Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater 5.1 Surround Setup with M60's as mains

rdwarn, don't go away mad, or go away at all. We're nice.

The receiver issue is huge. Like Snippy said, what you're driving the speakers with could be an issue, not only from the Bose proprietary perspective, but also regarding center channel functionality. For instance, if you've got a modern, Dolby Digital receiver, you will almost certainly be able to run a phantom center channel with the M60's. Depending upon your room and tastes, you might find that option much more satisfying than using the Bose in the middle.

I don't have a good understanding of how the Bose system works; are the cubes powered by or crossed-over by the sub or something? Or can you just wire them up to standard outputs like regular speakers?

I love my Axioms. You'll be absolutely delighted with the difference you hear compared to the Bose.

I too am suffering in Boseland, and am planning to replace the 5.1 setup with a 7.1 Axiom setup. Getting Axiom L/R mains would be a great enhancement to the sound, but you are going to have major problems with bass.

When I got my Denon 4802, I was surprised to find that little or no bass was coming out of the "bass module." I found later that the receiver's crossover was on, filtering out all sound below 80 Hz and sending it to the LFE output, except there was no real subwoofer in the system, and all the low bass was being lost. What the Acoustimass system does is having the speakers plug into the bass module first, which filters out the LFE, and then there's an output from the bass module to the receiver. By having Axiom L/R speakers, you need to set them to Large in the receiver settings, or else bass from the left and right channels will go nowhere. The best solution would be to get an SVS or HSU subwoofer, throw out the bass module, and wire all the speakers directly to the receiver.

I hope this all makes sense, and best of luck.

Steve

P.S. - This is assuming you have a non-Bose receiver. If you have a Bose receiver, there's no way around the bass loss.

In reply to:

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If you have a Bose receiver, there's no way around the bass loss.

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I could have sworn I read "Bose deceiver." I was laughing out loud, but it was all in my head.

I'd second the "please don't leave" comment. It's an unfortunate reality (depending on how you look at it) that any forum related to electronics and frequented by men breeds a somewhat "animal house-like" environment.

However, I assure you of all the corners of the web that I've rummaged for help since starting my home theater research, this has been the most helpful, interesting, informative place to come. And that's saying a lot because I've met a TON of helpful people all over the net.

My two cents is limited to about a ha-penny right now because you don't even want to know what my rig is...but I have heard a family members Bose, and I've read a lot about them all over the internet and I wouldn't recommend you mix them with anything.

-Nick

I think I'll have a little Office Space revenge when I finally get rid of these cubes.

I apologize to all...sorry I'm new here (as if you couldn't tell). I over reacted. Won't happen again. Anyway, let me get down to the business of why we are all here...quality speakers. To answer the question about my reciever, I have a mid-level 100 Watt Sony Reciever...again, I know this isn't great but hopefully it will sound ok with my new Axiom M60's. If these Axioms are even half as good as everyone says I think I will be very very pleased. I'm waiting for a pair of Black Oak or Boston Cherry to be posted on the Outlet Store.
What gauge speaker wire would anyone out there recommend with M60's? Right now I have 16 gauge Monster wire for my Bose.

Oh, if you're going with M60s, you'll be fine with the bass for a time. You may have to do some fancy footwork to just get the Bose to cover the centers and surrounds (but I don't really know, never having owned Bose...) The 16 gauge speaker wire will be fine.

Oh yeah. And you'll be blown away.

RD, on your latest question, since your M60s will probably be no more than 10 feet or so from the receiver, the 16 gauge Monster is plenty(although grossly over-priced). On the use of the Bose, because of the somewhat different construction it'll be unlikely that an integration with the M60s would be very satisfactory, especially for the center. You haven't described what crossover provisions your Sony has, but having the M60s handle all the bass and crossing to the Bose's at 150Hz or higher might give fair results.

After reading some posts from others on speaker wire I have been enlightened that I do not need to spend the big bucks for Monster Cable. Being ignorant is expensive!! So the guage of the wire can most be related to the distance the speakers are from the reciever...the further away they are the lower the guage should be...is that the general rule of thumb?
As for my reciever I'm not sure what the cross over is. I'll have to read the manual tonight when I get home from work. Excuse my ignorance but if I were to pop in a CD, set my reciever to one of the 5.1 surround modes, would the same signal be sent to all 5 speakers? Would all 5 speakers recieve the same bass? I assume with a DVD encoded with say 5.1 DTS that my reciever is not putting the same signal through to all 5 channels because the DTS decoder is channeling the proper sound to each speaker.

Thanks

All you have to do with the receiver is turn the subwoofer setting to off. That will send all the bass to the M60s, and you won't have to use the lack-of-bass module.