Speakers will be coming soon (supposed to ship tomorrow, I'll be watching my email), any recommendations for hiring an installer? I don't see myself running wires through the walls or mounting the surrounds since I have no experience, although I suppose it would be doable, given that there's an open attic above.

Do Best Buy or Circuit City do a good job?

Should I play with the location of the surrounds to see what they sound like before hiring someone to mount them permanently?

Thanks for any and all ideas.

To your second question, yes, do play with the location before you mount them.

SK - I think the Best Buy and CC crews vary significantly from one location to another. My experience with BB's custom install shop was not impressive, but in my case it came down to poor customer service more than technical incompetence.

Long story short, I paid $100 for their in-home consultation. They came, did a big review (and the guy who came seemed competent, though he had a very limited selection of equipment from which he chose his recommendations -- i.e. things Best Buy sold lots of). Thereafter, I never heard from him again with his final recommendations and proposal. After 2 weeks, I went in and asked for my money back, and to their credit they apologized and gave it to me.

With that diatribe out of the way, if you don't feel comfortable doing the wire fishing and don't mind spending a few hundred dollars for someone to do the wiring, I'd at least recommend you find a Best Buy with a "Magnolia" custom installers department as I found the teams there a lot more competent than the normal in-store BB guys. I believe they had a package price for a 5 or 7 speaker wire and install at the time that was between $300 and $500.

If the holes hadn't been pre-drilled in my room, I would have hired it out as well as I'm pretty sure I could not have wired them cleanly myself.

Jason

Hey thanks Jason,

That's helpful as my town has the regular BB guys but the next town just across the lake has the Magnolia crew, it's close enough that they probably would make the journey. Mainly I just want them to run the wires for 4 surrounds and perhaps one sub--depending upon results of the subwoofer crawl, if I can even accomplish one with the 800.

Did you find the info from the initial consult helpful in terms of room setup ideas or was it just mainly a sales pitch?

Sounds good, is there some way to experiment with the height of the surrounds before install other than adjustable stands which I don't have?

A ladder. Seriously, just make sure the speakers fit on the steps.

SK - actually it was pretty helpful as it allowed me to bounce a lot of my ideas off of someone who knew more than I did about this stuff (and the guy who came did).

Plus, they were willing to take the $100 fee and apply it towards any purchase I made through BB (it had to be of a certain value to qualify, and I think it could be applied on hardware only. I can't remember if you can put it against services too).

I got the impression that most of the consultation was designed to help recommend equipment, but in my case I had a lot of questions about screen size and height, room orientation, (for awhile I was considering putting the screen on the other wall) and speaker location. The guy who came did help provide suggestions on all of these areas, so it wasn't a total loss. It was everything that followed that was disappointing.

It's probably worth giving them a call to see what the options are. The one reason BB did appeal to me is that at least there was a big company backing up the service... if they managed to screw something up, I knew there would at least be a company there to back up and correct the mistake.

Jason

That's what I read, so does that mean like 2 ladders, one for each rear surround? I probably need to get another ladder anyway now that we have these tall ceilings.

SatKartr - didn't you mention you had really high vaulted ceilings on which you were mounting the QS8s, or are there walls where you can install them as well? If you're looking to test at ceiling height, that might be a bit more challenging.

Jason

Well I think the walls are going to work for the surrounds with the exception of the right (?) surround. JC said they don't all need to be at the same height, as long as you adjust the volume in the setup to equalize the db levels.

The right surround will be installed on the ceiling of the "dining room", it is really just one big room, but that 1000 cu ft piece of to the right side has a 10 ft rather than a 12 foot ceiling so I was thinking about mounting that one on the ceiling and angling down (no testing there, just have to bank on the "forgiveness" of the QS8s), while putting the rear surrounds and left surround somewhat lower on the walls to conform more to an idealized Dolby setup, those are the ones I would experiment with speaker height.

Got it... Personally, I think you'll be fine as long as you put them anywhere in the range recommended by Axiom. Most folks like them slightly above listening height or a few feet above (my personal preference).

If you can test different heights, it doesn't hurt to do, but for the one you can't test, I think you'll be just fine as well.

Jason

Cool.

Yeah, I was impatient and just stuck my QS8s up on the wall, but I kept them within the suggested placement. They work just fine.

If you are handy and have a few tools, you can do this:



All I did was cut a 1x4 to length and wedge it between the ceiling and floor. Now, the wall mounts don't hold up well unsupported, so you don't want to leave your speakers up for any length of time, but for short experiments it works fine.

