Hi!

I'm looking for advice from fellow Axiom owners who know more about sound than me (I'm a rookie so this means most of you!) and more specifically those of you who moved from bookshelf to floorstanding speakers in the past.

My current setup (about 2 months old) consists of a pair of M3s, a VP100, an EP175 sub and 2 unknown ceiling-mounted speakers (were already there when I moved in). Everything is fed by a Denon AVR-590 pushing 75w per channel. I use it to watch movies (70%) and listen to music (30%). The room in which the system resides is about 2500 cubic feet. Here's a nifty pic:



I'm VERY satisfied with the sound quality but I am a bit picky and find some things are not 100% what I'd like them to be:

- I sometimes have the feeling my VP100 is "too much" for my M3s when watching movies. I've tried tweaking the channel level of the VP100 so its more balanced with the M3s and it's a bit better, but not perfect.

- My EP175 churns out more deep bass than I need but I feel the mid-bass aren't enough especially when listening to music. E.g.: In a heavy song like "Sad But True" from Metallica, the guitar lacks "ooomph". The drum kicks in with serious bass but somehow I'm not finding the mid-bass I'm looking for in the guitar.

So there I am, juggling with the idea that maybe to get what I want, I need a bigger enclosure and more "displacement" in my main speakers so they can go "full range".

Do you think I should pull the trigger and get M60s considering that I do not intend to change my receiver? This means I'll only be pipping an entry-level 75w in my M60s, is it worth it? I found that with my current setup, the level at which I enjoy most my music/movies is somewhere between -25db and -15db. If I feed the same amount of power in my M60s, will I be able to get a similar volume or will I need to push it? Am I getting this all wrong?

Any input is greatly appreciated. Should I do it, or not, or maybe invest more time into tweaking my current setup? I don't know. However one thing is sure I'm sticking with Axiom I still can't believe the quality I got for the price I paid.

Thanks!

- M.

M, welcome. I voted "it's more complicated". We don't know exactly what frequencies you may think are "mid-bass" and whether it would be the sub or the speakers that would reproduce them. In any case, since you say that the problem isn't the deep bass, getting bigger, more nearly "full range" speakers to play more of the deep bass wouldn't appear to be the solution.

If you did get the M60s, there should be no problem with a lack of power, since the M60 is actually slightly more sensitive that the M3(contrary to some beliefs, the bigger speakers in a given line often need less power than the smaller ones)and requires a bit less power for the volume settings that you mention.

I voted Yay... I am a member of the bigger is better club.

A larger throw rug in that room might help as well...lots of exposed floor there.

I also would choose less shiny floor space. Try just throwing a big blanket over the floor between the TV and the coffee table and see what this does to the bass. I would be interrested to know the answer to that.

That is a very nice room. You don't mention how you have your receiver setup/calibrated. Hopefully, you have the other speakers set to "small" with an 80hz crossover as a starting point.

The 60's will give you more dynamics with the additional tweets/mid's/woofers and the larger cabinet will produce more bass in the room.

The receiver should be fine. Have you run the built in Audyssey Mult EQ on the Denon from multiple locations?

@sirquack

Thanks! We moved in quite recently and worked hard at decorating the room on a budget. Thank you IKEA!

I do have the speakers set to small with a 80hz crossover freq. I tried various other settings (M3s at 60hz, VP100 at 95hz, etc) but in the end the best curve (to my ears) was attained with 80hz all-around.

I did run the Audyssey Mult EQ quite a few times with up to 6 locations. It does sound better with it on, although I'm not convinced of the preciseness of that feature since it doesn't give the same results consistently when I run it multiple times. It adjusts levels and distance/delay perfectly but the crossover values are different every time (20% of the time it tells me my M3 are full range, the rest of the time it varies from a recommended crossover of 40hz up to 100hz).

I'll try throwing a thick blanket over the floor as was suggested... if that'd do the trick, it would be quite an inexpensive fix

Another thing to consider is room speaker interaction. Try listening from positions in front of and behind your normal listening position to see if the mid bass suddenly appears.

If you can hear differences in the mid bass as you listen from different positions, its a room issue.

I voted keep the M3s. Most of a movie soundtrack comes from the center channel. A pair of M3s and a good sub is pretty much indistinguishable from a pair of M60s and a good sub at reasonable volume levels. Big Will and I put this to the test with his very fine living room HT system.

At high volumes in a large space, the extra drivers in the M60s would move a sufficiently greater amount of air to make a difference.

First off I’m the second “It’s more complicated than that” vote.

Secondly, awesome looking room! And neat workup on the pictures.



