Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater VP 100 and Infinity Minuette

New to the boards...

I have my first Axiom brand speaker (VP100) on its way to my house to be one of the first replacements for my current home theater system.

I currently have a Pioneer DVD player, Technics SA-DX930 receiver (5.1), and Infinity Minuette speaker system.

I've always been annoyed with the utter lack of clarity in dialogue in my Infiniti's. I've also become bored of the flatness and lack of detail of the speaker system, hence the start of an upgrade.

My question is...when I get the VP100 and have not yet upgraded anything else, do you think I will be happy with the improvement, or do you say that I should not expect too much until I upgrade the rest of my system.

I'm worried that my receiver is a main culprit of the lack of detail in sound. Do receivers (this one is like 4 years old) cause lack of detail? From what I've read on the forums, that is up for debate.

The next step in my upgrade will be the M50ti's along with pretty much everything else that comes in the Epic 50 set.

I'm also going to be going with either a HK or Denon receiver...leaning toward HK at the moment.

I couldn't find a lot of information on the Minuette center but it looks like it has 2x 3-1/2" woofer/mids. With the VP100 replacing it I think you will see two things :

- dialog will get much more clear

- music etc... will sound a bit smoother but there won't be a night and day difference

I was putting together a "zero budget" HT system for my brother-in-law and found that hooking my VP100 up with some cheap tower speakers made a surprising difference. Without the center I did not enjoy listening to the cheap towers, but with the VP100 hooked up and listening to music in a surround mode I could listen and enjoy.

I think you will be happy with the results. If not, play with the placement of the VP100 (mostly make sure the front of the speaker is in front of anything else). I don't think the VP100 is touchy with placement, just that a less good speaker is gonna sound crappy wherever you place it so you don't have anything to lose, but with a good speaker you get rewarded for moving it around to find the right spot.

That makes me feel better, thanks. I can't wait to get the M50ti's!!!

>>I'm worried that my receiver is a main culprit of the lack of detail in sound. Do receivers (this one is like 4 years old) cause lack of detail? From what I've read on the forums, that is up for debate.

The one thing I think you could get agreement on is that the receiver makes less difference than the speakers. My personal take on the receiver issue is that when you are operating the receiver near its limits there can be a big difference between two brands, but between two good recievers operating at normal power levels the differences are small to non-existent.

Since I took the time to take out my receiver owner's manual for the first time in years, I was reading through it and found an option that I hadn't done yet.

There was an option to change the speaker size from Large (default) to Small. I think I can consider all of my Infiniti's as small (defined as being able to produce bass under 100Hz or not), so I went ahead and changed all the settings to small except for the center since I'm getting the VP100 tomorrow. It did make a slight difference in clarity since the result seemed to be that the receiver took away any tones below mid-range, letting the subwoofer handle it, giving the rest of the speakers less sound to have to handle.

Good move. If you have the ability to adjust the crossover frequency (not all receivers can do this) you might want to try raising it from 100 Hz to 120-150 Hz. My guess is that your speakers won't be flat down to 100 Hz so you'll get a bit of a "hole" between the small speakers and the subwoofer.

Some will say "don't raise the crossover frequency because then you will be able to hear where the subwoofer is" -- but (a) having flat response is more important IMO, and (b) if you stick the subwoofer near the TV the ability to localize is not a problem anyways.

Well, I received the VP100 yesterday and had a chance to test it out. You were right, the dialouge is day to night difference! I turned off the subwoofer and toggled between stereo with my two front sides, then surround with center @ +10 and it was amazing how much more frequency level is output from the center. It was two speakers against one, but the center truly outshined. With the sub turned back on and everything set to regular levels (with the center at +8 since it is now anchoring my system ), you were also right in that there wasn't a huge difference in overall sound, other than dialouge, but either way...I'm extremely happy.

I mentioned getting M50's as my next upgrade, I think it was a typo...

With a 13x16x16 room, do you think M60's would be overkill? I know first hand that the bigger the floorstanders (read more mids/tweeders), the more sound immersion they give you. I'm not going to be in this house forever and the next house will have a much larger room so I'm keeping that in mind too.

On another subject, I'm going to start another thread with pictures of my now skewed system.

In reply to:

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With a 13x16x16 room, do you think M60's would be overkill? {{SNIPPED}}. I'm not going to be in this house forever and the next house will have a much larger room so I'm keeping that in mind too.

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I had the same situation.

I went with the M60s in a smaller room (13x13) and I'm happy I did. They're great where they are, and I know if I refinish the attic someday, as I hope to, I'll have a great room that'll really let the M60s show off even more!

I'm now second guessing the VP100 over the VP150, but I just didn't like how huge the VP150 was during my selection process. Has anyone here heard both side by side to compare the difference? Considering dialouge and surround effects are the main sounds coming from them, I figured it wouldn't be that big of a sound difference (just maybe overall sound level ability) that is why I chose the VP100 (other than physical size).

If you don't mind an oversimplification :

- big room, consensus is that the VP150 sounds a bit better than VP100

- smaller room, nobody can hear any difference

It's not quite that black & white but seems pretty close.