Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater M80 placement....

Recently I was reading an old review (2005) on the M80v2 when it first debut and I took notice of the reviewers mentioning of where he found the M80's to sound best (to him). After much experimentation he settled in at 24 inches from the back wall, 6 feet from the outter walls, and 8 feet apart from eachother. Of course his room dimensions were different from my room, but I realized this was fairly close to where I found mine sounded best. After much experimentation I settled my M80's 20 inches from the back wall, 5 and 1/2 feet from the outter walls, and 11 feet apart from eachother.

I was just curious as to where others have settled their M80's in? And I won't exclude any M60 or M50 (do we even have any M50 owners in the house???) owners from this discussion. Book shelf speakers are a bit different, but hey if you want to throw your impressions of where they sound best, go for it.


P.S. It just occured to me that this has probably been done before. I haven't seen it been done since I've joined though, so this is a chance for new M80 owners like me to chip in. Does anyone have a link to a thread such as this from the past if there is one?

Unfortunately I have an irregular shaped room which dictates my speaker positioning more than I would like ie. I have two diagonal openings each side of the 80's. I have them about 7ft apart and toed in at approx 15* per side and because of the walkthrough on the outside of each tower, they are about 3-6 ft from the side walls depending which side. The left side is not backed by a wall at all(open to breakfast area) and the right side is partially open to the hallway. I didn't have too much in the way of placement options, but it sounds good to me. Ideally, I'd like to try them about 10 ft apart and with a complete wall behind them, but it's not an option(right now).

Mine are also in a compromise room (my living room in a 1000 sq ft apartment), so they're about 10 feet apart, 4 from the side wall, and about 6 inches from the back wall. No toe-in.
Also, I have M50s, but we shall not speak of their placement.

Mine are 6 and 1/2 feet apart with a slight toe in. They are about 12 inches from the rear wall and 3 feet from one side wall and 2 and 1/2 feet from the other side wall.

Cool, thanks. The most interesting thing I'm wondering about is placement from the back wall. In the review I read he had decided any closer than 24 inches from the back wall and the M80's bass sounded too 'boomy' to him. On the other hand, any further out than 24 inches and he said they started to sound a bit 'thin'. Perhaps I like 'boomy', because when I pulled them out (I tried them at 36, 30, 26, 24, 20, 18, and 15 inches from the back wall) much more than 20 inches and I could tell the bass dropped off a bit. Closer than 20 inches and the bass started to get a little blurry, not as punchy sounding (to me anyway).

To tell you the truth, before reading that article I had settled in at 18 inches. After reading it I played around with the placement some more and though I didn't like them 24 inches out, I did realize I liked them better at 20 than I did my previous placement of 18 inches away. I know, I know, 2 inches couldn't have made 'THAT' much of a difference. But believe me, I did move them back and forth quite a bit, and I truely did like them better at 20 then at 18.

So just for shits and giggles experiment just a bit with the placement if you haven't done so in a while, you just might find out (like I did) that the slightest change could make a fairly noticeable difference that you weren't aware of before. Also I must note, for the first 5 or 6 weeks I had both M80's toed in to the point that they were directly facing me in the captians chair. While that sounded very good, I came to find that backing them off a hair (they are now aimed about 2 feet out on either side of where I sit) actually gave off a more spacious sounding presentation.

Not to deviate from (my own) topic, but I just stumbled across 'in-ceiling' subwoofers on the internet the other day, has anyone ever had any experience with these at all? That would be a great way to add bass to an existing system, while also keeping those women happy that are strictly against 'big, ugly boxs' cluttering up their living rooms!!! Axiom doesn't make any, but there were offerings from JBL, Klipsch, Velodyne, Harmon Kardon, Boston Acoustics, Polk Audio and more.

Sounds like an interesting alternative for anyone experienceing space issues, or anyone in general looking for creative ways to expand their systems.

Also I did do a quick search and didn't find any specific matches to this sort of thread, but they only let you search back 12 months... that seems sort of odd? I'm sure there must be great material out there to be found that happened more than 12 months ago, I wonder why they capped it at 12 months?

