Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Starting over...

I doubt that there will be any disernable benifit.

Short answer = Bi-Wiring does absolutely nothing for your audio quality. Don't waste your money on the extra wire.

The extra inputs are just there to satisfy market demand for a misunderstood technique and for those who try to bi-amp. Even 99/100 people who Bi-Amp their speakers are not doing it correctly and gaining absolutely no benefit. What you are describing by using the extra outputs would still not be considered, true, bi-amping.

Good question though, we all had it in our heads at one time or another.

How big is your room? You may find 7.1 does do something for larger rooms or weird seating arrangements like I have.

The others have answered the Biwire issue.

James, you're actually referring to a so-called "bi-amping" feature that some receivers advertise. The Pioneer is a fine unit, but that feature does nothing of value. True bi-amping requires two separate amplifiers, as the term implies, and receivers have only one, distributing its power through several channels of output transistors. Output transistors act as valves to add power from the one main power supply section present to the small input voltages to make them strong enough to drive the speaker to a loud level; they have no power of their own. The power supply section has a limited capacity and distributing it to a speaker through two sets of output transistors(one previously not connected to a speaker)rather than one can't double the available power, as some imagine, or increase it in any degree. Wire your speakers in the usual way; no extra power capacity is available through that feature.

What you could do is wire up a pair of M22s atop the 60s to get yourself M82s!

Thanks for the clarity guys, found similar opinions when I figured out a decent search method.

So I got my kit yesterday, M60/VP150/QS8. This replaces my M60/VP100/M2 setup. Went from a Marantz 4500 to a Pioneer VSX-01THX as well. Sticking with a HSU-VTF3, so far so good! Love the sound, much better surround performance with the QS8 over the M2, but it could be the receiver. Overall I'm glad I spent the extra and stuck with the M60s.

Now I just need to get something to listen too! My HTPC with all my music was taken. All I have is NHL09 on PS3, which is nice...but crowd noise gets old!

Glad you are enjoying the new system. The QS series is the jewel of the Axiom line up, they really are the best surround speaker out there,IMO. They can make any system feel more enveloping. Now get out there and purchase some new music so we can have a more thorough review of the new system.

That reminds me... I should buy a backup drive for my digital music and photos!

JamesM, enjoy your new system.

Fair warning, this post is ridiculously off topic.

David - I'd suggest you save the money on a backup drive and try Carbonite online backup. I just signed up for it and have to say it is a heck of a lot cheaper and easier than running a backup routine every night (or when you remember) to a USB drive... (I've been doing that for ages too)

Inevitably, those backups stop running for some reason or another or don't keep a copy of the file I need, etc... On the other hand, Carbonite runs automatically and updates itself as files change without you ever tinkering with it.

Two things finally pushed me over the edge to go to a different solution than my external drives: 1) I had a growing collection of music on my computer that would be more and more painful to use, and 2) my family pictures and videos are now all digital and only stored on my hard drive. Even though I was backing them up to a second disk, a fire/theft, etc. would wipe me out completely. Yuck.

If you're interested, PM me your e-mail address (David or anyone else who wants to try it) as they have a referral program that lets me send you a coupon for 2 months free (as opposed to one-month free that you get by default). Fair disclosure, I get free months too if you sign up, but that's not why I'm recommending it. I just wish I would have done this a long time ago as it would have saved me a lot of money in external hard drives (I have about 2TB worth of them now).

For less than $5/month I could have accomplished the same thing with Carbonite... Oh, and did I mention they offer unlimited backup for this price? Pretty amazing.

Jason

Two caveats:

1) The initial backup is slow... I had about 100GB that I marked for backup initially and it took 15 days to upload - I imagine they purposely limit bandwidth to help keep their costs in line. Once that was done though, it now updates in only a minute or two each day.

2) It only backs up internal hard drives - not USB drives - another way they control their exposure on unlimited backups. If you happen to have eSata external drives, I've found it will back those up. Having said that, they don't limit how many internal drives you can back up. I have 4, and while I don't have them all full, it let me pick and choose from any of them.