History / About these posts….
I've been promising and joking for a couple of months now that, although I never officially posted my impressions of my Axioms, someday I was going to write the Mother Of All Posts. Those of you who know me, know that I can be long-winded on just about any topic, so this ought to be a doozy. I have a good number of photos to post as well, so I will break this into several posts to try to keep it organized as well as easy to load for those of you who are on dialup. (snicker-snicker).
For those of you who have come to these boards somewhat recently, and want to know my life story for a sense of perspective, my ego is glad to indulge you by directing you to this post:
Who I Am And Why I'm Here See? I told you I can be long-winded!
I'm not really as self-centered as I might seem. I'm hoping that this post, with all of these little details, can help someone who is interested in Axioms or might benefit from some of the methods I've used to mount and install them. They're issues that I'm sure some of you have dealt with or will deal with before long. Along the same lines, I'm also going to write about my experiences with much of the ancillary equipment I've purchased in the last couple of months as I haven't done so yet.
Do I need to say that all of what follows is just my personal opinion?
For those of you who don't want to read the 209 pages of minutia that follow, and have a finger poised on your mouse to click "place order": Just Do It. You can read this while you're awaiting delivery. For the rest of you, let me start with my "Axiom Experience":
Are You Experienced?
As you may or may not have read in the previously-referenced post, I planned on spending quite a bit more on speakers than I did on my Axioms. I'm not made of money, but rather allowed myself the option of buying the speakers piecemeal if necessary to get the quality that I had hoped for. I look at speakers as being a long-term investment and would not have been uncomfortable spending $5,000 on B&Ws or Cantons of KEFs. Yes, I equated quality with price.
I'm not sure where I first heard about Axiom, but it was likely on the
Audioholic boards. I was mostly checking into Paradigm, Definitive Technology, PSB, Monitor, Canton, KEF and B&W and, to be honest, I was really pretty unsure about Axiom. I had never heard of them before, and was close to convinced that if they were not some huge "brand name" that I've heard for the last 20 years, they couldn't really be all that good. Mostly what I did
not want was a compromise in the sound. I wanted that "pride of ownership", and I really would not have expected it with the Axioms. I didn't want, every time I turned on the system, to think that there was some detail in the "highs" that were veiled or muffled, or that my bass just went "boom, boom, boom" without any articulation.
There are several things that I've owned in my life that just "feel right" and, although they're never the finest money can buy, they were more than a good value for me; more than pedestrian. They just worked harmoniously with me the way a well-engineered items' ergonomics should work: A Seiko dress watch, my old Canon F-1 pro 35mm, my S&W 9mm (let's not hijack the thread here!) and maybe even my MX-700 remote (more on that later!). My Axioms are poised to join that elite list.
I stumbled across this very forum and liked what I was reading. Not only were people posting great things about their Axioms, they also seemed to be honest enough to recommend an alternate product if it really fit someone's' needs better. Further, it seemed like a great little community here. The word family comes to mind but I think we, as a whole, get along better than that!
In looking at the pricing, I was concerned that it was too low,
especially when you consider the discount for multiple items and the Factory Outlet. I was afraid that I would be under-buying, which has caused more problems in the past than overbuying. And, I never posted this at the time when I was new on these boards (and hopefully no one will be offended now) but what if everyone here just had low standards when it came to their systems? What if, previously, most had owned $499 HTIB setups? How could I trust the posts that extolled the Axiom benefits?
Before I write about what I ordered, this might be a good time to write a bit on the room I'm using. I won't go into the previous equipment; I covered that thoroughly in the post linked above.
I live in a 100 year old house on a main drag in Concord, NH and run a video production and photography business out of the same building. Because of the needs of the business (which really accounts for almost two-thirds of our square footage), our living room is relegated to a room that originally was designed as a bedroom. More of an issue than it being small, however, is the fact that it's square…13' x 13' to be exact. Square rooms have a reputation for being the most difficult to tame in terms of standing waves and "nulls", particularly in the bass.
Here's the basic floor plan as it
currently is; the equipment is new but the room dimensions and the sectional, table, etc. haven't changed:
Previously, on the wall where the DLP and speakers are, I had a massive oak entertainment center. As much as I loved that piece of furniture, it limited our TV to a 32" and was just
big for the small room. It's our intentions to replace the sectional and lounger with a new couch and loveseat, increasing the flexibility of positioning. If we get the style that has built-in recliners, I'll never miss my chair! The Bell'O equipment rack was moved into the closet based upon an idea by a member here (Thanks to Craig –" SpiffNMe") to help keep the minimal wall space open, both for flexibility in speaker and TV positioning as well as aesthetics.
I took a couple of still photos with a video camera that has a fisheye adaptor; it goes "wider" than any still camera I own at the moment. The first photo is taken from the corner of the room where the subwoofer is:
Here you can see the general placement of the QS8s and even, in the bottom right corner, An M60, the TV stand and the Samsung DLP.