Brilliant!

I grew up on a farm. I would have done it with bailing twine and wire but I didn't have any handy.

Great idea, what height did you finally settle on? Did you notice a lot of difference when experimenting with different heights?

Hi SatKartr,

Once you get the QS surrounds between 3 and 5 feet up above your ear level when you are seated, differences in height become insignificant in most rooms. And JC is correct; they do not have to be at identical heights. My right side surround is 2 feet higher up than my left side surround, and it's not noticeable at all. Plus they don't have to be exactly opposite each other. My right QS8 is about 1 foot forward of the left one and there is no significant alteration of the surround field.

Given all the variations in room layouts, ceiling heights and furnishings, I still encourage initial experimentation using a couple of step-ladders or the brilliant solution shown above, but the QS8 placement overall is remarkably uncritical.

Regards,
Alan

I can't say that I noticed much difference. I still need to play with front to back placement, but I seem to be stuck on the sub and treatments at the moment.

I don't think you have to worry about Circuit City...they filed for bankruptcy today.

D'oh! They just opened a store in my town. I went there just last week to pick up a Digital OTA tv tuner using the $40 governemnt-supplied coupon.

Oh I thought it was only certain stores that were closing, are they shutting them all down now?

It's the whole company now.

One more question: if I'm going to a run a high current audio amp like say the A1400-8 and the ep800 together--should these be on separate 20 amp circuit breakers or would one suffice?

Use 2 seperate circuits, the 2 together could pull more than 20 and I beleive the A1400 can get to 15A on it's own.

OK thanks, I was afraid of that, I'll have to experiment to see how the home is wired and then maybe call the electrician, depending perhaps upon the outlet that the subwoofer crawl reveals is the closest to the EP800, my guess would be that the circuits will wind up being the same.

I was thinking of in terms of extremes too, on the same circuit should Ok for most listening. I haven't seen my PB13 draw any more than 4A but I know my room is much smaller so it is not working very hard.

Got it, I will most likely have to wait until the sub arrives anyway, which will be last because it's on preorder, before I can determine the best sub location and therefore which outlet I will need to upgrade to drive the ep800.

Since I'm stuck in neutral with no timeline for delivery of the 800 I thought I might as well investigate amperage needs for eventual situations as well as how the living room is wired so I can hit the ground running when what I anticipate may perhaps be the most important element of the HT will arrive.

The sub is THE most important part of the HT environment, at least to me. I still can't believe it took me ~5 years to get a good one. I bought mine as the last piece of the audio puzzle, as I already had a sub and didn't think gettting a better one would add that much, boy was I wrong.

I feel the same way, that's why I'm not very excited at the moment even though the VP150 and 4 QS8s are supposed to be delivered today. They (or at least the 1 lb manifest) were last tracked by Fedex in Syracuse on Wednesday so who knows where they actually are and when they will get here, but until the sub arrives, I'm like OK whatever.

Anyway I probably won't hire someone to run the speaker wire through the walls and mount the surrounds until the sub gets here and I can finalize where it should live, so I'll probably just putter around with the surrounds and try and figure out if I want any wall plates and if so how many and what kind. Not too crazy about having lots of junction boxes, are there some where you can just run the wires straight through? There must be, I'll have to look at one of the links given by Jason in an earlier thread.

So the speakers have arrived in town and are scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. Wish me me luck, we have tickets to the King Tut exhibit at 1:30 so unless they are delivered in the morning I will probably be chasing down the delivery for some time.

Good luck!

Something like this should be what you are looking for

That looks good, thanks!

Watch out how you move those boxes, or you'll be walking like an Egyptian.

OK so full disclosure: I am flipping out now that additional Axiom speakers are in the vicinity of my home, I have monoprice cable and blue jeans gold banana plugs ready, and I put in an order for an Axiom A1400-8 today. How to stay calm, hmmm . . .

King Tut
Disco Tut
Born in Arizona
Moved to Babylonia . . .

Wow! You're going to be in business for real! Very cool!

Wow!!, the A1400, now that was quite a step up in $ and overall power from the emotiva. Congrats.

Well I had to talk myself into it to be sure but since I was going to have to buy the xpa5 as well as the xpa2, a new expensive shelf to harbor the weighty gargantuan duo, and eventually most likely break my back in the bargain, it wound up seeming like a cost savings in the long run, and now I will be out of my misery. In my experience buyer's remorse only happens when you don't spend enough to begin with.

HOLY CRAP!

Congrats man. Looks like I'm coming to you for the next audition!

