Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion What's New At Axiom Introducing the M5 and QS10

There's a first time for everything

I did a bit of experimenting last night, moving the speakers closer together to find out where the imaging "popped" without toe-in.

Turned out pretty well - moving each speaker in less than a foot was enough. So while 6-6.5 foot separation at 9-10 foot listening distance definitely required toe-in, moving the speakers in to ~4.5 foot separation at the same listening distance worked fine without toe-in.

Probably could have gone up to 5 feet and still been OK but I didn't test with enough different material to be sure. If I were cutting holes in walls I would go with something like (listening distance >= 2x separation).

My impression from seeing pictures & real world systems is that most people installing in-wall systems tend to do this anyways just because it looks right. This is also probably just a 2-channel issue anyways, since with 5.1 or similar you have a center channel filling the gap between mains.

I did move the speakers back to 6.5 foot separation with toe-in again after experimenting, since (a) that gave me a wider soundscape which seemed a bit more accurate eg. when listening to grand piano, and (b) the speaker interaction with the room seemed a tiny bit better as well.