Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Large great room. 7.1 speaker placement & dipole v

Randy, thanks for coming over to the 'novel' posting thread.
I do have Blu-ray and watch almost exclusively BD (so far) in the living room. When we have a DVD, my wife likes to take that opportunity to watch in the bedroom SD DVD player & SD TV. Audyssey did have the rears set to be less hearable from list. pos. When I remembered, duh, I can bump the backs up by +6dB to hear up front I did that. She always gets blasted when back there when I am watching an action BD, where I want the full effect. She would REALLY like for the Backs to be more forward, so they do not effect that are so strongly. For me... damn it, if I have 7.1 backs, I want to hear them! Hence, the mounting more forward idea.

The center of the listening field is 11.5' from each side surround. If I made the backs 11.5' from center point (measured at an angle from speaker to center point), they would be 6.5' from back wall. This would be directly over the middle of the kitchen and dining room table (where she'd most likely be). So the QS8 woofer would fire directly down in the area she is. I wonder if a strong part of the blast comes from the tweeters which of course fire away from the spot (but overhead).

From your mentioning it, I do recall it is good to have backs the same distance away as sides from ctr. list pos. But I was thinking Audyssey could adjust for them being closer. Hmmmn... Thinking of the blasting affect to the back areas left and right of room center, I wonder if a single 6.1 QS8 mounted either on ceiling or suspended a bit down, 7' back of list. pos., would be less annoying for someone who would be say 7' off center and in line to 2' back of the 6.1 down/up firing QS8? Ceiling mount w/ 4" top clearance would make the 6.1 QS8 30" higher than the sides.

I don't like the idea of less speakers from the back, but if this sounds decent, it could dampen the back area annoyance factor.

Does tilting down really make any difference with a QS8???
Thanks

I was just eyeballing your drawing and estimating the distance. The rears don't HAVE to be the same distance. What is the furthest back from the seat you can go without interfering with the kitchen/dining room.

My left/right surrounds are futher away from the center seat than the rears. When you set things up with the receiver setup you can adjust the distance setting, no problem. I've never tilted my Qs8's downward, but have always wondered. My bottom driver is about 7ft off the floor and seems to work fine, but could it be better?

Randy,
I don't have any idea how loud the QS8's would be if you wer sitting directly under one or say back 3-4'. Can you speak to that?
I believe you said your backs were 3' or so behind your 'second row'. How far back are they from your front row? I too believe the +/- dB adjustment of Audyssey (or manually) can adjust easily for the sides/ backs being different distance form primary list pos. I'm just not sure where the balance would be for front SQ and back low annoyance factor. If I knew how sitting under or 3-5' back of a QS8 during a loud action sequence, I could better judge that sweet spot. I certainly will find out when I order them and test it out.

So my 'current plan', as of this nano second ;o) is to order 4 QS8's and try various SBL & SBR distances back as well as their separation. I will also try a single as a 6.1 at the peak of the vaulted ceiling (w/ ≈4" top clearance). I may try the not too attractive idea of dropping the 6.1 down some so as not to be as far above the sides. I do not know if 'pointing down' from the ceiling center, say 6-7' back would be good enough to simulate being lower. One good thing about a 6.1 QS8 is that it would be in the center of the room over the tile bar/counter, so even farther away from from both the dining room and the kitchen areas.

OK, I received my two color samples today. Light Maple and Beech. I was sure I'd love the Beech and that it would blend best with our maple woodwork. I wanted to see the Light Maple, because I knew it was closer to white and might not stick out as much from the white ceiling.

Originally,I was thinking black for the 3 fronts with the sides and backs being either Beech or Light Maple. Now I am thinking having a wood color up front might be nice with so much black already up front. Especially, when I moved the mock M-80's away from the TV as Dean suggested.

The two samples have not grabbed me that much (yet). I was thinking I would love the Beech. I saw in the Sample page a High gloss cherry listed. This is not listed for the M80's, VP150 or QS8's. Is it available? Does it have an increased cost over the three listed colors?

Thanks

Ok first tell your camera to stop dropping acid.

Seems to me you have a handle on your speaker placement. I like the way you use the mockups.

If you haven’t already you might want to do some googling for primers on speaker placement and room acoustics. Not that we don’t like giving advice but you seem like the type of person who likes to roll there sleeves up and get into why and how things work. Here’s just one example of something to check out.

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-SFOQChOXcnQ/learn/learningcenter/home/speakers_roomacoustics.html

While acoustics is technically a science once you start getting away from simple shapes and patterns it gets so complicated, quantifying things becomes difficult. Throw various listeners into the mix and it becomes even more of an art than a science.



I preferred to tonal balance between the M22 than the VP150. Something bothered me about the VP150 from the start but didn’t realize what it was because the VP150 didn’t sound perfectly balanced with the M80s in my room until I happened to experiment with a “phantom center” (using the mains to simulate a center speaker as in normal stereo). In some movies and all multi-channel music things sounded both richer and smother using the 2xM80s alone.

Once I got another M80 and M22s I experimented and found both were better tonal matches as centers for the M80 mains, however, because of the difference in position they still sound a little different but not as noticeable. Hell I can even hear differences between my mains because of their different positions in relation to the walls which is one of the reasons I‘m so uptight about symmetry. At the end of the day most people including an audio engineer friend don’t notice the differences (only one person has) the way I do. Based on a lot of reading I really do believe it has something to do with whatever has caused my dyslexia. Two possible symptoms of dyslexia are being easily distracted by sounds and hearing things not apparent to others. So take my issues with horizontal speakers with a grain of salt.

A couple things I noticed were that the farther away, my seating was only 6 feet, I got from the speakers the more balanced they sounded VP150 included. Also the farther, up to about 4 feet, they were pulled out from the front wall and/or TV screen the more balanced they sounded.

One sort of funny thing…when I called Noreen at Axiom to place my second order 1xM80, 2xM22s and 2XQS8s she must have wondered what the hell sort of 5.0 system I was creating because she hesitantly started to explain to me that people usually need 2XM80s.


Here are some articles to explain part of the theory and physics that my be behind why I prefer vertical to horizontal center speakers in general.

This introduction…
http://www.audioholics.com/education/loudspeaker-basics/vertical-vs-horizontal-speaker-designs

…and conclusion…
http://www.audioholics.com/education/lou...evaluation.html

…explain it a little.

Cheers,
Dean

Check out Jason's HT pics for photos of the high gloss cherry.

It IS an extra cost (15%?) and is available on all speakers. It gets raves around here whenever someone gets it!

Just look at Jason with his arms all stretched out, big smile on his face and surrounded by a boat load of gorgeous speakers ... I am so @(&%!_$ #%^@(&! of that little @*^_!&@ happy for him.

%^#@ %!* Way to go Jason!

Rick, like you have any reason to get that excited over someone else's setup!

Charles I'd surely love to have the HG finish on our stuff, looks gorgeous from all of the pics I've seen ... wasn't an option whenever I bought.

Oh, that sucks that you bought before it was an option. Anyway, I was just messing with you because I drool over the pictures of your home theater. I agree that the high-gloss finishes are beautiful, but even if money wasn't an issue, I don't know that I'd go for it. I'll still set aside a little jealousy for the people who do have it, though.