Well people, I've finally done it. Just ordered 2 M50s and 2 QS4s, speaker wire, along with a Yamaha HTR 5860 receiver, and a Trip Lite HT surge suppressor. Total cost is just shy of $2200.00 Canadian. My budget was $2000.00 and I was going to go factory outlet, but for what, 3-6 weeks wait and possible blemish/damage just where I would be frustrated. Come on with the pristines!

The Yamaha receiver is supposed to have a feature that sends sub and center channel sound to the front mains. It also has auto YPAO and room EQ. Any comments on these features and my set up. No doubt, I'll be expanding later with HDTV, sub, center etc, but ya know, money doesn't grow on trees, At least not in NL.

Thanks to those of you who gave advice earlier.

Red, congrats & welcome!

I have a Yamaha 5660 and the "phantom" centre works awesome. I tried an old junk speaker I had kicking around as a centre, and I just couldn't stand it. Threw it out and went back to just the mains.

Not sure about sending the LFE to the M50's, though. I would probably skip that all together. The risk of damaging something is far too high. Be patient grasshopper. A sub is in your future. (And that's what should be next on your list.)

As far as the YPAO, you will get mixed advise on this. If you do a search, you will find plenty of threads debating the pro's & con's. I personally, am in the "don't use it" camp. Try without it for at least a week or two. Tweak the system by moving your speakers in & out, left to right, etc. Then for kicks, run YPAO. If you like it better, who's right?

Very good, Red; you'll have excellent sound with those four speakers and can expand later. When you run YPAO the calibration of levels and distances will probably be at least as accurate as you could do manually, so don't worry about that part(you can manually set items such as the crossover to the QS4s if you like). The equalization function is more controversial, but certainly use it at least at first. The M50s will be set "large" and will therefore automatically get any bass which might go to a sub if it was present(in your case lowest bass from the QS4s plus any LFE that might occur during movies). Since you'll set it to show no center speaker, any material which might have gone there will also automatically be directed to the mains.

Welcome Red to our Axiom family,

I'm sure you will be very pleased once you listen to these babies, they are fabulous speakers. I'm pretty sure you will have a hard time finding any blemishes, I'm still looking.

Randy

m60's vp150 ep350 4-Qs8's
Denon 2805
Sanyo Z2 projector
Toshiba DVD
Samsung HD receiver