Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Well color me ignorant!

Total noob question but in my infinite wisdom (or should I say lack of ) decided to remove the bridges from the 4 binding posts on my M60s when I first got them. I figured since I wasn't bi-wiring it wouldn't make a difference. Shows how much I know...

All this time I've been running my M60s with one pair of speaker wire without the bridge. After a quick email to Brent, he stated you should leave the bridge in place or else it will hinder performance! I had no idea and now I'm itching to go home a put those bridges back on.

My question is how much of performance gain or loss is possible with and without the bridge? Didn't want to ask Axiom since they would never think of doing that, but curious if anyone made the same mistake I did. Or can anyone try removing the bridge and offer your opinions on how different the sound is?

Thanks

Wouldn't you be powering EITHER the tweet/mid OR the Woofers if you wired to only one set of the terminals without the bridge? I wouldn't think the effect would be subtle. I think you are supposed to remove the bridge only if you are biwiring or biamping.

Tom is right on that.I would think you will notice one heck of an improvment once you get the other half of the speakers working.

Umm.. depending on which posts you had the speaker wire hooked up to (I'm assuming the lower, you may have missed the tweeters not being powered, but there's no way you missed the woofers not being powered)... you were just listening to half your speakers.

And don't you DARE call them bright when those tweeters kick in!

Bren R.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong. If you read the brochure that came with the speakers, I believe it states only to remove them if you plan to drive the woofers seperately from the tweeters/midrange, or bi-wiring. If you take the bridge out, depending on which terminals your using, I don't believe you'll be driving one or the other. My guess is that you are driving the tweeter/midrange, otherwise you would definately notice a problem. So, if your woofers are not getting any juice, you probably have a sub that is picking up the low frequencies, that is why you didn't notice. Once you hook up the bridge, you should notice a huge improvement. Make sure you have your crossover set right.

Does this mean that hashts was actually driving a pair of M30s?

Lol nice one Bob.

Damn now I feel like a total maroon!

According to my speaker manual...

Bi-amping: '..............Connect one stereo amp to the lower set of binding post on each speaker (the woofers), and the second stereo amp to the upper pair of binding post (the tweeters) on each.'

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Damn now I feel like a total maroon!

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Well then your in GREAT company hashts!

See there at least you have something to get excited about whenever you get home! Enjoy!

I disagree... I think he had the tweeter and mid wired, but not the woofers. I think you'd notice a speaker with only woofers! The tweeter and mid running would make it an M2, with a really big resonant area... Probably not half bad!

Hey Ken,

I'm pretty sure as Bren said I had the woofers wired and not tweeters. When I first got the speakers I would turn off the sub and redirect LFE to the mains and they sure provided a lot of bass.

I hardly listened to 2.1 so I guess having the VP150 on most of the time compensated for the fact the tweeters on the M60s werent being used. According to Bob and the manual, it seems I was powering the woofers and tweeters are being fed from the top 2 binding posts.

I sure feel humbled after making such a noobish mistake. And to think I have a lil bit of BOFH in me when my users do retarded things on my servers/network. Guess I can cut em a little more slack now

Well, you should enjoy the change!

So anyone sure which binding posts are tied to which drivers? More precisely, is the mid range driver (5.25") tied to the woofer or tweeter posts? (Sorry, Axiom - I refuse to call a 6.5" driver a "sub woofer" in a three speaker array. That's like Dominos calling their smallest pizza a medium.

Bren R.

Hash, there's no disgrace in the not being familiar with the connecting links on the M60s, since it's a rather useless feature. This has happened here before and although as I recall you're only the third one to admit it, I suspect there were other occasions. What we're still curious about is whether you had(or still have)the speaker wire connected to the top posts or the bottom posts. The bottom posts are connected directly only to the woofers and led someone who had switched from the M50s(only one set of posts)to the M60s about two years ago to be puzzled by the very "muffled" sound of the M60s(woofers rolled off above 200Hz). The top posts are connected directly to the mid and tweeter and not connecting the woofers would have led to a rolloff below the 200Hz crossover which the M60 uses, but having little response below say 100Hz probably would be less noticeable than having little above about 400Hz if only the woofers were connected. What say you?

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The top posts are connected directly to the mid and tweeter

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So that is the internal setup? In that case, yes, I wouldn't think he'd have had just the woofers connected.

Instead he had a very expensive M2.

Bren R.

Thanks for the encouragement John. I had the speaker wire connected to the bottom binding posts. Immediately got home and fired up Eagles DTS (in PCM stereo) and found only the 6.5" woofers firing. Heard absolutely nothing coming out of the mid and tweeter. So then I setup 1 speaker with the bridge connecting binding posts and left the other one alone.

Sure enough when I fired up the speakers, the tweeter and mids were certainly firing! And sorry Bren but they were REALLY, REALLY bright! Hehe just kidding...not trying to start a flame war or anything, but they didnt sound great obviously due to the fact I calibrated the speakers with only the woofers.

