Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions It just doen't sound right

Very odd. I have the same gear as you, and the only time that I have had something sound like what you say, is when I am in the wrong audio processing mode, such as 5 speaker "3D" or some simulated surround like DTS:Neo6 or ProLogicII instead of making sure that the source is playing 5.1 and my receiver is matched. Actually, now that I think about it, as long as the DVD player is NOT set to 2 channel audio output, the receiver autoswitches to the correct audio (as would pretty much all receivers), but I popped in the first Harry Potter movie this past weekend, and the sound was a lot like you said. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anywhere on the disk to change from 2 channel to 5.1... Very strange. I never did check the DVD box to make sure that it even had a 5.1 track on it. You would sure think so, but I got the first 4 movies as a "box set" which seemed to be a mix of "2 disc special editions" and some regular single disc editions depending on the movie.

Anyway, it is at those times when a movie doesn't default to a 5.1 sound track that I notice what you are saying. Some worse than others.

Let us know how your testing comes out.

Could it be that the DVD player is set to PCM instead of bitsteam? It happened to me once (a "friend" had played with my settings) and it took me a while to figure out why my surround sound sounded different.

I, too, was wondering if it was the settings on the DVD player since music doesn't seem to have the same problem...(?)

Did anyone notice where he said that he is running "all" of his speakers as large???? That is a big no-no!

Maybe you will get away with the M60's as large, but as for the VP150 and the QS8's you definitely need to set them as SMALL!

What you are doing is trying to run very low frequencies through drivers that cannot handle it. So not only are you possibly overloading the speakers but you may be clipping your receiver at the same time.

At least at higher volume levels, at low volume levels the QS8s (to my ears anyway) sounded a bit better when the entire signal was routed to them. But he definitely needs to set the QS8s and 150 to "small" and the cutoff in the 80 Hz range (YMMV), that cured a good portion of some similar issues I thought I was having. Pilot error ... as usual.

Oh Crap! I hope it didn't damage anything. I didn't notice any clipping so i don't think so, but still not worth the risk. I figured since I was running without a sub, I could set it to large. I'll make some adjustments and try again.

I was going to say that he has no sub...so he midaswell run them as large for now...

I wouldn't worry about damaging anything when set to large.

I think that you will be fine with them on "Large" as far as damaging them. No worries there. It will impact the sound, but like you said, there is something bigger going on here.

I've had my set up on "Large" for all of the speakers for a little while (even with a sub), but prefer small, even though they can handle it.

Check out your DVD player, or heck, plug in another one. Even a cheap one, and see if it is any better.

Divide and conquer!

Another golden typo?