Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater VP150 or two M3s'

I currently have a VP150 also and older VP100 acutaully two of those. I am wondering has anyone had the VP15- and switched it out for two M3s'. And if they did how was it set up. Do you set them up side by side or one on top of the tv and one under it. I have Mt80's for fronts.
I just don't want to order a couple Mt3's and find they are no different than the VP150.
I also have 4 M2's. I only have a 32" tv now .

Also is there a reason for this. I know my VP150 is sheilded and it is under my tv now, but if I put it on top of the TV it discolors the tv.

I would swap in a set of M2's and see if the sound stage is different, I would expect a huge difference in sound from the M3's to M2's as centers. I know Huztal is going to mount a some M3's one above and one below his screen and has them side by temporarily and he loves the sound. I am sure he will be along shortly to offer more.

I like my dual M3s,

I can't compare to the VP150, I have never heard it. The reason I got 2 M3s over 2 M2s is because if I want to upgrade again in the future, the M3s can easily be resourced to other areas in the house, the M2s cannot hold their own as good as the M3s without a sub. I also plan on building a studio, in which I want to test both the M22s and the M3s in the studio environment, I suspect I will love the M22s as studio monitors.

With that said, the frequency response of the M3 is closer to that of the M22 than the M2 is to the M22, which is another reason to grab the M3.

In all honesty, you won't notice a big sonic difference from the M3 to your M80 mains at all. I don't notice anything with my M22 mains, it is an even soundstage throughout, I haven't done any SACD or DVD-A playing yet tho, so I can't comment on that front.

Your vocals will have a more "full" sound because of the 6.5" woofers, much warmer than the 5.25" woofers. My M22s are crisp and clean (which is what I like for 2 channel and for movies), but the vocals on the M3s for movies are still very crisp, but I suspect produce a warmer feeling than the VP series or M2s would.

And it almost goes without saying, that an M3 or pair of M3s is an ideal match for those with M50 mains.

...or even M40s!

Hutz, I don't know that that's the case. Although I've never heard M2s (especially not in comparison to M3s or M22s), from what I've read, the M2s are more tonally similar to the M22s than the M3s are.

I once overlaid the Soundstagemagazine FR graphs for M2, M3, M22 and M40 into a single chart. The results were very interesting.

M2 is much closer to M22 than M3 is, down to 100 Hz. Below 100 Hz, the M2 drops off sharply while the M22 and M3 both have relatively more output, but the shape of their curves below 100 Hz is very different.

I think the issue is that the M22 and M3 sound relatively closer than the M2 because they both have "decent amounts of bass", if you were to repeat the same test with the speakers set to "small" and a subwoofer crossed at 100 Hz I think you would find that the M2 was now closer to M22 than the M3 was.

If you cross over at the more common 80 Hz it's kinda hard to say which would sound closer

Having said all that, Hutzal's original point was that the M3 was more generally useful in the future, and that is absolutely correct. The timbre difference between M2 and M3 above 80 Hz is going to be fairly small, particularly if sidewall reflections are reasonably well controlled (since the biggest difference AFAIK is the off-axis response dip of the 6.5" driver around the "few KHz" range.

M2s, M22s and M3s are probably equally likely to cause colour distortion when placed near a CRT. I don't know if the 6.5" M3 woofer has a bigger magnet than the 5.5" M2/22 woofer, guess we could ask Axiom that.

I tried placing the M3s on my 27" CRT, they cause color distortion, when placed upsidown it was reduced quite a bit, enough that it could work when placed upsidown.

Thanks for clarifying my statements Bridgman (seems I had a hard time clarifying myself ), interesting about the frequency response charts. Thanks for your input.

Hopefully bugbitten will post in here, he has parallel M3 centres with M80 mains and loves them just as much as I do.

>>Thanks for clarifying my statements Bridgman (seems I had a hard time clarifying myself ),

I had to edit my *own* post twice and it still didn't seem all that clear to me. This stuff is just darned hard to communicate

EDIT -- I just noticed that axiom_man's original post talked about colour distortion from the VP150, not from the bookshelf speakers. My mistake. I don't have an answer for that question other than to mention that I found even an inch or two made a huge difference in the amount of visible distortion so if you haven't tried a small lift that might be all you need.

ahh yes , bugbitten
hopefully he does as that's the setup I have for my mains

Center Placement

axiom_man,

Above is a link to the thought process behind the M3 centers.

