Curious if anyone has tried placing M60's or M80's on top of their subwoofer, say an EP350 or EP500 model? I just setup my custom VP180 stand tonight, and had to move my 350 subs further apart, closer to my M80's. Under my screen it is starting to look very cluttered.

I was thinking how it might sound if I spread the 350's out further near the edge of my screen, and put the M80's on top. All this talk about front height speakers, heck, maybe this would give me the best of both worlds. I'm thinking imaging would still be pretty good, coming from slightly above your ears, versus dead on.

What do you all think?

Definitely give it a try. If you like it, keep it that way. If not, put it back. Nice thing about floorstanders is you can move them around whenever you want.

Sure, Randy; if it's convenient, give it a try to see if the effect of higher mains and wider subs is good, bad or insignificant. Height speakers though, don't have any connection with the height of the mains. The material derived for the height speakers from 5.1 or 7.1 movie sources is derived from the surround channels, not the front channels.

Also keep in mind the principle of having the center of the woofer cones at different distances from the room boundaries.

Thanks, I may give it a try to see how it sounds. The rubber feet should help keep any potential vibrations to a minimum. The look might be kind of overwhelming when people first walk in the room. I probably would have to rerun Audyssey, hmmm.

Another point is that would be a long fall if they got tipped over.

Or, you could just cut a big hole in the wall and.... never mind.

Mark, I knew there was someone. Is your setup still that way, are those M80's? Can you comment on the sound once you moved them ontop of your sub?

Randy, I only did that for the photo when I first got the Axioms. If I had a second sub, I would have tried it though...if for no other reason than to try to save floor space!

And I have M60Ti's.

Hi Randy,

I've never listened to M80s placed on top of subwoofers. The latter setup might lessen the upper bass "punch" or "warmth" even if you have them crossed over to your sub at 40 Hz or 60 Hz or set to "Large" simply because there's less floor reinforcement of the lower octaves given the on-top-of-subs placement.

Soundstage height is a personal preference. If your seating location is farther back in the room, it doesn't matter much, but with closer locations (in my case, about 8 to 13 ft) I prefer the higher soundstage I get from my M22s on stands (which is nicely even with my DLP screen height for video), rather than the lower soundstage from my floor-placed M80s. When you're sitting well back from the M80s on the floor, the soundstage height seems perfectly natural.

Regards,
Alan

I don't think raising tweeter height is such a good idea now that I've done that..... If the speakers are used for general entertainment in an area where folks spend most of their time on their feet, it's great. In a HT though, not so great. The speakers I have in my great room for example, I did have them on the floor, so their tweeters were about 46" high (Wharfedale Opus speakers). When entertaining guests, I always felt that something was missing, so I moved them to sit on the fireplace mantel (roughly 16" high). This was a good move - for entertaining. But not so good for TV or Movies.

If you are sitting 20' away or so from the speakers, I suppose it wouldn't matter if they were on top of the subs or not, but I bet you won't like too much if you are sitting closer than say - 15'.

The ohter possibility that I'm open to, is that it's all in my head and doesn't make a damn bit of difference....

Thanks guys, yeah the people in the back row are 10" higher, so it would most likely work for them, but the front row 13ft back on lazy boys, might not work so much....The 80's just seem to have such a wide sound stage, I didn't think having it 19" higher would make a huge difference, it would anchor it center right/left of my screen though.

13ft might be just far enough back, assuming the listeners in the front aren't reclined all of the time. Like others have said, it's worth a try and comes down to personal preference. You will definitely need to run Audyssey again though.

I tried raising my M80's before, but not on a subwoofer so I can't speak to how your subs will sound. I found that the soundstage was fine 16ft back but not as good 10ft back. Because my VP180 sits fairly low, pans across the front were not as seamless either. In the end, the difference in sound between my front and back rows was too significant for my liking. Besides, elevating the M80's terrified my wife; she was convinced someone was going to lose a limb, or worse.

What if he used a higher crossover, something around 100Hz? Wouldn't the sub then help provide some of the missing punch?

Give it a shot Randy, the off axis of the M80s is very good and I know there are a couple more infrequent forum members that have floor standers on their subs, maybe they will chime in.

I need to see pics, lol

Randy have you tried this yet? if no, why not....?

What dak said.

haven't had a lot of time, been busy with other shhhhhhhhhhtuff. Will try asap..tick tick tick

Yeah, another vote to give it a try. Report back with photos of the beer you drank while you were tweaking your system.

got plenty of that in my keezer.