Jason

I just went through quickly so I don't know if it was mentioned but Axiom has an installation program Axiom You might want to call and ask about it...you spent lots of money so maybe they will negotiate the install?

Absolutely, any time, I would love to hear how your 600/800 combo sounds as well but I have to admit I am a little afraid to do that in case I just have to succumb to the inevitable and fire up two subs in my own system. I am still holding out hope that one 800 is going to be enough for our one couch listening area, especially since my wife is probably not going to want me to crank up the system much anyway, leaving only one seat that I will really need to tweak to perfection, I will most likely be the only one who cares among the three of us.

Family comes first of course, so we went to the King Tut exhibit today and came back 5 hours later, and lo and behold Fedex shows up right on cue with all 6 boxes (four QS8s, a VP150, and a full metal ceiling bracket for the right surround). Unbelievable! I was certain the torture was destined to continue.

Guess there will be some setup duties in my immediate future . . .

Man...I'm jealous! 1400-8 to drive it all? Wow....You're neighbors are going to hate you!

Way to go, FedEx. Congratulations on your delivery.

Well I have my fingers crossed about that because we live in an older neighborhood where they actually left some space between houses, we have a corner lot, and the living room is closer to the side street than to our nearest neighbor on the other side.

When I had the XPA2 cranking up music 90-100 decibels I went outside and walked around and it wasn't that extreme--I suspect that people inside their homes may not have necessarily noticed.

Time will tell!

I haven't had any complaints yet. I mean, you can hear my system outside when I'm blasting it, but yeah, I imagine people aren't actually hearing it in their homes.

Yes I like to give credit where credit is due. I could tell some war stories of course about Fedex but lately they've been taking very good care of me. I love it when my expectations are exceeded.

I have found only the bass makes it out of my house when the doors and windows are all closed. No complaints from my neighbors yet, but that is just the M80s, I have the PB13 in the basement.

Wouldn't that be a great trip for Axiom. I'd come home wanting an A1400-8 and you'd want another EP800. Maybe we both better wait awhile for the next get-together.

I wish I could have my screen up a bit higher too. I have those damn bifocals (getting older) and when I recline, I end up looking through the bottom/reading part of the lenses. Thus causing a blurry picture. Just one more thing to consider.

Oops--the VP150 is about 6 inches too long to fit into the table below the TV so I suppose it will need to be wall mounted above the TV!

So many things to consider when you're doing all this for the first time.

It should sound more as intended if not inside the table as well (assuming that would be a somewhat enclosed space), so that's a double bonus, minus the fact that you have to wall mount another speaker.

You probably remember, but I use the full metal bracket for my (slanted) wall/ceiling mount of the VP150. I found that it works very well.

Jason

I have my EP500 in the basement also and when I really crank it I can feel the bass shaking my deck at the other end of my house and can feel it shaking the ground in approximately a 10 foot perimeter around the house. The previous neighbors/friends to the left of me said that they could feel the bass in their house, and that was with a 150 W paradigm, I can only imagine what it's like now .

No complaints though

Thanks for the heads up, just placed an order for the full metal bracket.

Has Axiom given you a frequent flier card yet for all of the different orders you've put through?

Jason

Fedex strikes again, Go Fedex, I came home to a door tag, signature required for delivery, and thought what could this possibly be? I ran the tracking and Holy Smokes, what weighs 58 lbs and comes from Ontario?

I didn't think the amp would even ship until this week, I ordered it 11:00 am CST on Friday and Axiom shipped it International Priority with delivery attempted at 9:33 am Monday morning.

Of course I drove the 1/2 hour to pick up the amp, lugged it home and plugged in the M80s. Sounds great, no surprise there, and I think I will be happy with the power/level of headroom.

One question: when running the 663 as a pre/pro, are you supposed to keep the volume from exceeding 0db by very much? I have to admit I didn't understand that article Alan wrote about trying not to exceed 0db by much on your AV receiver, is he referring to both internal and external amplifiers, i.e., can you introduce distortion at the preamplification stage by boosting the preamp up too much? Talk about your newbie question, eh?

Now you're just rubbing it in SatKartr! it's bad enough that you have the 1400-8, you *had* to get it that fast eh!

