Hi All,
I am in the process of putting together HT system and need alot of help with speaker selection. The room size is 12'x16',ceiling hgt is 7'6". The receiver is going to be the Denon 3805 or 2805 (can't decided), listening will be 50/50 between music and video. Because of the layout of the room I will only be able use 3 surrounds,I will most likely be assembling the full speaker system over the next several months. Any suggestions on what I should start off with, I am looking for tower speakers for the front and possibly a sub.
Thanks
Gazer1
Welcome to our humble community
I have the Denon 2805 driving M60 mains, VP150 center, EP350 sub, and 4 Qs8's. I absolutely love my setup and the sound is fabulous. I would say look at all the options on both receivers, and get the one that makes more sense for what your needing. Some people pay a lot for features they never use. Right now I have all my stuff upstairs in a room that is slightly bigger than the one your planning. As soon as I complete my basement remodeling, in the next month hopefully, I will move everything down there. That room is much bigger and with 9' ceilings. The only thing I may do is get a second EP350 to match my other one since the room is pushing 900 sq ft overall...
A lot of your decision should be based on your budget. Personally, I think Axiom speakers in general offer a great value when you consider the sound these babies produce. Also, you may want to consider ordering from the Factory Outlet as you'll get an additional 10%, and if you order 5 or more speakers you get 5% also. The factory outlet still offers brand new speakers with the same warranty and guarantee. Supposably, they may have small blemishes or minor nicks, but most people find they can't find any problems cosmetically.
Good luck on your purchases.....
That is not a very large room (1440 cu ft). I know you said you were looking for towers. But I think it would be a great match for M2's and an EP500 sub. Try running thru the Home Theater Wizard for some ideas.
Gaze, the slightly higher power rating of the 3805 is of almost no significance, so unless one of its features(such as provision for Denon Link on DVD-A/SACD)is important to you the 2805(or 985)should be the better buy, especially since the microphone is included(about $60 extra on the 3805).
As to speakers, although in that size room M22s with a sub should be fine, if you're set on towers the M60s would be excellent and you could temporarily do without a sub. The surrounds(probably QS4s)should be next, then a sub and maybe last a center speaker, which in my view could well be a vertical M2.
Yes! Welcome!!
To echo JohnKs' recomendation, but with a bit of a twist: Do you prefer a slightly warmer, or, a slightly cooler sound with a touch more detail? If a warmer sound is more to your liking, then a look at the M50s as front towers with perhaps an M3 as center is another option. The M3 is more full range as a center, but it does have a bit of a bass hump(although I can't say as I hear it)as well as a reduction in some midrange detail. The M50s also fall a little behind in the accuracy and clarity dept. but they respond by being very pleasant and easy to listen to. It comes down to a matter of personal taste. I haven't heard them side to side, but I understand the difference is in degrees, not night and day.
I have the M50s, M3 set-up and I'm in it for the long haul, couldn't be happier.
Rich.
Gaze:
I think the "budget" is the big question here as far as peakers, but john is right on the money that if you don't need those last couple of features that the 3805 has, take the extra several hundred and put it towards the speaker budget instead..... it will have a much, much more significant difference in overall sound quality than a bigger receiver or hi-end disc player.
Welcome, by the way!
Another vote for "get the 2805 and some nice bookshelf speakers and spend the money on a good sub"
Seriously, this is a tough call. For most music I have a slight preference for tower speakers and no sub, although I'm sure that with more placement & tweaking effort I could get rid of my last few concerns. On the other hand, a good sub makes a BIG difference with movies (assuming we're not talking about "The English Patient" here).
My sub is out on loan right now so I'm running M60 mains but as soon as the sub comes back my HT system is going back to M2, VP100, QS8 plus a PSB 6i sub (similar to EP350). In the new house I'll need the M60 mains because the room will be much larger.
What kind(s) of music do you listen to the most ?
Is there a good chance of you moving into a larger room in the not too distant future ? If not, there is a real argument for good bookshelves plus a good sub.
