Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Advice on 5.1 system

Hi to everyone here is what I'm thinking. M80's, VP150, and 4-QS4's. What I'm trying to achieve is good surround for the 2-rows in a 5.1 set up.
My room is 12ft.x23.4ft.x9ft.
Front row is 12.5-13ft. one surround at 14ft
second row is 17.5-18ft other surround at 21ft
I have a pair of QS8's and they are great I have them in the 21ft. position it is great for the back row but not for the front, so I wanted to know has anyone tried this. I have tried a 7.1 system in this room but I like the sound of a 5.1. I love the sound of my Axioms I do own a pair of M22's vp100 and the QS8's my bedroom system powered by an Integra 5.6 My media room I have rotel pre-amp and rotel amps. Any advice would be great thanks in advance Steve

Steve, the surround placement can't be optimized for both rows, so one plan is to optimize for the first row(e.g., about 3' behind)and have guests you don't really like all that much sitting in the second row.

I'd think that putting the surrounds directly to the side of the second row(i.e., about 5' behind the first row)would be a pretty good compromise.

The problem is there is a big window between the two rows. I have tried to mount above the window between the two rows but it is too close to the ceiling and didn't like the sound. The best spot I have found is at the 21ft. and 7ft. up on the wall plus it gets some reflection off the back wall. I played with the settings to get more output but have not got that right either. I do sit in the back row I was just trying to help the others that sit in the front. The other problem could have been I was trying mate the Q's with my paradigm monitor speakers.

A few things you might consider is to try running dual surrounds, one for each row. You might try to simulate that by putting both on the same side aligned with each row and see if you can get a feel for how it might sound if you did that on both sides. You could also just order another pair and if it doesn’t work send them back for about $30.00 shipping.

If you can use a ceiling mount to get around the fact there is a window between the seats you could mount them between the rows as John suggested using blinds or curtains to tame any potential harsh reflections off the glass.

Although it wouldn’t help with the surround soundstage you could get a receiver capable of using wide speakers which will help wrap the front soundstage around the front row more and give that row a different sort of ear candy.

Cheers,
Dean

you could tilt the surrounds, as well, in order to gain the space for the qs8 top drivers.

i've been meaning to do that for years. on my to-do list every summer.

that is what I'm thinking about doing is to put 2- QS'4s for the left side surround and 2-QS4's for the right side surround and run the whole system off my 5-channel amp. I do have some very heavy curtains on the window. Did play around with the tilt but the curtain is so high on the wall and heavy that it muffles the speaker a bit. So thats why I was thinking of run 2-sets of Q's in parallel and seeing how they are smaller than the QS8's I could tweak them a bit to have a bigger surround sound stage with having 4-of them but still in a 5.1 set up. So the QS4's would be placed at 14ft and 21ft and 7ft high on each side. The big question is does anyone think it will work, it sounds good in my mind but that is a whole different topic