Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Which center for large room paired with M5HP's?

Lol, ok, I will try that reasoning out on my wife. I'm not sure if she will buy the not-so-good sound or possible distortion, but the talk about the toroidal transformer may just do the trick! She is an engineer after all.

Maybe I will do QS10's in the rear dining area and leave the QS8's on the sides in the living room area.

And you don't have to remind me about trading in equipment. I'm really good at justifying expenses to myself :-D But, I will hit you up when I need help convincing myself that I need omnidirectionals!

Well then...if your wife is an engineer, she'll understand if you tell her the 1500 can source 106 peak Volts and 42 peak Amps. That's 6 Horsepower. That's like...six times more than a moped at the same cost as a moped! LOL!

I went from a Crest Audio power Amp. 450 Watt x 2 to a ADA 1250 x 3. I have the M80s and VP160. When I first hooked my M80s to an external power Amp. the difference was noticeable immediately. Much larger and cleaner. I noticed parts of songs that more or less was muffled at moderate volumes.

At the time I was using a Teac Pro A.V.R. made by Onkyo Integra that had a Toroidal transformer."{100 watts x 7}" The difference was so great as soon as I added external power. I decided it was a must for me personally.

Mojo,
I know you're sold on the 1500 but I have a feeling most listen at a more reasonable level ... I mean most people don't don ear plugs before doing their critical listening

My suggestion of 2nd pair of speakers was not for movies but just to fill the cavernous space at a reasonable level ... for background music and such. I get the feeling that is not the application being discussed here ...

Heh heh...good one, Rich. Agreed the 1500 sounds excessive but not at 21 feet away with M5s. If he went with M100s, his 4500 would be adequate.

The M5s need four times as much power as the M100s to develop the same sound pressure level. Also, the M100s can be used without a sub at those high pressures whereas the M5s need a sub or they start to sound like a Basset Hound in a dryer.

BTW, what the vast majority of us needs is a 4 Watt per channel amp. That's it! But it needs to have 1024 Watts per channel dynamic capability.

Yeah ... well one needs to consider the room and the application. I get the feeling this area is more of a typical living space. So less emphasis on dynamics & imagining and more about just hearing the movie dialog and getting a sense of space. Just a guess.

I agree with 4 Watts/channel ... but you'll probably be ok with 128W of dynamics in that case (per channel, all channels driven)

The best reference I have is Renee Alstead's Hit the Road Jack on Tidal HD. I measured the quietest bits of that tune at 82dBC. The peaks are 103dBC and it could be that my meter is not capturing the true peaks. That's a whopping 21dB of macro-dynamics.

At my listening distance with the M5s, I need 4W to reproduce that 82dBC and 1024W to reproduce the 103dBC peaks.

The ADA-1000 can do it with the M3, M50 and M100. It can't do it with the M5. My Onk can do it with all speakers but it's not as clean as the ADAs (up to the 1000's limit). The ADA-1500 can do it cleanly with all and then a bunch more!

The M3 BTW struggles with that level above but the M5, M50 and M100 sound great.

This was definitely a consideration, but time is of value too. Taking the time to figure out how to extend the fronts & center to the other room seems too much. Plus there's still the expense of buying more speakers. Easier to just crank out more power from the existing.