Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater m-80s with m-22s up front??

if your yamaha has preout then you can add an additional 2ch amplifier or 2 monoblocks dedicated for the M80, and run the M22 off of your yamaha, if you stack or pair them together I suspect the overall sound quality is going to suffer due to the different nature of amplification. my advice...not a good idea.

Just use the M80 as your main and setup the M22 in other room. You said you want more punch, how about getting another pair of M22 and run all 4 of them upfront? parallel them will give you a 4ohm load, assume you yamaha can handle it. Technically, 2 pairs of M22 have more drivers(cone area) than M60, and they should have very close output to that of M80, with less bass extension but you have two 12" sub to handle the lower region so that shouldn't matter, left alone 2 pairs of M22 = $800 and 1 pair of M80 = $1100, you do the math :-) If you must pair the M80 and M22 together, then wire them in series and that will give you a 6ohm load.

JoninFlorida,

Before the era of discrete Dolby Digital 5.1, Yamaha always promoted the "presence" speaker setup, which did indeed widen and make the front soundstage more "expansive" and spacious, a significant improvement over the old Dolby Pro Logic processing. If memory serves, the extra pair of front presence speakers are driven from their own amp so they should not present any impedance problem.

In my judgment, the "presence" speakers are not required anymore and I suspect they would muddle the front soundstage. Besides, it's a Yamaha proprietary format and not the way movies are mixed. You can always try it if you like.

By the way, Yamaha is still iffy re driving 4-ohm M80s and the older models definitely did not do so. If you want more punch, get the M60s, which are an easy 8-ohm load.

And don't connect speakers in series if you want fidelity and accuracy. The impedance curves of each speaker will interact and alter frequency response when speakers are connected in series.

Regards,

Thanks Alan, good info. I think my Yamaha rxv-1400 has enough power. Maybe some can weigh in on it. Not that weight dictates power, but this is a big amp 40 lbs. It has plenty of brut. And has very good power, 770 watts @ 7 channels. (110 w.p.c.) It does not seem to be overstated power like I have seen in the past. I had a a cheap Sony that was rated at 100 watts per channel. It just seemed very lite duty, I use it in my garage now. There is no way this Yamaha is only 10 w.p.c. more, it plays twice what the Sony did.