The boxes were delivered by FedEx around 2pm (this was less than 48hrs from when Axiom shipped them!). Overall, I think they arrived in fantastic condition. It had been raining the last 2 days, so some boxes were a little damp (the one M80 box was sort of falling apart on the top from the rain, so I took the speaker out of the box in the garage before brining it down to the basement).
After careful inspection, I can tell you that only one speak had any kind of imperfection (they were all bought from the Factory Outlet). One M80 had a slight nick. That's it! The two EP500 subs had sequential serial numbers, so I think Axiom gave me a break and sent out new ones so that I coul have my speakers within the 3 week promise! This is a mark of a great company!
Here they are all unpacked and ready to go in the theater!
Here they are set in pace in their new home!
And of course, the obligatory full frontal nudity shot!
I'm still in the process of tuning things and setting the sound up, so I don't want to say too much about the sound yet (My old speakers were Infinity IL60s, which were great performers in their own right). I will mention a couple of interesting things:
1) Denon Audessy now wants to set all of my speakers to large. I have never had that happen before. I tried twice and both times it set all speaker (even the QS8s to large). Although it sounded great in stereo, it did not sound great in 7-Channel stereo. I have manually set the speakers all back to small with a 100Hz crossover (since I have 2 subs up front next to the mains, I can get away with a setting this high). This sounded MUCH better in all modes. Oh, the subs are both set to FLAT.
2) Audessy likes to tune down the sub a lot. With both subs at 7pm setting, FLAT, Audessy adjusted the sub another -6db. When I took measurements with the Radio Shack meter, and the Infinity RABOS meter, the low frequencies were much quieter than the high frequencies. I adjusted the subs to the 9pm position after the Audessy adjustment, and it sounds much better like that.
3) Even with initial testing, I have been able to get a +/- 1db flat curve from 100Hz down to 20Hz. I am using the Infinity RABOS sound meter, which is very accurate on the low frequencies. My old speakers would begin to drop off at 35Hz, and would be -15db at 20Hz! Huge improvement.
More to come as I continue adjustment and listen to more music!
