Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Centre channel Help!..VP150 versus old Athena ASC1

Hi again.

I have tried tilting the centre to different degree variations and have tried moving it left and right on its shelf. That's about all I've tried though.

I really need to have the speaker on that shelf to keep wife and landlord happy (in that order of importance!) so I'm not sure what else I could try for positioning.

There are three reasons (mostly valid ones) why I don't want to upgrade just my centre.

1. I've never really been happy with my subwoofer
2. If there's any truth to timbre-matching, I'd like to keep everything of the same brand/type construction.
3. I'm hoping to buy a place within a year so I'd really like speakers (especially surrounds) and a subwoofer that will fit my needs down the road too.

But you make an excellent point about trying the VP150 only and then making my decision. It is excellent of Axiom to offer their same return policy on the outlet stock but I don't want to delay that long, because the person who's offered to buy my old set-up cannot wait that long.

I think there is also a bit of a chronic upgrade problem at work here too.

Ahhhh the upgradeitis bug, be careful it comes back and back and back once you have been stricken with it. I speak from experience having moved up from M22s to M80s with the Sub coming next, then the receiver, then the......

Yeah, that's what I have, but I do have an excuse. I haven't bought any HT equipment in almost 6 years now. My speakers were 9 years old!

I'm looking for;

Center Channel - VP150
Surround - QS8
Receiver - Can wait awhile

Perc, the equalization part of MCACC is more controversial, but the basic level calibration does a fine job and there's no good reason to expect that a manual calibration using a separate SPL meter would be more accurate(or even as accurate, considering the added factor of human error). You could nevertheless bump the center up a couple decibels. Another temporary check would be using one of your mains vertically in the center to see if audibility was better. If so, this might indicate that the present center speaker isn't adequate, regardless of the level set.

You just had to add the vertical center didn't you I can't disagree after hearing the M60 as a center flanked by the M80s, man that was nice.

Hi all. I tried going into MCACC to change speaker levels but I couldn't figure out how to do it without the test tones sounding...so I guess I will need to wait until I'm home from work at a decent hour or for the weekend.

If it can be done without the test tones, please feel free to let me know how!

Trying a front speaker with the centre channel is an intriguing idea too, thanks. It doesn't seem totally fair, though, to compare the clarity of output of something with two 8" drivers to something with two 5" drivers. It will still be fun to try and like said above, give me an idea if my current centre has serious shortcomings.

Thanks for all the advice. Unfortunately still no ex-Athena users around!

Size ain't everything. I get more bass out of my M80s (dual 6.5") than I heard out of Peter's old Monitor 9s (dual 8").

Of course, cabinet size might be everything. The 80s are significantly larger.

What about the port holes?