Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Agony

Axiom Speakers: They sound freakin' awesome. (tm)



Great, Henry. Please do report back about any differences you perceive after adding the Behringer to the mix.

Looking forward to your thoughts Henry.

All right, I have done some listening to the Behringer.

Unfortunately I do not yet have everything set up to place the Behringer in the room behind the TV, so I have it on the component shelf for now. This means that I can hear the fan, and it is a distraction until I crank up the volume a bit.

Anyway, my first step was to set the gain dials. The Behringer goes up to 32 dB of gain, and I think it could blow the M80s at that level. I went up to 28 before getting nervous, then dialed it back to 26. I hope my babies didn't get hurt, because they sure shook the house for a couple of seconds!

This is far from an A:B comparison since I did not level-match and it takes time to move the speaker cables. There is no easily discernible difference between the Pioneer and the Behringer, but at higher volumes the upper mid-range sounded better and the lower ranges sounded tighter with the Behringer. At these volumes the Pioneer is close to max (plus it is only rated down to 6 ohms) while the Behringer is barely ticking over, so my guess is the Pioneer was starting to lose control.

My room is big and still somewhat bare, and I know it is causing some harshness. Interestingly, the Behringer seemed to sound less harsh. So far the Behringer is looking good, except for the fan noise. Not bad for $250.

Thanks for the update.

Henry, what kind of spl do you reckon will drown out the fan noise (approx), to give us some idea. Presumably from your post, it will be much quieter when rack mounted....

Adrian, it's hard to say, but louder than "casual background music" level. The biggest problem is that you hear the fan during quiet passages in the music. So for me it has to go somewhere where it can't be heard at all.

There was another thread on here with a link to a video showing that some Behringer amps with variable gain suffered a huge amount of distortion when at about 64%. That would be 20 dB on that dial. It was over a range of only a couple dB, but the amp performed really poorly there.

I don't remember the model, but it is something to be aware of, when adjusting the gain back from full.

Yes, I was aware of that video even before I bought my Behringer. The video concerns a different (older) model completely, but it did make me hesitate before buying.

In my listening I could not hear any distortion. If anything, I would characterize the Behringer + M80 combo as "effortless" in producing very high SPLs. Also, after setting the gain at 26 I powered it off, unplugged it, and moved some cables around before plugging it in again and doing some sit-down listening. The volume was then controlled at the source and I do not intend to adjust the gain again, ever.

That was the "A500", Chris.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that distortion happened only when the gain was being turned up or down through 2/3rds gain approx....would this mean that if you left it at, say 50%/75%/100% and used the master volume on your preamp, you wouldn't have said distortion?

I understood it as: You would get that distortion anytime the volume control (gain) was at that setting...i.e., 75% or 80% or whatever it was.

If you left the gain on the amp at 100% (all the way up), you would be fine in controlling your actual output level by using a preamp while inputting...and controlling your volume with that.

That's more-a-less how I understood it as well, Mark. Don't most people turn the gain up to max/near max on the separate and use the preamp volume?

I've never had a separate so I'm curious as to what people do in this instance.