Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Sub proximity to mains

Thanks for the compliments, guys. And the input. I guess my amp must have a bias to the left channel. I'll take a better picture when I get home tonight so you can see the finish better. The whole thing came from a 4'x8' sheet of MDF, 6 3/4" threaded rods, cut to 30", 2 coats of mahogany stain, and 5 coats of polyurethane on top, with fine sanding done between each coat (2 coats on underside). I used a small routing bit on the edges, and all the side surfaces were very well sanded.

This was my project while I was looking for a job from home, and my dad has some great woodworking tools. Sorry Curtis, I won't be making another one anytime soon, even if I had the tools. It took quite awhile, though it's very satisfying to take on a DIY project. And you have endless options. Home Theater Forum has a forum dedicated to DIY-type projects.

-Cooper

Could the levels be off on your receivers set-up menu ? And I know this is a reach, but it appears the right speaker is in a corner, and the left is on the open side of the room ? This may be adding some unwanted color do to the slight horn loading effect caused by the corner.. Just a thought..

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that's a nice rack!!

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Wow! This was uttered, and nobody got their face slapped!

I thought about making a comment, but then again, I don't notice "racks" all that often.

So when your M60s showed up, did the delivery guy say, "Nice package!" ??

The mystery is solved. My receiver is a simple stereo unit (HK 3470), so I pulled out the jumper pins from preout to main in. I replaced the pins with interconnect cable, but crossed the channels: left preout to right main in, and vice versa. This resulted in a right-channel bias, so the problem is actually the preamp section of my Harman Kardon.

I verified this on multiple inputs, including the tuner. This means that the Axioms are so sensitive that they revealed a slight L/R imbalance. I never got an inkling of this problem with my Paradigm Mini Monitors.

This same thing happened to me with my headphone amp: the Headroom Little. My Grado SR60 headphones are also very sensitive, and so at low volumes it sounded like the sound faded to one channel. I sent the amp back to Headroom and they kindly replaced the op-amps with a better matched pair.

By the way, my SR60s, which cost $70 new, are far superior to my Mini Monitors. This was one of the reference points that gave me the itch to upgrade speakers! While I haven't listened closely to my headphones much on my main system, I wouldn't be surprised if it's still a tossup between SR60's and the M22's. There's a powerful immediacy to good headphones, and I actually find the imaging very enveloping.

-Cooper

Good quality headphones are great. they present the audio in a much differnet way than speakers, and you really feel emersed in it.

good quality headphones ARE great. but even the best headphones dont give you the sensation of a good 2 channel system.

Headphones are a completely different way of listening to music. Believe it or not, you can easily spend as much money on a good headphone system as on a good 2-channel stereo system. Of course, there are as many snake-oil products available for headphone enthusiasts (headphiles) as there are for speaker enthusiasts. One product that I have yet to see (but am expecting any minute) is a specially shaped q-tip that contours your ear wax just so....