Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Living Large

Yesterday my wife caught me cruising the Axiom Boards again - she shook her head and brushed on past. Good speakers are the last piece of my Home Theater as I now am in the active "saving" mode. Later in the day we were driving and she asked me if I had ever considered buying a piece or two at a time. I thought about it a minute and then told her, no, I never had as I wanted to take advantage of the home theater discount. I guess my question to the group is how many of you "went large" and bought the entire set up at one time vs. how many "pieced" together the system?

Don't deprive yourself. Your package discount could potentially be wiped out by inflation anyway. Don't forget about the factory outlet store.

Piece, out

Piece by piece for me. The first time I went "big" I ended up with an HTIB. It was my first purchase and I didn't know much about what was available. Since then, I've added components as I could afford them. I still change things from time to time.

I have a piecemeal system now that I would be embarrased to list. The "best"piece is an old 8" M&K dual push pull sub. It gives ok bass - the descriptions in here of the 500 leave me....as Dave said in some of those old Wendys commercials "I yearn wanting more". As for the factory store, I have calculated an Epic 60-500 set in Black Oak from the factory - same system in Warm Cherrywood from the Custom vinyl and same system in Natural Cherry from the Custom Wood store. Then calculated the difference in each. When I get bored with that, I cruise back through the forums looking for some tidbit I might have overlooked before...........hence the wife shaking her head bit. Of course, she might be right, I could be "losing it".

No, you're totally on the right track

My system came together in three chunks.

For Christmas of 2003 my wife 'surprised' me with the VP150 and a pair of m22's. A pair of Energy Take 5's and a Kenwood sub held down the rest.

In the Spring of 2007, I surprised myself with a pair of M80's and an SVS sub. M22's became the surrounds.

And recently, I bought myself a pair of QS8's. The M22's are now doing time in our bedroom as a 2-channel system.

Whether you do it all or slowly depends on your budget, what you want to do, and what sorts of speakers you have lying around.

If you're going for a full-bore 5.1 setup and you already have decent other speakers, I'd say it's perfectly fine to do it a piece at a time. If you have no other speakers and are starting a home theater from scratch, you might as well do the whole thing at once.

You never know, there are a few oddballs out there that don't like the way Axiom's sound, and it's a lot cheaper to return a pair of M22's than it is a full 5.1 system.

I got mine all at once as well. The way it works at my house with things I want that CAN be pieced together a bit at a time like speakers is this... I buy the fronts, and my wife says, "That's nice." I talk about getting the center or surrounds and she says, "Why? Those other speakers sound good by themselves."

It is a scam being run by wives everywhere. They act like they are giving you "pre-approval" to go ahead with the big purchase as long as it is spread out over time only to come back to you later with their crazy logic to make sure that you never get a chance to complete your system!

My wife wasn't sure about any of this until I had my first theater, and that was just junk pieced together comparatively. Then when we sold that house and the home theater was written in by the buyers as a "must have" I told her that it was OK because I wanted to do it "right" next time.
Well, V2.0 had the hardware I wanted (including my Axioms) but not the location. I am now in V3.0 with the same good hardware, and when asked if I would ever upgrade again, I said "Sure. I'll need a new 1080p projector and an HDMI receiver..." I don't feel the need to upgrade the Axioms at all, and even if I wanted to jump to M80 fronts, it would be a hard sell even for me because I like the M60 fronts so much for my space.

Get it all, never upgrade again!

You nailed it....it is a conspiracy. When I said that I have never had good speakers, she said what about the polk system you bought? These are seiously small speakers - a left center and right all wired to a "sub woofer". I think the system was called M3 or something. I tried explaining that I just agreed to that due to the WAF. Her response was "those speakers sound plenty good". How can you even begin to rebut that logic? You may have the best strategy - to do it all at once so that I can't be tripped up later. That is sort of why I called this "living large". I always ask myself what would Joe Montana do in this situation? He would GO LONG, of course....

That's one of the things I truly liked about Axiom when I was looking. Because they have little inventory, they don't HAVE to sell you all at once and can have a much lower price piece-by-piece, while still offering some reduction for 5 items or more. I went once piece-a-month. It was a great progression.

I was lucky, I bought the VP100 and QSs. Once hooked up they made my mains sound so bad my wife was the one that said I should get better front speakeers(not that I didn't already know I needed them), I went for the M22s, it took all of 2 weeks for it to come together.

Piece it all together or buy it all at once, as long as you get what you want, it is all good.