see what this impact it has on the overall sound, they currently are at ear level.

My biggest dilemma now is which one I prefer to use (I guess this is a pretty good problem to have) I think at this point I am favoring the M3’s, mostly for the more realistic sound it offers in my surround setup. I was actually looking to see if I could make a hybrid by putting the M3 driver into the QS8 cabinet but there is no room for it.

I hope some will find this review useful, I consider myself an average user and always appreciate reviews from the same. Any questions please feel free to ask.

Thanks

(Quietly thinking to myself…………….hhhmmm lets see a QS10, 2-6.5’’ drivers, 2-axiom tweeters, in an enclosure capable of about 50Hz………………….hhhmmm)

Great writeup. Just curious, what crossover frequency were you using for the surrounds ?

they were crossed at 80.

That's probably perfect for the M3s but might be a bit too low for the QS8s. You're going to have a bit of a "hole" between 80 and 100 Hz when running the QS8s -- that might explain the different sound. In the interests of science, any chance you could set the surround x-over to 100 hz and try the rain in U571 again ?

I know what a pain it is switching speaker interconnects, just finished doing the same thing last night and again today. Banana plugs are looking more attractive every time

Nice review. You should follow up on your thought regarding placing the QS8 higher on the wall and also adjust the crossover. The woofers fire up and down on the QS8 which may impact what you heard based on your placement.

i will set the crossover at 100Hz and re watch the material, also i have raised the qs8's to about 6' high now. ill post my results later today.


thanks.

I tried u-571 again with the crossover set to 100Hz. interestingly enough it did not make much of a change. I did experience a bit of listener fatigue with it set to this though, this could also an attribute of raising the speakers to the 6’ level, not sure.

I think for my listening tastes I am going to stick with the M3’s, for my balance of music and movies I think it’s a better match for me. To be honest im actually thinking about the M40’s or M50’s now for my surrounds, I never really noticed how important it is to be able to get the deeper frequencies back there until I did this comparison but it really makes the realism of depth. The music side would certainly benefit also.

Interesting. I just finished hauling my M60s down to the basement and moving the M2s to the surround position so I finally have an all-Axiom system again. I have been hovering over the "Purchase" button on a pair of QS8s for a while but was also a bit unsure because I still listen to more music than movies on the system.

Lots of good things to think about here. Regarding listener fatigue, I assume the QS8s were broken in properly before doing any serious testing ? (ducks as half-full eggnog containers start flying through the air )

[EDIT] I just re-read your first post and realized that you are gaming through the same system. That's a huge argument in favour of regular speakers for the positional cues so you don't get killed from behind.

I still haven't gotten my head around running a video game through an expensive system -- still stuck in a time 20 years ago when video games output nothing but horrible square waves and fried your tweeters. This hi-fi gaming thing is still a bit of a novelty for me.

You have interesting taste:
CC-370 over vp150
m3 over qs8

I believe it is my ears personally that have a hard time with the vp150/m22/qs8 drivers. For some reason they get into my eardrums and create havoc. Please don’t flame because of my personal tastes. I think the reason they are ok in the m60's is because they are such a small part of the whole speaker, they seem to get washed along the way.

As for the q8s review I just find I prefer the direct sound over the ambient sound of the qs8, again just my personal preference.