The "M2 plus EP500" response might have sounded like a joke but you could do a LOT worse than that (assuming your speakers will be along the 16' wall not the 12' wall, thinking about distance from speakers to listening position here).
OK, I have to admit, you don't need an EP500
Seriously, though -- spending money on a good sub will make a big difference in your HT enjoyment. Get at least an EP175 and given the pricing I would go with an EP350.
IMO you can get at least 70% of the "home theater experience" with a stereo receiver, good bookshelf speakers, and a good sub. Depending on what you have today that might be a great way to start -- and if your heart is set on tower speakers (either for playing at high volumes or a larger room in the future) you could consider starting with something like M50s or 60s plus a sub and get receiver, surrounds & center later.
I found the jump from (DVD plus TV) to (DVD plus good mains and sub) to be a bigger improvement than the subsequent step to AV receiver and 5.1 speakers. Probably personal taste though...
In reply to:
The M3 is more full range as a center, but it does have a bit of a bass hump(although I can't say as I hear it)as well as a reduction in some midrange detail.
Uh, I thought the M3 had a mid hump (around 1K) - a huge, insurmountable hump... a Quasimodo-esque convexity that completely colours and destroys all good chi in it's path. Curse that evil 6.5" driveerrrrrrr...
Oh, wait, no, according the the NRC charts, it's what, a 1.5dB curve over 3 octaves or something.
Bren R.
I thought it was a small bass hump around 100 Hz and a small midrange dip centered on ~3 KHz. I believe the bass hump is deliberate (for better overall sound when running without a sub) while the midrange dip is a side-effect of the slightly poorer HF off-axis response of the... um... evil... (I can't say it with a straight face) 6.5" driver.
Question guys:
Is that hump sometimes refered to as the "BBC hump" (or something like that) due to the old near-field monitors used by the BBC in their mobile news vans? My terminology may be way off, but something like that.(?)
I was even under the impression that not only was the hump intended, but so was the mid-sag, and that's with a 5" driver. (I'm half-Brit, so I can say it: The Brits are a little weird) I think it was even part of the specification that the BBC Asked For!
Like I said though, I may be way off "bass" here, but I think I may have read something about it many years ago or at least just thought I did. Back in the days when speakers were wider than they were deep.
But hey, the M3s "Sound" good. (OK, at least to me)
I also note that the M50s have neither the bass hump or the
major mid sag, but yet sound (after only one day) pretty close to the same. Of course the primary sound I hear is still the M3 as center, although I listened to the M50s in stereo and found them to be very close to my "memory"(only a few minutes old) of the M3s as mains, it's still the M3 that I hear most when I listen to TV or movies. To paraphrase, I neither miss or desire the hump or sag, at least not right now. I'll know in a few days when the sound of the new speakers causes total transformations of my eardrums. (Anything annoying tends to get Really annoying)
Anyway, right now the M50s are extreemly cool-and so are the M3s.-humps, sags or not.
Rich.
Yep, the 3Khz dip seems to be pretty much the famed "BBC dip". If I had made the connection a year earlier there is a good chance that I would own M3s and M50s today instead of M2s and M60s, since my last good speakers were Rogers LS3/5A's.
If you search the web on BBC dip it's pretty clear that listeners find a speaker with the dip to be more relaxing, and that it "takes the edge off" hot recordings without hurting the overall sound very much. I doubt that Axiom designed the dip into the M3 family deliberately, at least I never got that sense from posts by Alan and others.
Now the 100Hz bump -- that's just a bump (although it may be deliberate).
It is not to be confused with the Brockville Bump (road going over an old railway tunnel in downtown Brockville, ON, where due to a moment of confusion between MPH and KM/H I almost landed my Ford Fiesta in the bed of a pickup truck. It was really neat, just like one of those zero-G flights -- all the junk in the back seat floated up to eye level before we hit the ground.
