Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater The LFR 1100 Actives Have Landed

Lo and behold the FedEx truck pulled up this morning with my new speaker system. It’s been a bit of a journey since I first contemplated this purchase but they’re finally here. I’ll probably let them sit for a day or so in case they were handled by someone with Covid-19. We’ve been hit really hard in this part of the world. For those of you who have attained these, any suggestions about set up, break in, etc.? And curious, what was the first thing that you listened to?

Ian promises “audio nirvana.” Hoping for great things; this is the single most expensive audio purchase I’ve ever made.

My single piece of advice is do not mis-wire the woofers or mid-woofers to the tweeters. They will ignite as physics says they should.

Korkster - The surest way to make sure you wire the speakers properly is to connect each DSP out to the amp channel then to the speaker, one driver set at a time.

Front woofer DSP out > AMP Channel 1 in > Woofer input on speaker
Front mid DSP out > AMP Channel 2 in > Mid range input (front) on speaker

Do this on all ten sets of drivers, and you will be fine. It's tedious, but effective.

Make sure you put the speakers so the slight angle on the rear angles the drivers out. Start with the speakers with no toe in, and experiment over time.

They are also so neutral and clear, you may not be "blown away." Nothing jumps out at you - but you will start hearing details unlike ever before. You will notice you can listen for hours with no fatigue. You will realize the limiting factor is the quality level of the recording.

Thanks very much for the advice. I will make sure to take my time in hooking everything up; that’s part of the fun anyway. Anxious to see how this goes.

The real fun is hauling them all around your room to minimize the soundstage-trashing effects of position error.

I got everything hooked up yesterday and had a chance to do some listening last night. I had forgotten how you described the sound until reading this again this morning. The first thought that came to mind last night was what you said, “clear,” incredibly clear without sounding too bright. And non-fatiguing. And superb dynamics and contrast. A couple of songs that I listened to last night have a spot where there’s a pause and then the vocals return, and that contrast was impressive, if that makes any sense. Hard to explain, I’m not expert critic. BTW, I thought female vocals is where they really shine.

However, I’m missing a sense of what I’d describe as “fullness” maybe? The low end seemed a bit shallow. My wife said they sounded a bit “digital” to her; not sure what that means but...I kinda get it. It could be that the amps (ADA 1500’s) need to break in a bit and “warm” up. I was a bit disappointed in how brass instruments sounded, somewhat muted I thought, as opposed to acoustic guitars that sounded really sweet.

And you were also right in that I was not “blown away.” But what detail! I have a lot of listening to do in the next few weeks, and maneuver them around a bit. I put furniture sliders under each one to make it easier. These things are beasts to carry.

Korkster - Give the speakers a couple of weeks. One thing I will do for some break in time is loop a CD (yes, I am old school) that has some deep bass tracks. You don't need extreme volume - just enough to get everything moving. On our actives, the bass got progressively better over the first month.

A few years ago, Danny Ritchie (well known in the DIY community) ran a test with some high quality 6.5 inch woofers he uses in some full range speakers. After 100 hours, the Fs of the drivers was lower ... all the Parameters had changed. It was easy to plug the "fresh" speaker data and the "broken in" speaker data into the modeling software and "see" that the broken in speaker had a better bass response curve.

What is your preamp?

Thanks Craig. I am using the pre-outs on the Pioneer SC-1222 receiver that I was using before. I know its far from top of the line, but the speakers were a big enough purchase, so any upgrade there is going to have to wait a while. I’m using an Oppo BP-103 as my CD player, again far from top of the line, but....

The other thing I realized this morning, after reading your post again, is that I have the speakers backwards; the rear drivers are facing inward instead of outward. I was so proud of the fact that I got all of the wiring hooked up correctly, I forgot about that. Not sure if that will make tremendous difference, but will definitely reverse the two today. Duh!

Korkster - the slight angle won't affect the bass response. In fact, one would wonder how many could hear a difference under blind conditions between the two positions of the speakers.

The best recommendation is the break CD or streaming track. Also - check the polarity on the speaker wires to make sure all positives are to positives and negatives to negatives.

I’ll have to find one of my cd’s with some deep bass and put that on replay for a while. Thanks! I checked all of my speaker connections and its all good. I got all of the cabling from Axiom, color coded, which was a huge help; made things so much easier.

BTW, I’m looking forward to reading your review some day. Think I saw somewhere that you had written something up and sent to Ian and Andrew.