Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Dual centers; vp180 & vp150?

I personally doubt it, I think a market for a smaller box, and on-wall variety of VP150 will still be around. Not everyone needs to satisfy a wide off-axis audience. Myself, for instance. But the VP160 will be a much better choice for those that can work it in. I've been much pleased with the output from my VP150. But since I can work in the in-cabinet model of VP160, I've decided to pre-order one of those.

Jball likes believing in troll comments over on AVS. I used the VP150 in my theater for many many years and there is no off-axis problems.

Try measuring a VP150 30 deg off axis and then come back and make that statement.

Get your flame suit Jball, everyone everywhere that doesn't sing the Axiom praise is a troll. They don't believe in science or your fancy measurement type stuff.

VP150 was the reason I went with another brand, couldn't fit the VP180 and VP160 was too tall. Dialog was hard to understand even sitting dead center or maybe even slightly to the left or right perhaps only 10-15degrees.

Thank you, Ken, for doing everyone else's homework!

Shareholder in the Making? Phooey! Defacto Axiom archivist and historian.

To some degree, I would have to admit that there is some drop-off with the 150 sitting off-axis but this can really only be determined by putting a "pink noise" signal through it and measuring that signal in that frequency range with an SPL meter. Realistically, when measuring in the same manner, there isn't a horizontal center channel speaker out there, regardless of price, that doesn't have some drop-off to one degree or another when moving off-axis, that is just the nature of the beast and the compromise of the center channel design. Believe me, I have tried and measured several brands. The only one that didn't have this issue was the now discontinued expensive Omnipolar channel designs from Mirage. Their particular tweeter design and positioning in the cabinet provided a pretty consistent signal as much as 80-90% off-axis, quite unique.

Prior to the introduction of the VP180, I was looking for a large center channel and tried one from Elemental Designs, the large A-6T6 5 driver behemoth from that company. Unfortunately, it had, by far the worst, off-axis performance of any that I have used, 2 and half to 3 db drop-off in level moving as little as 10-15% to the left or right of the sweet spot. Of course, it was returned almost immediately.

Now that I think about it, one of the reasons I prefer the VP150 over the VP100 is I can hear the center channel much better with the VP150. It's the VP100 I had an issue with off-axis listening.

Aren't there medications available for this type of behavior? Doc?

Nice find Ken.

I say give it a whirl. You'll need two separate amps though. Run a Y-connector from the pre out to the two amps. That is how I have my over/under screen center's wired. I have two, M22's running parallel under my screen, and one VP150 above my screen. I love it, and it does center dialog. There was about 1 db difference is sound between the VP and the M22's. Not enough to matter much. I have a VP160 on order, and I'm quite curious to hear how it plays with the VP150. I suspect it will play just fine.