The only shipment that I went to the UPS office to pick up (w/o waiting for redelivery) were my Yankee season tickets. Thankfully, my Axiom speakers all showed up while I worked from home. The guy delivering the speakers comment was "man...you're neighbors are going to *love* you with all this gear"

Sat, the first point is that the volume control is a variable resistor which controls the amount of voltage that comes into the pre-amplifier section from the CD player or other output device. At its maximum setting, regardless of what that is numerically, it lets all the voltage through(and lets no voltage through at the minimum setting)for pre-amplification, which typically might be about 12dB, which is 4 times. Whether there's significant distortion at the pre-amplifier stage depends on how high the voltage coming in from the player is at that instant; if the music is very quiet for the moment, the pre-amp may be outputting much less than a volt even with the volume control all the way up above 0 or whatever the numbering happens to be on that unit. If on the other hand the music hits a loud peak and the voltage(multiplied by the 4 times gain)is too high for the pre-amp to output cleanly, then there'll be audible distortion which will carry forward for the succeeding amplifier section(which will in turn multiply the voltage with a gain of around 29dB, which is about 30 times). So 0 or any other number doesn't necessarily constitute a magic dividing line; it depends how high the voltage coming in at that instant is as to whether the pre-amp and possibly the amplifier too will audibly distort(either or both may be unable to cleanly supply the required voltage output).

Of course, as a practical matter, if a receiver is to be calibrated to reference level(very loud)when at 0, then very loud moments in the program material would be unbearably loud and damaging to hearing if set above 0 regardless of whether the pre-amplifier and amplifier sections could handle it cleanly. Too loud and clean is still too loud.

SK - I also ran into this issue when running Zone 2 (as a pre-amp) from my Denon to a Sherwood receiver (functioning as the amp). Originally I had my universal remote programmed to regulate volume completely from the Denon, which turned out not to work very well as the way I had the volume set on the Sherwood (too low), the Denon had to be in the +5 or higher range to achieve the volume I wanted in Zone 2.

This resulted in clearly audible distortion even at very mild volumes. When I turned the Denon back down to ~-20 dB and regulated the volume from the Sherwood, the distortion disappeared and I was able to drive the M3s (Algonquins) to very high levels with no distortion.

What I was curious about is whether one could actually damage speakers by having the pre-amp voltage maxed and then listening at even modest gain levels on your amp?

Is the resulting distortion from this situation dangerous to speakers or just ugly to listen to?

Jason

Which inputs were you using on your Sherwood? It was probably expecting a maximum line level that the Denon pre-out was surpassing.

I doubt this type of distortion is very dangerous to speakers, apart of course from the sudden need to destroy them after long exposure to bad sound!

I was using the CD input. Is there a better option?

CD input sounds good to me. Finding a good balance is what matters (I actually had to do that yesterday between the new headphone amp's volume control and the volume control in the receiver).

I'm not the expert (hopefully Alan will chime in) but I would say anything in the chain that causes clipped, squared-off waves would be dangerous to a tweeter if played at enough volume...

From what I've learned going from the pre out on the Denon to the cd input of the Sherwood would be a mismatch in terms of how the units are designed because then you run the risk of overdriving the input to the Sherwood, which has a preamplifier input (CD) which is designed to accept what used to be called "a line level signal," which would come from a different output on the Denon, usually labeled audio out.

A CD input is designed to accept the output of typical CD player, which generates a lower and more restricted range of signal that that potentially generated by a pre out output from a receiver.

You can't adjust the volume level with your universal remote control then of course; I ran into this with my Rotel integrated preamp/amp, I used the audio out from the 663 and adjusted the volume on the Rotel. The 663 manual states that the pre out outputs generate the same level signal as the speaker outputs, so you have situations where the output would be way too high for a preamplifier input to receive.

Obviously there may always be a range in which the levels would be workable (without distortion), sounds like you may have found that range.

I think we're going to have to create a new forum for the Mrs. to post about the woes of brownouts in the SK household 'cause the audiophile of the house has been rocking out to his Axioms again.

Yeah, Jason; the pre-outs are intended to feed directly into an amplifier section(a few receivers have inputs that feed their amplifier section directly, bypassing their pre-amp section)rather than another pre-amp. The CD input leads to the pre-amp of the Sherwood, so you have two stages of pre-amplification in tandem. Since the Denon pre-amp has a gain of four or more times for the voltage coming out of the player, the Sherwood has to pre-amplify that higher level, which can result in distortion if it has to output perhaps four times the contemplated voltage. The solution, as you found, is to turn down the Denon level control to reduce the player voltage which it pre-amplifies. You apparently came close to what's sometimes termed the "unity gain" setting. For example, if the gain is four times but you turn down the level control far enough so that only 1/4th of the player voltage is let through, the net result is that the output voltage is the same(unity)as the input voltage from the player, despite the four times gain. A little bit of distortion is added in the process, but it's very low and the Sherwood CD input then receives the sort of CD player voltage which it can amplify without audible distortion.

