Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Soundstage of v4 on-walls

I have M3v4 bookshelves mounted on Axiom stands in the living room. I'm driving them with a 17-year old Denon that doesn't have room correction. I have complete flexibility in laying out the room but no matter what I do, I can't get anywhere close to the v4 holographic soundstage I enjoy with the M5HP in Mojo's Dojo. This is not an M3 problem; I placed the M3s in the dojo and got a very similar soundstage to the M5s. Rather, it's a real difficult room that is open to the rest of the house and has a 5-pane bow window (which incidentally focuses the image onto the floor when the M3s are placed in front of it).

I am wondering if on-wall v4 speakers may be better for my application. Can anyone comment on what the quality of the soundstage is like with on-walls? Do you hear width, depth, height and lots of space between the instruments or are you just hearing images collapse to the left, right and centre?

Sorry Mojo, can't be of much help and I doubt you will find anyone using on-walls in a 2 channel setup. On-walls, in my opinion, are already a bit of a compromise (usually for aesthetics and space constraints) and the inability to effectively toe/angle them limits their effectiveness to tweak ever so slightly.

In my case, my on-walls (2xM22's and a VP180) are also supported by 4 ceiling speakers, 2 QS-4 surrounds and a pair of M3 bookshelf's as rears. Needless to say, with DTS:X or Dolby:ATMOS processing, I have no issues with holographic imaging

Now if Axiom could only figure out how to do in-floor speakers to get that truly 360-sphere sound I've been craving...

@Mojo I have eight M3v4 on-wall speakers!

Currently all set for surround and overhead Atmos/DTS:X duty.

I could possibly move a pair up front in place of my M60s, but I don't know how good of a test it would be as they would just be sitting on the ground and about 3 feet away from my front wall.

I don't really do any 2-channel listening if that is a key factor.

I guess I could say this. Since I am using them for all of the surround effects and Atmos/DTS:X, they are pretty capable.

I do have a heavily acoustically treated dedicated room though.

@TDIPablo, I agree. In-floor speakers would be wild. hehe

Mojo, I recently purchased a VP180 On-Wall (pre-Black Friday sale). This speaker is phenomenal! Initially I was looking at the VP180 however the overall size did not work with the media cabinet (BDI) the wife and I are planning to purchase. My system now consists of an EP350, VP180, M60's and QS8's. My wife actually approved the on-wall speaker so I am ahead of the game. The soundstage has improved dramatically and now I am toying with the idea of upgrading my older M60's to the M5HP On-walls to complete the system. I have found that I very rarely listen to music in stereo mode so giving up the cabinet size of the M60's will free up some floor space and create a nice look with the 70" flat screen and on-walls. Note: the original centre channel was a VP100 however it was over worked in a 4,300 cubic foot living room.

I can see how an on-wall or in-wall center is no different than a free-standing one from a sound quality perspective because a center speaker does not lend to the illusion of stereo. There is no stereo image for a center. The left and right front channels though might be a different story. I don't think you can get a 3-D soundstage with on or in-walls but I could be wrong because I've never heard them. Maybe it's possible and if so, that's a secret that we should all know about. If so, why buy floor-standers and take up all that space?

I used to listen to music in PLII. Since I got the v4, I've ran into very few songs that sound better in PLII. The holographic soundstage is adversely affected in PLII. By holographic, I mean the soundstage is wide beyond the speaker boundaries, deep and tall, images are well-defined like light spectra through a prism and there is a sense of blank space between those images.

Not sure you can achieve what I described above with on-wall M5s.

Hmmmm...thinking about this more, I think the holography is a function of the lateral reflections and relationship between the listening window and sound power curves. Reflections from behind the speaker are mostly due to port output and cabinet diffraction and should be absorbed at the front wall. With that, assuming the listening window and sound power curves of in-walls is "similarly good" to floor-standers/bookshelves, in-walls should be the best in term of soundstage because their rear reflections are absorbed in the wall. The second best would be on-walls. If this is so, the only advantage of floor-standers may be improved placement flexibility and lower bass output.

Note the assumption above for the listening window and sound power curves of in and on-walls being similarly good to floor-standers is a BIG assumption that I have absolutely no basis for.