Anyways now I'm gonna recalibrate and Im fairly certain I will luv em cus they sounded great WITHOUT the mids and tweeters so I can only assume they will sound much fuller and clearer.

One of the lessons Ive learned in life is that you should always be able to laugh at yourself when making mistakes
I certainly made an honest mistake but its all good cus I'm keeping these speakers! Talk about an upgrade...from the new M30s to M60s for NO COST.

Thank YOU everyone for all your help!

Happy owner of M60s

>>Damn now I feel like a total maroon!

I imagine most of us have either done or thought something just as bad. Everything seems clear and obvious after a year but it wasn't very long ago that I was wondering how the 5.1 got from the DVD to the receiver without having 6 cables...

I thought we were talking about Bi-Wiring not Bi-Amping BrotherBob?

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I imagine most of us have either done or thought something just as bad.

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When I first learned how babies were made, I wondered why the hell anybody would want to do something so gross.

Yea understand, I was just wanted to show hashts where the manual states that the top and bottom binding post drive the different speakers.

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When I first learned how babies were made, I wondered why the hell anybody would want to do something so gross.

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I suspect that is a common reaction. I know when my parents told me, I thought "EEEEEEEEWWWWWW! I'll never do that!." I changed my mind!

Yeah.....then after you do it a few times you change it back!!

I guess that all depends on who your practicing with.

It’s only a mistake if you refuse to learn from it.

I’m glad you posted this. It gives me an idea. I might just buy another amp and try bi-amping. I think this would be the ultimate way to ‘tweak’ the signal going to the speakers. I could adjust the pre-amp output 2 a little up or down over the pre-out 1. This way I could set the speakers up to play the woofers louder, or not as loud as the tweeters, or vise versa. Cool, an excuse to buy more stuff!!

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I think this would be the ultimate way to ‘tweak’ the signal going to the speakers.

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Devil's advocate here, Mdrew... but years of testing at the NRC have produced flat frequency responses speakers in the Axiom lines. You'd want to alter that?

Bren R.

Couldn't hurt, could it? I don't have to get 'approval' to spend money.

And to be real frank, trends, graphs and pie charts don't mean crapola to me. Hearing is totally perspective to the person’s likes, dislikes and preconceived notions, not something that can be quantified by an electronic instrument. I like my sub with music. Now if I were to go by graphs alone, then the 80’s should be more than adequate for me, seeing how the sub starts making noise before the 80’s dip into never land. But I can’t live without the sub anymore. So by using this reasoning, the ability to bump up the 80’s woofers a little over the tweeters, I believe that I would prefer that.

I dunno….just speculating here. I’ll know more after my separates show up and I play with them for a while. It may be that the tone controls will be all that I need. Or, I may end up preferring the tone controls defeated…….ain’t got a clue at this point. But I do like to keep my options open. It’s only money and I can’t take that with me. I sure don’t plan on leaving any behind when I go. My boy will get a free ride through college as long as he keeps his grades up, but the tit dries up after that…….

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And to be real frank, trends, graphs and pie charts don't mean crapola to me.

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These are charts of a speakers response at a given level measured at a given distance for a band of frequencies. By definition, these "crapola" charts show exactly how precise a speaker is.

Having said that...

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Hearing is totally perspective to the person’s likes, dislikes and preconceived notions, not something that can be quantified by an electronic instrument.

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Speaker neutrality can be measured. What the listener wants to hear can't be. I've mentioned my brother a few times, as a great example of two people with the same "nature and nurture" as it were, who couldn't possibly have more different tastes in sound. I like high end. Treble is spatialization. I run my treble controls high on my monitors and in the car, I like metal and poly cones, he prefers 10" paper cones - and I'm sure he's removed and eaten tweeters.

My M3s are "hideously bright" to him... his 1982 paper woofer towers are "undetailed and muddy" to me. Are either of us wrong - no, what we have makes us happy.

Bren R.

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Now if I were to go by graphs alone, then the 80’s should be more than adequate for me

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The graphs I saw at soundstage showed the 80s to begin bass rolloff after 60 hz.

There's a lot of bass below 60 hz that the M80s can't play as loud as a sub could, so the graphs do indicate wheather or not one would want a sub with their speakers, based on how much they want that last octave of bass there.

Though the gragh does show a roll off at around 60 hz it does not account for in room response. The specs are listed for the M80s at +/-3dB (Hz): 37 - 22kHz.I would have to say given their frequency response from the spec sheet the 80s would have very good output down in the mid 30s.

And Ian has stated more than once that those Soundstage charts don't apply to the current 80's.

Also the frequency response on the 80s should have read 34 hz not 37.Brent @ Axiom said that was a typo on the spec page.

Wouldn't room interactions also increase other bass frequencies - increasing bass production above and below the natural roll-off? You can get more 40hz bass response by putting the speeaker in a corner, but wouldn't that also increase the 60hz response as well?

Well I would have to imagine that would be very room dependent.You could see here with this room mode calculator that different frequencies will be affected by the size of the room.