I haven’t done much research on this yet. Just an idea I’m considering after I get a few other priorities, like curtains, cabling, carpet and possibly room treatment out of the way. I try to prioritize my upgrades based on what will give me the most improvement for the money at that time.
I’m already loving the mid/upper bass coming from my 3 M80s up front but they don’t carry the LFE channel, well unless I didn’t use a sub. My EP500 has no problem filling the room with sound and shaking both the furniture and the foundation but I miss that in-your-face feeling I’m getting from the M80s.
Right now I’ve got the EP500 near the back right corner of the room, mostly to keep the front open. My original plan was to buy an LCD (computer monitor) and a plasma (day to day TV watching) to go slightly behind my M80s on either side of the center. However, testing with my DLP has revealed that’s to far away to use as a computer monitor, colours the sound up front and I like having room to walk between the M80s.
I reconsidered my original plan to wall mount the LCD and plasma on brackets that swing out from the side walls but that is going to be at the limit of my visual acuity as a computer monitor and my eyesight aint getting any better. Additionally, since moving in April I’ve only watched about 10 hours of TV so when my year is up, unless something changes I’m dumping the DirectTV so no need for the plasma.
Which brings me to my new plan (always subject to change) of buying just an LCD and like I’m doing with my DLP right now just slide it in and out of the adjacent room as needed. By listening in stereo or switching to a phantom center I can still have perfect audio at the sweet spot even with the HDTV in the middle because I have a direct line-of-sight, with room to spare, to both mains.
This means for movie watching I now have room up front between the mains and center for the sub(s) or perhaps more effectively Mid-bass modules (I‘d need 2 for symmetry
). This quest in part comes from one setup I had in my apartment where the EP500 was right in front of the TV about 4 feet in front of my seating. This gave me the level of impact I liked for explosions (in the real world explosions are directional) but at the cost of the lower bass being boomy, and a twice re-broken toe (first broke it surfing) when cutting to close walking by the sub. EP500 beats the crap out of toe every time. So the sub ended up in back and I lost the directional feel of the explosions.
Since giving that directions feel seems to be exactly what the Mid-bass Module is designed for while minimizing room interactions. It seems to me it will be a better solution than just adding multiple subwoofers. My idea is to use the Buttkicker for the 40Hz and below, the Mid-bass Modules for the 50-80 or so and the EP500 to sort of tie it all together.