Ah ha, so Axiom HAS sold at least one pair of M50's... and we're so lucky as to have him in our presence. I honestly have never once heard anyone commenting on a M50 since I joined this forum... well, that I can remember anyway!

I'm not sure if they cap it at 12 months, I think if the thread lays idle for that time, they may close it.

You've got me wondering about how much more bass I might have with a wall backing up my 80's now. I always felt they had plenty of bass despite my compromised room, even others have stated so as well. Hmmm......

Dude, you finally got speakers for the bathroom?

The bathroom of his mistress's place, maybe.

No, they're in my bedroom, but sort of willy nilly. One is next to the closet, the other is on the wall to the right of that next to the bed. They're rarely used, unfortunately. When i had them before the M80s, they were in similar positions to where the M80s are now, only farther from the wall.

Yeah, that's both Willy AND Nilly.

Out of curiosity, are the M80s closer to the wall than the M50s were because of the sound, or just more Willy Nilly Happenstance?

I haven't given names to my speakers yet.

I have. Left front, right front, left rear...

I do have one favorite I call Bob though.

Happenstance.

That is a really strange name for a speaker. Is that from one of those Hairy Putter books?

Micah, not sure this is what you meant, but you can set different 12 month search periods, i.e., 12 months to now, 24 months to 12 months, etc.

Oh I see... I thought it meant you could only look back 12 months and after that the threads locked or something. I thought that would be a shame.

I’m still in the process of moving them around. Right now the distance from the drivers is 30 inches from the side walls, 6 feet from the front (sort of wall) and 8’ 6” between each speaker with about 10 degrees of toe-in.

Eventually I will have two positions. Well actually two listening positions and possibly two speaker positions. One for movies, football and video games with the projector and screen and the other for surfing the internet (on the DLP or an LCD if it dies) and listening to music or watching TV (on a plasma).



I totally agree with you Micah. It’s why I always tell people to experiment with positioning their speakers and not be constrained by Dolby or THX recommendations.

A couple things that have surprised me how big a difference they made. One what elevating the speakers M80s or M22s. Makes them much more enveloping. A few of my stereo CD sound like 5.1 surround like this.

Has noting to do with their vertical dispersion pattern since just crouching down doesn’t have the same effect. I think is must have something to do with raising them higher in relation to the furniture so more sound is directly reaching and reflecting off the back and side walls.

I also discovered that my futon is a sonic black hole. I had everything set up just perfect using just using my mattress/box spring combo as a couch. Finally set up my futon and it just sucked the life right out of the room.

I need a futon like that. Die, room, die!

Hmmm... So what are you going to do, pick up more reflective furniture?

Space vampires!

It makes one hell of a room treatment. Bummer it’s to big to put in a corner.



Why actually yes I did. Picked up some metal frame reclining chairs with matching ottomans. Did the job acoustically but despite seeming very comfortable in the store they destroyed my back so I had to return them. Kudos to “The Room Store” for their return policy.

I will probably get a chaise lounge for individual viewing, and perhaps more traditional seating for when others are over. I’ve moved furniture to second to last just before room treatments on my list of things to buy now. I’m glad I dragged the futon out because I was shocked at how much just changing the seating effected the sound.



More like an Aural Vampire - Freeeeze!!

Yeah i wish.

Well, that was entertaining! Howcome vampires like that never hang out in my neighbourhood?

How is your 'moving into the basement' project coming along anyhow?

Are you saying that you have the old school vampires, you know, the Bela Lugosi types out your way Fred?

And they all speak with strong German accents. You should see them during Oktoberfest!

ONE!! One keg of beer....ahh...ahh...ahh!

TWO!! TWO kegs of beer...ahh...ahh...ahh!

.....

Have you ever seen a drunk vampire try to do the chicken dance?

It could be worse...a drunk vampire trying to do a chicken.

Mark, check on shipping charges from Arizona to New Hampshire and make Dean an offer. This thread may have the result of curing two rooms that suck in one fell swoop!