Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Fitting out my 10x12 room

Rizzo, here is a link to a thread of a comparison another forum member and I did last year on the differences we heard between the M22, M60, M80, it may help in your decision on what to get for mains. I will also say that the findings we had on the M22 are not the norm as I have no thinness issue with them in my own home and they sound great. The M60s I found to be a very nice speaker once I stopped comparing them directly to the M22s and ran them on their own after we did this comparison. Personally I think that anyone of the 3 would be a great speaker for your room size.

The EP500 sub or even the EP600 would be the way to go for your room, as was stated you can never have too much sub. It all depends on how much you are willing to spend.

My Budget will run along the lines of spending half my money on a speaker system. Remembering 1 US dollar only equals around .65 Australian dollar at the moment.( nearly twice as much )

This is the range I will be looking at

Flat Panel screen $3,000 Aus dollars
Receiver $1,300
Blueray/PVR/HD Tuner $ 1,300

That leaves me looking somewhere in the range of $5,000 Aus dollars for speakers etc, so something like $2,700 US dollars.

Im hoping our dollar will go up a bit..It was worth .95 Aus dollars only a month a go before the financial crash!!!

I can describe my room briefly which is 15ft wide with the underside of a staircase sliding down the left front hand side. I have recently cut the storage area out from this area opening the room up dramatically.I have restructured the supports for the stairs. The room is 21ft long with a sliding door on the left hand side near the rear. The only problem I see is if I push my couch which I want near the back wall forward at all it will be blocking the sliding door on the left hand side. But to mount side speakers into the room , they will also be infront of the door on the left hand side. This is the one point of the room I will struggle with.

At what height should the speakers be mounted , or should they be on stands to be at head height when sitting.

Hi Rizzo, I am in Perth Have you got your TV yet? If not take a look at the Samsung Series 6 Full HD 52" LCD, I just bought it and I got them down to $3500 and a 6 point Surge Protection thrown in ($150)with very little haggling from Retravision. As for the Blue Ray the Samsung BDP 1500 is pretty good and I got it for $340 from JB Hi Fi.

Graeme

Jason, welcome as another addition to our Australian contingent. Just a brief comment on surround speaker terminology: the first set of surround speakers are in fact "side surrounds" even if they're mounted slightly behind the listening position on the rear wall. They play the sound information from the side surround channel material, and are connected to those terminals on the receiver, not the back surround terminals.

Thanks John,

Im still getting used to the setups on some of these..Ive only ever had 5.1 channel receivers .
I have probably got a leaning for the Epic 80-500 system even though I wish I had come across these speakers a few months earlier when the Aussie dollar was at it highest.I would love to invest in a 7.1 system but I dont think I have the finances to match at this stage(the extra QS8 speakers). Can you run a 7.1 system ok with only the 5 speakers connected ( Main , center and rear ) until another purchase can be made on the side surrounds, has anyone got any comments on how it sounded.I would love to not limit myself to 5.1 channel at the moment and buy a 7.1 channel receiver for what I want in the future!! I hope that makes sense!!

Jason, of course a 7.1 receiver can be used with a 5.1 speaker setup. The receiver will be set to show no back surround speakers and won't send any sound to the back surround terminals. So yes, you can certainly use the side surround speakers without back surrounds. Unless you have a significant distance behind the listening position(say at least 4')for a rear sound field to develop, a 7.1 speaker setup may not be of benefit.

Jason, as John pointed out a 7.1 receiver can be used in a 5.1 setup, you just don't hook up as many speakers and your receiver will show no rears for now.

Just so your clear, in a 5.1 setup you don't have "rears" you have "side" surround speakers. You would not hook up the rear channel speakers for a 5.1 setup and your "side" speakers would be to the side of the listening position, not behind you.

Rizzo, the epic 80-500 would be fantastic for that room. My basement HT room dimensions are similar and am just using basically a Epic Grand Master with HSU sub because I will wall mount the M22's.

Alan from Axiom suggested that setup to me(with EP500) back when I was asking and told me if I wanted to sometimes play music at "E-LEVEN" to go instead with the M80's.

The QS8's are great surrounds and in the future I may just put 1 or 2 M2's for rear speakers if I ever want 7.1 but I doubt I will even do that. 5.1 HT is enough for me.

Just a few minor questions on home theater setup that someone may be able to help me with...looking at the cable side of things If I run a hdmi 1.3b cable inside my viewing wall to my rack will it be afffected in any way by using wall plate f/f connectors at both ends instead of direct connection.
Im also looking at speaker cable and have read many topics on this and im looking at the blue jeans type 10awg. Now this is pretty expensive cable so has anyone had any experiences with it and is it comparable with a few cheaper options.
In my basement room I have 3 of the 4 walls concrete and the viewing wall is timber, will this have much effect on the audio and if so is there something easy to do to it besides framing it up and compromising the room size, I have read a few reports from people that concrete walls can affect the low frequency of the subwoofer.
thanks.

The Blue Jeans 10 awg is very nice speaker cable. I bought 100ft not too long ago. I also purchased their locking Banana plugs which are awesome. If you want something cheaper Monoprice would be a good place to buy your speaker cable. There will be no difference in sonic quality between them. I chose to buy from Blue Jeans because I like to support their business. If you buy a thicker wire, I higly recommend the locking Banana plugs. They are expensive but they make a nice solid connection to your equipment and speakers.