Just how big a difference is this ?
I will be running dual subs

Just curious I had the M80's and well Just cannot get the imagining off the floor or well about what seemed 18" off the floor. SO gave them to my VP160 as I rarely use it.

But, just not enough balls.


My room is 11.5 x 15.5 x 7.5 . I sit at 11ft from front. hence the M80 issue. When I was upstairs I was 15 ft away and they were great.


SO, am thinking once again M5HP or M60HP but at a 2K price point difference, why would I go M60 plus then I would have to mess around with placement again, But given that the woofers are higher off the floor than the M80 I figure the sound imagine would be better. Also, I clued in to why some people have stages up front with their rooms. It's to get the speakers up a bit higher

Troy, you've complained about this before and I have to say I don't understand how you can possibly be experiencing a low-to-the-floor image. I've suggested in the past there may be a problem with your set up.

Regarding your question, I asked Ian last night because I'm trying to decide how to or if I should upgrade my M80v2. Ian says the soundstage of the M5HP and the M60 are very similar. Note however that M60s go lower, are more sensitive, are higher impedance and can go louder. These characteristics may be important to you depending on your environment.

Bridgman, please jump in here and help us.

Mojo i too was shocked to read that troy has imaging issue's. My room is 15 x 16 x 8 ish and my M80's image well to my ears. I have ran it sans center channel with impressive results,maybe my brain is just adjusting to poor imaging? I know when my mind gets fixated on what it perceives as a problem i have a hard time letting it go.

Troy if this were something i was dealing with i would go with the M5HP and get some stands that compliment your room and sitting position ,the subs will handle the heavy lifting. I started with M2's and 2 subs and the move to the M80's wasn't as great as one would have expected.

Troy, no matter where I listen from in my room, the image is nowhere near the floor with my M80s. I can lie on the floor and the image is above me...floating eerily.

It might just be a matter of listener height... I have somewhat the same problem, where typical floorstanding speakers seem too low unless I slouch in the chair or get some beanbag chairs to go with the lava lamps.

That said, I am 6'5 and have most of the furniture in the house jacked up 4+ inches to get the seating height into "comfortable" range, so my ears are probably 9-10 inches above "normal".

I replaced my M60s with M5HP's on 31" stands and that was about right for me... maybe a bit low but close enough. My guess is that LFR1100's would be sufficiently tall as well.

I don't play very loudly (M3's would probably be sufficient from an SPL level) so arguably it makes no sense buying speakers as big as LFR1100's or M100's but I do find that I need the height.

So, what is the difference between buying a pair of M5HP and putting them on a tall stand to get them higher up. or Buying an M60, and putting them on a smaller stand to raise them up a bit? Does the manual say that floor standing speakers have to sit on the floor? I think I threw away the manual when the speakers came so I don't know. Perhaps I have been listening to my speakers wrong all this time.

John, tell us about your M5HPs again. I am considering replacing my M80v2 with M5HP. I am looking for a deeper and more focused soundstage. I am very happy with the width and height.

I asked about this a while ago... the answer (from Andrew IIRC) was basically that floorstanding speakers are designed around a certain degree of "ground bounce" (I think that was the term) and that raising them would affect the mid-bass response a bit, in addition to the loss of bass reinforcement. The recommendation was to tilt them backwards a bit rather than lifting them.

When I tried lifting my M40s about 8" I found the change in sound was noticeable and not as good, although it must be noted that the track I was using for evaluation was the start of "Echoes" where the bass line begins to play under/against the piano, so the focus was on depth and linearity of LF response. Lifting about 4" was an OK compromise - got the drivers closer to ear level but without hurting the LF response too badly.

I don't remember if I tried raising the M60v4's - I should have though, since one of the things I didn't like about them was boomy bass in my living room, although I think some of that was a function of the setup rather than the speakers. I only had enough space to pull them ~3 feet away from the wall and that never seemed to be enough in that room (although it is enough in a different room)... I did try port plugs and that didn't seem to help much.

