Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Lets plan a theater space

That's an interesting little table / workbench you put together there...

Center channel stand from scrap plywood. Pretty sturdy despite its look. And quick! One of those Sunday morning stores closed bodges.

Hooked up. CD on repeat at 70db till Sunday.

what was the old trick.. to put the two speakers facing each other and reverse the polarity on one of them so they are out of phase.

That reminds of a moment I had with a support person a long time ago in another company. The support person was talking to the customer on one phone and one of our software engineers on another phone trying to help the customer with an issue. After a bit of back and forth that was over her head, she simply reversed one handset and held the phones together so that the engineer could talk directly with the customer. Obviously the call did not go well and the support person did not last very long in that role. One of those, 'Really? That just happened!' moments

Back on thread track - The speakers look gorgeous, I hope they sound as good as they look after break in.

Cheers,

Like looking in the oven at a roast. Done yet? Hungry!!

Its been baking for a few days and I tried a piece. Tasty!

The best way to describe the changes may be to compare it to the prior towers. They were Mordaunt Short Mezzo 6s. I was expecting a massive change moving to the new super towers, but all the improvements, across the board, were incremental. I haven't had time to test with multichannel content, so impressions so far are 2.0 music in 2.0 listening. I am running them full range without subs for stereo use.

The most interesting change to note is how they interact with the room. LFR owners take note. The open back midranges resulted in changing the room treatments slightly. The SBIR traps located directly behing the old towers had to be removed. With them installed the midrange energy was decreased to a point where the upoer bass was perceived as heavy. Once removed the midrange balance improved considerably. I would suspect removing all surrounding absorbtion would further improve overall balance and spaciousness at the expense of clarity. Based on this experience I would suggest NOT treating immediate areas around LFR towers with absorption. It will cause a frequency imbalance not intended by the designer's DSP/crossover network.

The overall balance of the new towers is a 7db tilt up towards the bass region roughly hinged on 250hz. The measured -3db point in room was 18hz without sub assist. These are true full range'rs. Above 250hz the response is very flat with a couple db reduction per octave above 4khz until almost 20khz. This is a marked difference from the old towers. They did not exhibit much bass energy below 40hz and rolled off sharply after 12khz. The new towers exhibit more "air" and extended decay or sustain of cymbals, strings etc. They also handle low frequencies without the aid of a subwoofer and sound extremely tight and natural when doing so -similar to applying Socketman's dsp antimode 8033 in my experience. Bass is enveloping yet does not bloom. This is an improvement for music when compared to the old towers/sub combo. There is also a stronger definition of tones within the overall bass note. Further textured bass.

I was expecting the new towers to be a "thor's hammer" experience when it comes to their presentation. Not so. They are incredibly tight and precise sounding over most of their range without being overbearing. The exception is on recordings with sustained droning bass. Peter Gabriel's "blood of eden" begins with an enveloping, but heavy and sustained bassline. It was this track that highlighted the need to remove the SBIR traps to improve the balance of midrange to upper bass energy. You have to be careful about these towers' surroundings. They dont need help to make bass. M100 owners can probably relate.

The new towers have no volume limit, at least with my amplifier. It can now play painfully loud without sounding strained. The old towers would start to exhibit a tonal shift and the soundstage would collapse when pushed really hard. These dont. I have to be mindful of this as I increase the volume to feel a bassline -which is now possible at upper bass frequencies. Fun.

The overall soundstage/spacial impression of these towers is comparable the the towers I moved from. The difference with the larger towers is images are larger, broader and have more perceived physical presence. They are slighly more tangible but never a "sound ball". The nearby QRD diffuser prevents that sort of presentation anyway.

More thoughts once I get into multichannel content. So far so good. The old towers aren't going back in.

SUCCESS!

Yep, that sounds like success for sure

Any kind of "Thor's hammer" experience would be a negative IMO. Really good speakers don't sound like anything, they just get out of the way.

All that and they look fantastic too...

Feels good.

Spent the afternoon being lazy and watching movies. After a little bit of tweaking I found the system is elevated into uncharted territory by using the subs as well as the towers with a crossover of 60hz. The tower's strong upper bass blends very well into the subwoofers and provides plenty of tactile response. John Wick's gun blasts were each felt at the couch with more presence than I have ever been able to achieve in this room without artificially bloating the bass. The machine gun was really fun. I just ended up rewatching the whole thing. The cannon battle scene (Ch4) from Master and Commander can now be played sat reference without a hint of strain. What? I can't hear you.... What is already entirely apparent is just how capable and natural these babies sound. No strain. No sweat.

I still have to play around with dialing everything in and spiking the towers. For now I'm taking a breather to just enjoy them without analyzing them to death yet. They are pretty awesome. New toys, right! I expect once they are lifted off the carpet slightly the bass will improve further at the expense of extension. They are bottom ported with a vent cutout out of the back of the bottom base. Right now the port length may be artificially lengthened due to sitting on the carpet. They are only supposed to be tuned to 25hz and they are hitting 18hz no prob.

Here is an earlier pic showing what is sitting directly on the carpet. It will be interesting to see how raising them slightly off the carpet with spikes changes things -if at all.



P.S. The final tower weight is over 170lbs.

Ooh, ooh, I know !!

Spike-shaped holes in your floor and zero change in sound