Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners What speaker for sixth channel

Don't try and talk me out of it, I will be buying a sixth speaker to go in the rear as a sixth channel. I already have the wire there from the old surround that was there.

The question now is, do I want another QS4 or what about an M2 on wall? What would you guys do, and why one over the other?

Two QS4's.

Trouble maker.

Yeah, 6 channel is dead, man.

QSwhatever. Fer sure.

It's still alive here

In all seriousness, I seem to recall that a direct radiator is a bad idea; your brain flips it over and makes it in front of you instead of behind you.

If your set on 6.1 Rick, and have the room behind you, I would think a Qs4 or Qs8 would do a fine job.

What this upside-down M2 doing in front of me? I thought I put you on the back wall...?

Order one M2 and one QS4 and do some testing and then let us know your results I will add if you have 4' or more behind you then I say M2 less than 4' go with QS4, just my 2 cents.

QS is your best choice, I've also heard that a direct radiator postioned directly behind you will sound as if it is coming from the front, but by all means experiment.

Telekinesis, man. Best way to enable it is with a direct radiating rear surround.

Well if you insist on going with a single rear channel verses two, you will not have discrete R/L sound in this channel. What you will hear will be matrixed sound from the R/L surround channels. In this case, the obvious choice is to go with a non directional speaker such as the QS series. I would not use a direct radiating speaker unless you run two for a 7 channels sound, and only if you have plenty of distance between the speakers and where you plop your ass down, 6 feet or so.

Whatever you do, you'll enjoy the rear channel and don't believe those who tell you differently.

I would get the QS8 or similar design. I’ve used both QS8, M22, and VP150 as a single rear speaker and found that for the center seat (sweet spot) the direct radiators were useless. I couldn’t tell if the sound was coming from behind or in front of me. The QS8 was a slight improvement upon this for directional sounds and helps a lot for ambience if there’s a large gap between the side surrounds.

Rick, your best chance to minimize the back/front reversal that's been mentioned, and which Dean experienced, is to use a speaker as multi-directional as possible.

hence a Q series speaker.

Another QS4 it is then.

Just put in an order for a QS4.

Congrats!

Very nice



Funny thing is, LOTR blu-ray just came out with 6.1 DTS Master.

I am considering going 6.1 in my room as speaker placement is tough with 7.1 in there, and it's not a big room. I don't know that it's a big enough upgrade over my 5.1 though, only have about 3 or 4 feet to the wall behind the couch.

I wish there was such a thing as 4.1 with only 1 QS8 speaker in the back of the room. I think that would work out the best with my living room, because of bad placement options for all other options. Just the Center of the back wall would provide optimal placement. Is there a way to wire this up, by combining the LR and the RR wires into one speaker? Without this option, I'm just going to do without the surrounds.

Original Dolby Surround was just one channel of information played out of two speakers. Prologic (not II), was 4 channels (L, C, R, and Surround). I don't know of any current receivers which allow for a single surround channel, but plenty do 6.1. But there may be, I've just not looked for that feature.

You could still place the L&R surrounds very close together on the rear wall.

Yeah, I could do one above the other. But to save money, I would only need one.

The reason why the other walls are not good is because along the wall where I have my recliner, the RR would have to be placed right above my head, and the LR would have to be placed above the curtains on the other side with no clearance between curtains and ceiling. Along the back wall, a window with curtains eats into one side, while my tower computer stand eats into the other side, leaving only the center area open.

Edit: Even if there were an available AVR for this, I wouldn't be spending the money on it. I just bought one about 6 months ago.

Hmmm, I wonder if you only hooked up the rear channel without side surrounds what would happen. Would this play in the manner you are looking for?

I have 7.1, there are 2 rear channels. (I had hijacked this thread, the 6.1 was someone else's.)

A single rear without the sides would end up missing a lot of content. It would be up to the receiver to detect a single surround, and then run in the old Prologic 4.1 mode. I don't think any current models do that. But if you picked up an old non-II model, it would work to hook up just a single surround and feed it with matrix stereo audio only. (It isn't much of an option, really.)

I might have to try it to see if the 3808 will default to a single surround/rear channel and matrix it properly.

It looks like the only way to make my AVR produce 4.1 sound is by listening to only stereo sources with the standard sound mode set to the Pro Logic mode. I don't see any instructions to make this work with surround sources.

I only have a rudimentary understanding of electronics, from some reading and kit building when I was a teen, but it seems that if diodes were connected to each surround speaker wire to keep any voltage from backtracking to the source, that you could connect the output from both of the surrounds together into a single wire to be connected to the surrounds. May also need to limit the voltage before it went to the speakers.

We got the other QS4 in today. Right after work I got it hooked up and calibrated. IMO it is well worth the extra money to add the center back channel. It's not like you hear anything different than before it is just more of it.

I'm listening to the Eagles Farewell DVD and the sixth channel adds quite a bit to the mix. I'm very glad I went with the it.

Glad you like it. I always liked my 6.1 in the old house. The new place is not 6.1 friendly (couch 18" away from back wall) but I may try it anyway.