I don't think there is anything in the manuals about not lifting floorstanding speakers, at least I don't remember seeing anything about it. When I did some simple calculations (figuring out the first cancellation & reinforcement frequencies from raising the woofers a foot) I think the numbers were something like:

on floor - cancel 137 hz reinforce 275 hz
up a foot - cancel 90 hz reinforce 180 hz

I never had enough free time & motivation together to haul the M60ti's and M60v4's to the same floor so I could A/B them properly... all I remember is that the M60ti's sounded great in the living room once I fed them enough power and got the position right... but the M60v4's never sounded right.

M3's, M5HP's, Sierra-1's and M40's also all sounded good in the same position so it might have been something off with the speakers, but they sounded pretty much the same when I fed them a mono signal and switched from left to right so wasn't something obvious like a dead midrange.

Putting the Sierra-1's against the M5HP's was interesting - it was the first time that the speaker pairs I was A/B'ing didn't sound like chalk & cheese... they still sound different in tonal balance / frequency response but without a switch box and more free time it's hard to describe the difference properly or even say which one is closer to "right".

I'm sorry guys. It's just how I seem to hear or precieve the sound. In the M80 the sound ( Voices, Singers etc )sound like it was below the tv. My tv is wall mounted and 26" off floor to the bottom. It is a 65" screen.
I have toed in toed out moved my seat back it still sounds below the tv.
The M22 I have now the top driver is 37.5" off floor and the tweeter is 43.5"
They are toed in and the sound, I don't even need the centre channel on. In stereo I have people argue that the centre channel is on, until they put there ear to it.
just the way it is.

and yes it does go 6hz lower. and no I do not need louder.
But, is the 6hz $1500 worth better ?

Just trying to justify spending an extra $1500

One thing to keep in mind if you are running the M22's without center channel... if the center is below the TV then when it is on you will probably find the sound moves down compared to when you are running M22's only.

If you were running M80s with center and M22s without that would add another variable you probably want to keep out while you are making decisions.

If the M5HP vs M60HP question is for an HT system where the subs will always (or at least almost always) be used then I don't think you would hear much difference between M5 and M60 as long as they are set to "small".

"...I don't think you would hear much difference between M5 and M60..."

Do the M5s image better than the M60s including depth, width and height?

The bookshelves could also benefit from the easier placement options, higher lower wider etc.

When I originally went from M22 to M80. I had gone through many different placements with my M22 in doing so it made the integration of going up to M80 so much easier. M80s still a little taller than all the placement of M22 before them.

It's tough to say because (a) the listening position was better with the M5HP's in terms of relationship to ear height and (b) I was changing other things at the same time. My recollection was that even without things like DAC changes the imaging was a bit more precise with the M5's but it's hard to be sure from memory.

I'll try to dig up some of my long rambling posts and see if any useful information slipped in by mistake

Thanks, John.

I'd really like to know how The Family of Curves enhancements (that started with the research into the M100, LFRs and Brystons and ultimately made it into the entire M-series) has affected the soundstage. Everyone is looking for louder and cleaner and that's all good but I am looking for soundstage enhancements like improved imaging and deeper soundstage. It's frustrating that I want to upgrade but can't find the justification to do it. It doesn't appear there is a "standard" in audio for how to express soundstage quality.

I think this is the core problem... no standard way to express it, no standard way to measure it, and as a consequence seemingly not much in terms of ability to translate it back into specific attributes of a speaker system.

There is a school of thought that things like time and phase coherence in physical design and/or crossover design have a big impact, but that has not been my experience... if anything I find them to have more impact on the sound of acoustic instruments in ways that can not necessarily be explained by frequency response alone.

My impression from talking to various speaker designers is that things like diffraction effects off the edges of the speaker cabinet (and even off the edges of the drivers themselves) can have as much or more effect on imaging and soundstage... but that's getting well off the end of my knowledge.

For Troy to get the centre image higher up, a pair of on-wall M80s would work as they can be mounted at whatever height works for his room.
But the ultimate for soundstage presentation is the LFR series. For Troy the LFR1100s would also raise the image up. Besides making the sweetspot be everywhere in the room, there is an eerie detail to the positioning of everything. We have made the Listening Window curve and the Sound Power curve within a few dB of each other. This resulted in needing to make the Listening Window curve tilt slightly downward towards the higher frequencies and to lessen the tilt on the Sound Power curve. Since we have a DSP in the mix we have also been able to make these curves +/- 1 dB to target.