I think that the M3 is an excellent match for the M80s. I like the sound of the dialog from the M3 more than I like the dialog from the VP150 also, but the purpose was to get the dialog centered on the screen.

It drove me crazy for it to be localized to the speaker. I tried the M3s in WTTW and TWWT both above and below like I tried my VP 150 above and below. In the end I ended up with a TW above and a WT below with each speaker on its side.

No ill effects with the speakers on their sides and I love the sound.

I would love to see a center with 2 tweeters, a 5.25 and a 6.5, but I would still get 2 for above and below in my current setup. In a perfect world a single center would be an M80 behind an AT screen to match the L/R.

Bug

Troy, if you have 4 M2s and 2 VP100s you have plenty of opportunities to experiment that will give you some idea, although it wouldn't exactly duplicate the result with M3s. For example, try one vertical M2, then one vertical VP100, then two of each in various positions.

I think I am going to try the VP150 under the tv and two Mt2's on top tonight.
but I am unsure how I should wire them up.
I would like to do it in Parrallel but, the centre VP is 6ohm and the two M2's are 8ohm making them in parallel 4 ohm.
jeez how do I do three speakers. I think I will try the VP100 also. This I can do in Parallel , but I don't want to screw my amp.

I have seen it suggested NOT to connect 2 speakers with different impedences in parallel. I could be wrong.

Ok,
wasn't sure so if I test drive tonight it shoul be 2 M2's alone ?
and I am thinking that the M2's have a 5.25" mid so this would/should be a better match for my M80's, whereas the m3's have a 6.25 and most of the dialog comes from the mid's.

Most likely it should be the M2s alone. You'd probably melt your amp if you hooked up all 3. (completely unsupported claim.)

Hell, go with video. That'd probably score some youtube views.

I think it's series connection that is usually problematic.

AFAIK the main problem with paralleling speakers with different impedences is that one speaker is usually 8 ohms and the other is usually less, so you end up with <4 ohm effective impedence which only the huge honkin' amps can drive reliably.

This place is pure evil!!

If one M3 is good for center, then two must be better!!

Here's a hypothetical question.

Say a person happened to have, say...M50s for mains and a single vertical and inverted M3 sitting on top of an....oh, I dunno....65" RPCRT which has no problem hosting the speaker on top, but has no way of supporting a big ol' bulky M3 down below the center of the screen without sticking out way into the center of the room.

...but yet the TV configuration would support a speaker snuggled right on in there in vertical orientation in an indentation of the bodywork in the front of the TV and only stick out about 3-4" in front of the screen; a dimension easily matched by adding a bracket on top of the TV pushing the front of the M3 out a like distance in front of the screen. Yeah; and the M50s too.

....anybody ever hear an M3 and a W3 paralleled together?

Ok, so two VP150's in parralel is out of the question. 3ohms
but I am going to try the M2s' see if there is a difference.

can do the two M2's distorts the tv even upside down have to put them on a shelf another night.

well I made a shelf last night and mounted one about 1" above th tv. It was actually 2" given the wood thickness. But I had to set the MT2 speaker back 6" as it was discoloring the tv. Then I put the other in a horizontal postion actaully both were in the horiztntal postions.
I have a 32 JVC and I sit 12 ft from the front and ..... not for me I treid to angle them towards me, I set them so the wer straight and I couldn't get them to create a sound like they were coming from the tv. It sounded like two speakers so I put my VP150 back. But, I just hate that when I listen to dialogue it comes from over or under the tv. I do like now that I have the speaker above the tv better than below it. Guess I will just have to wait until I get the Front Projector and a screen where I can put the speaker behind the screen in the middle

Axiom man,

did you try a horizontal M2 below and a horizontal M2 above your display?

I believe bugbitten has his dual M3s in a TW and WT format above and below his screen.

yes. I had them in Horizontal with the tweeters to the outsides.
It doesn't really matter it did sound good and maybe if I could of squeezed them together a bit more it might have made a diffence in the separations. They were about 34" apart between the shelf under the TV and the Shelf on top. I reckon that was a big difference.

Anyways I am going to get an front projecotr and spend the extra on a Audio screen and mount the VP 150 behind the screen. Which make a savings also because in stead of that being a HG real wood speaker I can just get a normal one and save money as it won't be seen anyways