Since you tweaked the channel level and that only took care of part of it can you describe more specifically what “too much” still is?

I’m not sure how accurate this is but it might give us a common frame of reference to know what frequencies you are needing help with:

http://www.recordingeq.com/EQ/req0400/OctaveEQ.htm

In the mean time although it doesn’t look like it if you have some placemen flexibility try pulling your speakers out some from the screen and walls. Nearby objects can greatly colour the sound of speakers cause them to sound like they don’t match up as well as the should.


Based on what you are saying I it does sound like the issue is with your M3s since at an 80Hz crossover they're where most of the guitar is coming from. Ironically the M3 is suppose to have a bit of a mid-bass hump to make it sound a little “fuller.”

You mentioned trying different crossovers. Have you tried setting your M3s to 90, 100, 110, 120. I wouldn’t normally recommend a higher crossover for normal use but if the mid-bass improves by sending more of it to the EP175 that might be good indication it’s really the M3 that aren’t performing.

I'll second the nice room!

I have Algonquin M3's currently as well as M60's and I used to have Vassallo M3's.

To me there definitely was a difference in sound with the M3's and M60. I played around with them a lot and really like both speakers for different reasons.

Impression 1
Impression 2

I think the VP100 might be "too much" because it doesn't really have the same tonal qualiies as the M3's. It is a more forward sounding speaker to begin with, at least to my ears and is much closer in sound to the M22, M60, M80 series. Moving to the M60s, IMO, will help the center not stand out as much and the M60s will play lower than the M3s which will help with that mid bass. I would also suggest getting a bigger sub to really know what "enough low bass" is that little one must be killing itself trying to fill that much room.

I hope you're wrong, because I plan to go with W3 and W100 in the living room. Personally, I thing that they would compliment each other. Don't see any reason they would have to sound the same.

The do sound similar, but not as close as the M22/M60/M80s(like I said to my ears), just jump up to the W22

I've got the M22 (destined for L/R in HT room) and wanted the W3's for the extra bass that they might supply. I am trying to avoid having a subwoofer in the living room. For movies in the HT room, I'll definately need subwoofer though. Living room is for TV watching and when I don't care to watch on the big screen.

Also, I want the W3/W100 in shiny black. W22's would cost more than the W3.

The M3's/W3's don't supply more bass they just have a recessed midrange, which gives you the impression of more bass...Simply bump up the bass setting about 3db on the receiver and have a listen on the M22s to see what that sounds like.

I voted for more complicated.

First off I have to say what a stellar room. Wow! Beautiful.

Before you watch your next movie try this. Go into your Denon's settings and set your front speakers (M3's) to large and in the subwoofer settings in the receiver change the subwoofer to LFE+Mains and a 80hz crossover for all speakers. Then play a movie and some music and listen for any differences and what you think about it.

I see what you mean, because I printed out the frequency response graphs of the M22 and the M3 and overlayed them with the 60db lines matching. There was no additional bass in the M3 from 20-100hz, but there was diminished db in the 100-2k range. Only a very slight increase in the 80-100hz range. The highs in the M3 dropped off more rapidly than the M22 also. I wish Axiom would loan a pair of M3's so I could A/B compare the sound.

Sorry for not following the intended topic of this thread. It gets too easy to run in tangents.

For the price of return shipping you could try them for 30 days. I'd imagine shipping on the M3's wouldn't be too bad.

Yeah, just there's a long waiting period, when going with shiny black.

I usually learn more from the tangents that pop up than from the original questions.

I voted 'Its more complicated'.

Nice looking setup!

I have the same receiver, and a set of M3's going across the front.

With regards to music, I'd try to find a good recording of whatever genre/artist you enjoy and listen to that first. While the M3's are reportedly the most forgiving speakers in the line up, I find that bad recordings sound BAD.

I would also look at isolating your speakers from the shelves they sit on. The M3's do resonate some when listening at elevated levels and send vibrations through whatever they are sitting on.

I can't comment on the role of the center channel speaker as I opted to get another M3 to serve as the center. No difference in tone or timbre to me.

BTW, you know that a bigger sub is in the cards for you down the road right? Its just a part of the upgradeitis that eventually gets everyone. Except for fredk maybe.

That would be JohnK

Oh, OK!

Wow great feedback! Thanks people!



I tried this last night and it sounds better than it used to. I'll leave it like that for a little while before I make up my mind but sounds like a good direction.

Also have to try grunt's suggestion of raising the crossover to see if the issue is really with the M3s.

I also mentionned to my GF that getting a bigger rug could help... should've stayed mum on this she's already shopping!