I still don't understand why Troy has this problem with M80s. The problem with on-walls is zero soundstage depth. I've moved the back of my 80v2 three feet from the front wall and I've been stunned with the improvement in depth. I want more though.

As for the LFR, the listening window and sound power responses are textbook! What an amazing journey Ian, to come from a time when you had to use pen and paper, passive components and loads of manual characterization just to deal with what are now mundane challenges to optimizing characteristics that were once the stuff of dreams.

I don't know
probably has something to do with the M80" are 39" tall and the middle of the botton tweeter and Midrange is 27" from floor.
Currently my M22 to the top is 45" and middle of tweeter and Mid range is 40"

Sitting in my chair my ears are 30" from floor
I am 10" from front of tv center
10'7" from the M22 L/R
They are wall mount on the FMB's
The image is about dead centre of my 65" tv
and seem to be floating about the front of the VP160.
I am currently in Stereo sound and I would swear if the front of the Pre/Pro was blanket out, I would swear it was the centre channel turned on.
I cannot get a better image

Connect up the M80 and frigg around for hour and the voices in Stereo I swear are at my knee height. it is like it is coming out from under the VP160.
The VP160 is on a home built stand with no bottom and the top is directly level with the bottom of my tv. The bottom of the VP160 is 20.5" off the floor bottom of my tv is 30" off the floor. Centre of the tv is 46" off floor.
I can play and raie up the M22 about 8 " and the image would be dead centre. But, just looks a bit wierd

Maybe the speakers are out of phase. try switching the positive and negative on one of the speakers.Also are you rerunning your room correction software when you switch out the speakers or is there no room corretion being used.

My ears are 34" off the floor, my M80s are 9' apart and I sit 12' away on the diagonal. The centre image is great! Are your mids and tweeters working? If you have dual binding posts, is the shorting bar in place?

If they were out of phase then why do these new ones sound perfectly imaged. And the Anthem came back with no errors after check.

and yeh of course I re ran the ARC, I mean going from M80 to M22 I wouldn't expect it to be equal

OMG Yes the bar is in place. ...all tweeters are working fine and mids.

If this was the case ,then why would they sound great upstairs.

How bigs your room the speakers are in ?

Doesn't matter now, I spent 6 months screwing around that I sold the M80's and bought M22's and so much better.

Glad to hear you found a way to keep enjoying your theater. At the end of the day we all hear different thing differently and the room has so much more of an effect than most people want to admit or are willing to realize. Anytime someone is unhappy we love to accept the challenge of making it right and since we are not there we can only share our ideas for everyone to try. So go easy, and try not to insult anyone by saying OMG , thats just not nice.

Richard

My room is 4,200 ft^3. I've also had the 80s 7' apart, flat against the wall and sitting 8' away. I've never heard them sound the way you describe.

As for the shorting bars, I knew it was a stretch but I had to ask because that was the culprit a few times here on the boards.

BTW, quit upsetting Richard 'cause he's not the stallion he used to be.

Like TroyD, I experienced an "on the floor image" with my recently acquired M3v4 when I placed them in my living room. These are the same M3v4 that soundstaged so beautifully and filled in my 4,200 ft^3 space.

I first tried them on the short wall and imaging was great but for a few reasons other than just acoustics, I decided to try them on the long wall. I placed them on either side of the bow window about 3 feet into the room and made an equilateral triangle with my MLP. The acoustic width was awesome. However, the front image of many songs was on the floor with all other songs sounding like they were being played by little people. I moved the M3s so they were only a foot into the room, moved my MLP to form the equilateral triangle and BAM...the soundstage was raised to normal! This works well for me.

What I don't know yet is how much soundstage depth I've given up. I have a lot of room treatment to do to clean up the sound. There's depth there for sure but nothing like my main A/V room. It's also worth noting I could not replicate this with my 10 year old Dreamcatchers. Of course the Dreamcatchers don't image anywhere close as the v4. It wasn't a case of distance between the speakers or distance to the MLP. Since I had the M3s four feet away from the front wall in my main A/V space and they imaged very well, I can only conclude that the bow window focused a portion of the M3s' polar responses towards the floor.