Ian, Am I to understand that as long as I don't play music very loud, then, the lows, the mids and the highs will sound the same in both the M60 and M80. Also, will the M80 go lower than the M60? Which is a better buy for a 14 x 15 x 8 size room? I am looking for good sound re-production at medium volume.
Thanks
Sonically these two models are very similar. The M80s have a dynamic quality that the M60s do not quite attain and they do go down a bit lower. The M60s would certainly be lots of speaker for your room. It depends whether you want that little extra overkill.
Ian Colquhoun
President & Chief Engineer
Just out of curiosity, then, whats the ideal room size for the M80s?
Thanks for your help.
The M80s will work great in any size room. The room size equation is a matter of esthetics and overkill. Assuming you were not concerned with how much of your room the speaker consumes, then the question comes down to the overkill equation. Since the M80s will play lower and have better dynamics than the M60s, these attributes will remain in any sized room. If the room starts to become quite large then these attributes switch from "good to have" to "must have" in order to fill the room with a reasonable amount of sound, depending of course on your definition of reasonable. So in answer to your question there is no ideal room size for the M80s, just upper end size limitations to each speaker model. In other words at some point the room would get too large even for the M80s, such as an auditorium. On an interesting side note I did a demonstration of surround sound in a room of 100 people using the Epic 80 system with 3 subs not too long ago and the system was able to handle this very well up to what would be considered a medium-high volume level.
Ian Colquhoun
President & Chief Engineer
Do you have recommended crossover points, for each class of speakers, where a room size moves each particular speaker's attributes from the "good to have" column to the "must have" column? Ideally, I guess, this would be a table, with room size on one axis and number of speakers (2.0, 5.1, or 7.1) along the other axis, and the recommended minimum package at each intersection.
Of course, I already own the Epic 80, so to me this is of purely academic interest. :) It is certainly overkill for my 15' x 11' x 9' room, but I expect to move soon and I hope my living room will be larger. And for now, the overkill is actually nice.
There are a number of factors that come into play to get this equation correct. If you err on the overkill side you will not be disappointed with the performance. You may spend a little more than you needed to but you will get a benefit for that spending, the only question is "was the benefit worth the extra money?" You can see where this becomes a very personal question. Since all of our speaker models are designed to be accurate performers then if you err on the not quite enough side fortunately you will still be very pleased with the accuracy of the reproduction. There will however be those areas you wished it did more, like the overall output, the low frequencies, and the dynamics of the performance. These areas can also be affected by the other components in the system, mainly the amplification. So the balance of the system overall is also important. The key areas to consider when making these choices are the following:
Room Size
Real Amplifier Power
Type of movie and music preference
Desired overall clean output
Budget
I have written the logic in our Home Theater Wizard to take all these factors into consideration when putting together the suggested home theater system. So the table you are referring to does exist inside this Wizard.
Ian Colquhoun
President & Chief Engineer