Now that the M2i is modified, I think the next speaker to be modified should be the QS4's. Most people with M3's or M22's are using the QS4's as their surrounds, and they are the suggested ones in the home theatre package. However, they are using the hybrid tweeters, whereas the main speakers and the vocal channels are not!

My pair of QS4's are great but I do often wish I had QS8's because I do feel the sound dispersion could be more, especially in the higher frequencies. It could my room is not reflecting the high frequencies well, or it could be the tweeters, or a combination of both.

Does anyone else have any comments with their QS4's matching with their front speakers?

I use QS4s with M40s and they sound great in a decent sized room (~400 square feet). Then again, I tend to laugh off the whole "perfect timbre matching" stuff, because most movies don't even come close to making adequate use of the surrounds anyway. Besides which, in a properly mastered 5.1 soundtrack, effects should sound differently in the surrounds because of the doppler effect.

As far as maximal dispersion, try playing with the positioning of your QS-4s. I moved mine out from the walls a bit (I use stands) and played with the angle of the nulls...a bigger difference than you might have thought.

Finally, you can always increase the output to the surrounds on your receiver. This is almost mandatory for the center channel (some soundtracks are just mixed awfully), and the average receiver will have more than enough juice with speakers as efficient as Axioms.

fhw,

I cannot put them on stands because there is a desk behind my couch and they would really get in the way. It is true timber matching is not THAT important, however, the better tweeter would still disperse sounds better. Most movies do not use the surrounds, I agree, but the ones that do tend to use them well, if not very well, like LOTR or Black Hawk Down.
I do agree with you that I have to boost the signal going to them from my receiver, as well as the center channel (and I have the VP150!). I find it hard to believe that a sound engineer doesn't notice the center is sometimes 5 to 6 dB too low!

That is interesting because I have to lower the dB on my center channel (VP150) by about 4dB...

Michael

This differential is done intentionally, that way the sound effects are much more dramatic. Next time you are in a theater pay attention to the dialog and you will notice how low the volume is compared to the effects on the ST. Some new HT receivers have a normalize feature so that when you want to play a movie say late at night and do not want to have to reach for the remote al the time to turn the volume up and down throughout the movie you can normalize the levels and play one setting. It is amazing how mush you loose the effect when you play a movie this way.

Hi Patchwork,

Just to keep things on track here, the dispersion of the tweeter on the QS4 and QS8 isn't significantly different. The dome is the same size on both but the voice-coil of the QS8 tweeter is 1 inch (compared to 1/2-inch on the QS4) so its power handling is cleaner and better and a lower crossover frequency can be used (2.7 kHz vs. 4.3 kHz). The QS8 also has larger woofers with greater bass extension than the QS4.

Good advice from all on tweaking the placement of surrounds to improve envelopment and gain a seamless sound field.

Regards,

This is true, In theatres the volume is just so loud that you cannot tell the vocal soundtrack is low.