Hi All,
Thanks to all for the advice! I'll probably go with the Denon 2805, as for the speakers, I am still leaning towards the towers. The layout of the room only gives one option to put the t.v. There are two doorways in the wall with 2ft of wall space on either side and 6ft of space between them. I plan on building an entertainment center which will take up all of the wall space between the doors, so placing the towers next to the t.v is not an option. Because of of this layout, towers will be about 12ft apart from each other. I think the towers will sound better and look alot better than bookshelf's on stands. The t.v will be about 10ft from where will be sitting, with the surrounds about 6ft to either side. So, if anyone has anymore suggestions, please let me know
Gazer
OK then, so that's the real situation-I knew I'd read it a long time ago and wasen't quite clear on that.
And yeah, the LS3/5 is what I was thinking of(although I would never have remembered the no.outright-seeing it though makes it obvious) That one was made by lots of other vendors as I recall and only died cause the mid-woofer mfg. stopped producing the drivers. (Someone on another forum mentioned that in relation to a BBC mini and I just assumed that's the speaker he was talking about) Didn't they also produce it in a 15 or 16 ohm version or something? I envy you having had them, I was much impressed in my readings of them over what seems like many decades of Hi-Fi magazines. That's a speaker of real historical significance alright. It was the same publications(going back into the early 60s)that got me brainwashed into the "warm and comfortable go together" mentality.
Don't know either if the bass bump on the M3 was deliberate or not, but I had noticed that it is designed into a number of other speakers by other manufacturers throughout the years, so I may have assumed that it was deliberate in the designing of the M3.
I also think I know the bump you're talking about, or at least a close relative of it; caused me to do a very scarry and inadvertant wheelie while accelerating away from a stop sign at a somewhat too high of a rate of acceleration. Thankfully there was no passenger on the back to be deposited on the pavement. Your experience however, had the humerous visual effects in the mirror, as well as the visualization of being launched into a pickup to make it a more memorable event worth retelling! What color was your Fiesta? for some reason I'm picturing it in Racy Yellow!
Ya know, Gazer, all things being equal, towers sure do look a lot more impressive than bookshelfs on stands, No Question There! I just swapped out my M3s for M50s yesterday, and Woah, what a difference!! (In looks as well as sound)
I can't help but agree with you that for as far back from the TV that you will be sitting and as far apart as the speakers will be, that towers Are the Natural Choice.
>>What color was your Fiesta? for some reason I'm picturing it in Racy Yellow!
Close, it was "what, me speed ??" white. I rallied the car quite a bit and didn't want any un-necessary attention from the law.
>>That one was made by lots of other vendors as I recall and only died cause the mid-woofer mfg. stopped producing the drivers.
Believe it or not, they're back from the dead. Production is back online (or soon) :
http://www.richardallanaudio.com/
EDIT -- found another one :
http://www.stirlingbroadcast.net/ls3-5a%20NEW2.html
>>Didn't they also produce it in a 15 or 16 ohm version or something?
Here's a shootout between a lot of different variants, focusing on the "11 ohm vs. 15 ohm" battle :
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.whatton/shootout.html
>>I envy you having had them, I was much impressed in my readings of them over what seems like many decades of Hi-Fi magazines. That's a speaker of real historical significance alright.
I shouldn't have sold them. Then again, they were hardly originals -- Bay Bloor Radio in Toronto was selling them like hotcakes 20-ish years ago...
I used them with a passive subwoofer which never really worked as well as I had hoped. The speakers generally sounded better with the sub disconnected. 25 years later nothing has changed, I still prefer music without a sub. Oh well, nothing ever changes...
Oh WoW!! Look at all the cool stuff I can research!! I might as well since I don't have to study the Axiom line any further.(I got'em now)!
A "subtle" white makes sense for rallying, good choice. I wasen't as lucky when I almost went rallying with my Austin Healey in the late 60s, it was RED. I started seriously pricing the Hella gear I needed (I think it was Hella, it's been a while) and found I was seriously under funded!
Anyway, time to brouse the links you posted; This'll be fun, Thanks a Ton!!
Rich.