I prefered my M22's set to large and LFE + Mains setting on my Denon, I felt it just sounded richer, warmer, fuller (Did I miss any audiophile adjectives ).

I understand M22's set to large, but what does LFE + Mains setting on my Denon mean?

All LFE and the lower frequencies below the crossover point are sent to the sub while the mains are playing full range(no crossover setting affects them). This is also known as double bass on some receivers.

Jake,

So I understand this correctly... Let's say you had the 22's set to large, the Denon set to LFE + main, and the "bass setting" in the Denon (LPF) set to 100 hz. This would mean the M22's receive all info from the two front channels, while the sub is also receiving everything below the crossover point on the two front channels, and the sub is also receiving all LFE info below 100 hz?

Interesting, I may have to try that out. Right now I have the 22's set to small and the x-over at 90. Can you change Audyssey speaker settings from small to large and not wreck the Audyssey calibration? I thought the only thing you could really do was raise the crossovers, and change channel levels which it will account for.

I believe you can reset the speaker sizes and the LFE + mains setting with out causing Audyssey to change too much but it will be compromising the sound it has set up.

If you want to keep Audyssey as is, it is best to not mess with it's settings too much. You can simply run with out it and set the system the way you want just to have a listen as to what changes it brings.

What about resetting it the way you want, and just rerunning Audyssey?

Audyssey will ignore your settings and go about setting crossover levels, etc. After it is done, you can go in and change to LFE + Mains and set your speakers to Large.

Yes you are correct. The Audyssey enthusiasts state that when you run the auto setup the receiver (not Audyssey) decides whether to set your speakers to large or small. This would make that setting independent of what Audyssey is doing. Changing your speakers set from small to large +Lfe+Mains should not have any effect on your current Audyssey settings.

The Dr. is correct in saying that the speaker size settings are set independent of Audyssey buy the receiver so changing size, crossover, LFE+mains (or double bass depending on your brand) will not effect your Audyssey setting, however it will effect how it performs.

The reason the Audyssey proponents recommend setting all speakers to small with no lower than an 80Hz crossover is because the EQ curve that Audyssey calculates for the LFE channel is suppose to be much finer (more accurate) than for the other channels. So in theory you should get better in-room bass response by sending the low frequencies to the sub.

Also by switching to LFE + mains you are now getting multiple bass sources that Audyssey did not account for during its calculations. Also I’m not sure whether Audyssey calculates a full range 20Hz to 20kHz for each channel or if it only calculates a curve from where the crossover was set buy the receiver up to 20kHz or more.

So when you deviate from the all speakers to small 80Hz crossover you are supposedly bypassing some of the advantages of using Audyssey. If however you find your M80s sound better set to large or like me just left them at small with a 40Hz crossover where the receiver set them then by all means do it.

Well, I just finished listening to about 30 minutes of Metallica's S&M album from about 10 years back. Anyone familiar with this album knows it's a pretty good choice for giving your speakers a workout. This is the first time I have had these W22's cranked pretty darn loud (+1) in stereo and with only a CD. Once I heard the intro to "One,", I started to get goosebumps. These speakers are just fantastic. Being a guitarist myself I probably don't get as much enjoyment out of just sitting down and listening to music as I probably should, because I'd rather play... But this is just great, I haven't felt this in a long time.

To get more to the point, I tried the W22's in both large mode and in small with a 90 hz x-over and with the sub off for a while, and honestly I really couldn't tell much difference, which re-iterates the fact they aren't doing much below 90 hz in my room. No big deal, because with the sub on... Well, it's all above.

Dean, Audyssey equalizes each speaker only as low as the crossover set for that speaker. For example, if a certain speaker crossover was set at 100Hz in the Audyssey process because of weak response measured below that number, manually setting the speaker to say 60Hz instead would mean that there would be no equalization for the 60-100Hz range. Raising the crossover to 120Hz or higher would of course still provide equalization for the range above 120 Hz.

My view is that the "plus" type of bass setting is a bad idea and that the mains and sub should remain separate, as the basic concept of bass management contemplates, to allow the sub to handle what it does best and relieve the mains of part of the burden.

I love that album. Glad to hear about the goosebumps.

John, you are correct. The Audyssey folks have long said you should never reduce the crossover setting for a particular speaker from which the setup process found. Bumping things up the other direction is ok, but not required.

Potato, above if your talking about the sub crossover setting you have at 100hz in the receiver, this is misleading. Even the Audyssey folks wish receiver manufacturers would not put this in as an option. This is actually a "low pass filter" and should be set to a higher setting or 120hz, not lower.

Thanks, that was I thought but didn’t want to state it absolutely as I wasn’t sure.