Sat, you may have misread the 663 manual on that point. The pre-outs have the same signals(e.g.,the same musical content)as the corresponding speaker outputs, but the levels are greatly different. As mentioned in the previous reply, the amplifier section which feeds the voltage to the speaker outputs adds a voltage gain on the order of 30 times the voltage which the pre-amp feeds to the pre-outs.

Thanks John,

Yes I realized this afternoon after posting that I must have read the manual wrong, it made no sense when I thought about it because that would have to mean that the pre out was equal to the post internal power amplifier output to the speakers.

I appreciate both of your explanations and am still trying to grasp the fundamentals, I may regurgitate my understanding again at some point to make sure I get the implications for my setup.

Well you caught me there but actually I'm jonesing because she has me on a pretty short leash. I can't wait till Friday (or tomorrow?) when I'll be home working alone and she's not also working at home so I can check out the volume that this puppy is capable of.

Tonight the fam was watching a TV show and the 663 was set at -2db and it sounded good but just wasn't that loud--fits quite well with what JohnK says about it all being relative. I want to experiment but I don't want to blow anything up, despite that you have all reassured me that the M80s are pretty much invincible, I just couldn't take that right now you know?!

Can't wait til tomorrow!

Self deleted post. I was in the wrong thread.

Can't wait to hear about today's exploits!

Any thoughts after your jam session last week?

Jason

Glad you brought this back up Jason.

Do tell, Do tell!

Work intervened and jam session never happened, I'll keep you posted once it does.

I had to wait a week for the fmb to arrive and then schedule installers, the surround speakers and center speaker will go up today.

Now how should the speaker wire be terminated/connected to wall installed qs8s? Spades? I understand banana plugs won't fit, of course that's what I have.

Just go with bare wire to the terminals. It works just fine and is a very solid connection.

Not to mention it's hotter.

Oh yeah, smokin' hot.

Well the center speaker is on the wall thanks to the fmb and they are working on the surrounds. Had to go with room limitations with regard to placement mostly so they land where they land. Once again getting close to the promised land this seems like a forever process, and the ep800 hasn't even been built yet!

Happy holiday all,
SK

Since I have no sub at the moment should I set the M80s to large and the qs8s and vp150 to small or should the vp150 also be set to large?

80's to large, small on the other speakers, with crossover to 80hz.

That's what I thought, thanks.

I'm considerably less tortured though, the surround sound is awesome and finally puts the muscle of the A1400-8 to good use, the improvement over stereo of course opens up the sound field and makes the M80s that much more impressive!

I'm a happy camper, onward and upward.

I am always amazed at just how much bass the M80s are capable of, they really are a great 2.0 speaker, which is how I presently have mine. The M22s from the Ninja tryout are still in the basement as part of the main HT and they may just stay down there till my wife says otherwise.

I like the M80's bass. Since I piled up boxes of paperback books in the corner causing me a lot of boomy bass, I am now able to run my M80s at 50hz xover and it added a lot of smoothness to the whole room's bass response.

Have you tried them full range in 2.0, it is very good.

Definitely try them 2.0 if you haven’t. I exclusively use mine 2.0 when using 2.0 sources. For multi-channel sources I’m using a 60Hz crossover and LFE+MAINS so the M80s are getting full range and the sub also gets everything below 60Hz.

Basshead I trust you have the M80s set to Large, otherwise the LFE+ setting is meaningless.

Your trust is well placed.

It’s just that I can’t bring myself to turn my M80s into giant bookshelf speakers by crossing them over at 80Hz, just seems wrong so I kept moving the crossover lower and lower until there was no more lower to go. So I set them to large but still like the sub to help with the bottom end.

I did the same thing with my tower speakers, too, Dean. There was no cancellation effects so I kept them full range running with the sub.

I have my 60s on large, figuring three bass sources would help with nulls. I don't even remember if I ever graphed it that way to compare....

With my M80s corner loaded as well as the sub, I get a tad boomy when I move the M80s to a 40hz XO or if I go full range, so I pretty much stick with them on small and a 60hz XO.

Tad Boomy is a good character name.

I thought Tad Boomy was the public address announcer that Negative Orange used for their concerts.

Or was it their sound check guy?

I don't know, but I bet I have the poor memory to wonder about it.

Sound check guy, I have the ringing in my ears to prove it.