Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater QS8 Placement!

Very true. I read somewhere that QS-8s need to be a minimum of 6 inches from the ceiling to allow room for the upper woofer to fire. Do you think the same would hold true for the back wall to allow room for the tweater?

I would say at least 12" in from the side wall.

Well, I moved the QS8 slightly behind my listen position. While watching Any Given Sunday I heard background sounds I never noticed that were there before. Maybe it was due the fact I was paying more attention to the sound, but it does sound better with the QS8 placed slight behind my listening position.

I've experimented with QS8s in a 5.1 config at the Dolby and THX-recommended approx. 90 degrees, the ITU-recommended 110 degrees, and at about 135 degrees. To my ear roughly 90 degrees works best for both music and movies. 110 isn't too bad, but more than that gives a surround gap on the sides, and a loss of envelopment (at least in my limited listening tests).

MiniRock and The One:

It's keeping the QS8's woofers away from a rear-wall/side-wall intersection that can be problematic, rather than the tweeters. The closer you move the QS8 to a corner, the more likely that upper-bass reinforcement from the two walls (plus the ceiling) will color upper bass sounds.

Somewhere in the FAQs on our site that I wrote and edited is a statement I picked up in conversation with Roger Dressler, one of the chief Dolby Labs engineers and developers of Dolby Digital 5.1, Pro Logic II, etc.

If you draw an imaginary horizontal line that runs across your seating area from wall to wall, then the Dolby "ideal" is up to 15 or 20 degrees to the rear of that horizontal line, above ear level, etc. as the quote from the Dolby site notes.

Because of their multi-directional dispersion, the QS8s are very forgiving. My own are not exactly opposite each other or at the same height, and I don't notice any adverse effects (one is slightly forward of my couch on the right wall).

To experiment, get a couple of stepladders to temporarily position the QS8s in different locations and listen.

Regards,

How about rotating the QS8s 90 degrees, so one tweeter faces the ceiling? In my room, I don't have any wall space that would accomodate them other than up near the ceilings.