The room from the opposite corner:
The doors were taken off both the entrance to the room and closet. The closet door was removed within the Home Theater Upgrade process, so that it maintains the look of the equipment being "inset". I've left the hinges on the door frame to allow me to "hide" the equipment if necessary when my little niece and nephew visit. The entrance door we removed quite awhile ago simply to allow room in the corner where the chair is. As an aside, that's my office and edit suite across the hall; Joyce's is down the hall a bit.
The photo above is from the primary seating position. I haven't as of yet done any A/B testing with the coffee table in and out of place to see if my imaging would be cleaner without it's large, flat and half-glass top surface reflecting everything to my ears!
Finally, a photo towards the setup that doesn't have the fisheye look and serves as a good, general reference shot:
As you can see, the floors are hardwood with a rug just under the table. I don't really consider it a "live" room, but it would certainly lean that way over it being described as acoustically "dead".
Although I know many are anxious to read about the Axioms, let me also write a little about the general equipment and the placement in the room. As I mentioned previously, I "installed" a recently purchased Bell'O equipment rack in the closet to save some wall space and give a little bit of a custom look. I emptied the closet (which was essentially full of little-accessed stuff that I could find some other place for!) and painted the whole interior black. I wall-mounted a
Tripplite HTPowerBar 10 to the inside right (The building has a whole-house lightning protector at the service panel, but I'm pretty cautious about such things!).
It was
after talking Joyce into the idea of losing the closet for the equipment (but luckily, before painting) that I tried putting the rack in there to "get a feel for it". I realized as soon as I did that there was one small detail that I hadn't considered: The floor was uneven. Not atypical in an old house, we've gotten used to keeping our feet on the floor when we're sitting in chairs with castors so as to avoid careening towards the corners of the offices! Anyway, when you stand a 5' object up in a closet door, it becomes immediately apparent if the lines of the object aren't parallel to the door frame. On the one hand, it may not seem like too big a deal to overcome, but there were other factors. The Bell'O rack, having glass shelves, explicitly warns of it being moved with equipment on the shelves, yet I needed a way to roll the rack out for rewiring. I initially thought that this could be accomplished with Teflon gliders, but was now leaning towards castors of some kind. I would also now need a base unit that would not only support the rack without flexing (and potentially dumping my equipment in a shower of glass) but correct for the uneven floor.
I ended up constructing the base out of Poplar 2x2s as a frame with 2x2 "braces" or "cross-members" every 4", with ¾" plywood on top and bottom. I wanted the castors to not only be rated for far more weight than necessary, but also as low-profile as possible. I ended up with appliance castors that fit both needs well, and mounted them under the base with one side "shimmed" to make up for the uneven floor. I covered the entire base with the heavy material used to cover P.A. systems and racks of audio equipment that DJs and bands use. It's matte black, heavy duty, and, besides, I had some leftover from a previous project. This base unit is about the only thing that I did not photograph as it was under construction, but there really wasn't much to show anyway I guess! I fashioned some pieces of 1" dowel, covered with black rubber into appropriate places on the top of the base to act as "bumpers" to "lock" the rack in place; it can't be slid off the front, back or sides.
The rack pulled out for wiring:
There isn't a specific "end result" photo" but there really wouldn't be much to the photo except a low-profile, unobtrusive black boxy-type thing, which is good because that's exactly how I wanted it to look: Invisible in the black closet! You can see it at the bottom of the next photo.
This is a composite of two photos of the rack to show it in it's entirety top to bottom:
On top of the rack are my A/R wireless headphones. I'm not at all impressed with these, as the reception is actually finicky when I'm sitting only 10' away on the couch….plus they have no bass at all! They allow me the convenience of watching TV late at night without waking up Joyce, though. I have Sony MDR-760s and AKG-240s for music listening.
Top to bottom:
The next shelf down has the Pioneer 578 disk player, a TiVo unit, and an old Panasonic VCR, which really doesn't get used anymore. The second I pull it out, though, we'll find a tape that we want to watch in the living room!
Next shelf down is the Denon 3805 and below that, a Philips CD Recorder and an Onkyo MD deck.
The bottom two shelves each have a Sony 400-disk Jukebox. These are connected to enable "mixing" and shuffling between units while in playback mode. The only other piece of equipment (not in this photo) is the high-def/DVR cable box under the DLP.
I'll write about each of the pertinent components a little later.
Just as a quick note, I spent a little time looking for some sort of "pass-thru" to enable a clean method of passing the wiring between the closet and the room without having it just feed in along the floor. I couldn't find anything so ended up cutting a hole through the baseboards on each side and using dimmer "wall plates" to keep it a little neater than my saw left it:
The last thing I'll mention about the room is lighting, as I feel it has much to do with the success of the room for Home Theater. I installed a Lutron remote-control dimmer for the overhead light that I can control with my MX-700 remote. I also have a floor lamp standing in front of the equipment rack with 3 lamp holders; one holds a 15 watt bulb and is pointed towards the ceiling for overall ambient room light when watching movies, the two others hold 7 watt bulbs to softly light the equipment. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I also want to experiment with a soft light mounted behind the DLP to "glow" the wall around it a bit.
I'll see you on my next post where I'll discuss becoming an "Axiomite"
