Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater M22 for a Large Room

Yes, but you will never get the same bass response in that room as you would get with 60's or 80's. My HT/Rec room is 30ft x 31ft x 9ft ceilings that leads into a wide hallway to the other end of our basement which is also about 1,000 sq ft.

The 22's can't provide the same bass performance for music or HT in larger rooms, compared to a large floor standing speaker. Also, a receiver, in my opinion won't give you enough headroom as seperate monoblocks driving 80's.

Lots to think about for sure, I have time to make the decision on what to do as I just started looking.

I do plan to hand over powering the speakers to Emotiva to take the load off my rec'er

I think seperate amplification is a good thing if you have speakers that can make use of that power, and a large room to fill. The 22's are great speakers, but they can't fill a large space like full range speakers, even with seperates.

If I were you I'd think about starting in a 5.1 setup and use the money saved to upgrade your sub before spending money going to 7.1. If you're set on the 22s as mains, I think you'd notice the effect of a better sub rounding out the sound long before you'd notice the subtle gain from the 2 extra surround back speakers.

Jason

I'm leaning towards something bigger for the mains but I have the challenge of getting my wifes approval for something bigger.

I probably would go for the extra power first because my rec'er can't drive my present 5.1 system all that well, as mentioned above I can throw it into protection mode at *nominal volumes* with a DTS test disk. Maybe my rec'er has other issues, I don't know.

** Due to my room being 27x25 maybe they aren't so nominal..

Is that logic correct? If not pleas feel correct me, I am a newbie after all!

Any chance you have a voltage selector on the back you have set to 6 ohms? If so, turn it to 8 ohms. I'd be suprised if it had problems driving Axioms, they are very efficient and easy to drive, using minimal wattage. The 60's would be slimmer looking than your old speakers. Also, you can get a color that looks nice with your room.

For several years, because of space issues, I always used bookshelf or similar type speakers(Paradigm Studio 40's) in my main L/R configuration. I later replaced the Studio 40's with a piano finish pair of M22's. I must admit, although both of these speakers sounded excellent, when it came to the upper bass frequencies, they seemed to be straining a little at loud volumes. Once I was able to change my set-up, I purchased a pair of M60's and the difference was noticeable immediately. I found, believe it or not, that the full range reproduction capability of the M60's blended better with my sub woofers(I have four) in that I was able to lower the crossover point, up the volume of the subs slightly, which enabled me to take advantage of that REAL DEEP BASS.

This was my experience, so if someone has the space to get either M60's or M80's as your mains, you certainly should notice an improvement for BOTH movies AND music.

Good point Casey, the blending does seem to be much easier/better with the floorstanders and I suspect the blending is even better for larger rooms. In my smallish room the M22 and sub sounded very seamless, but in Mojo's much larger room(double the size of mine) the sub and M22s never really worked together, they have always seemed to be independant from each other.

It's not that I have a space issues, I have wife issues! lol

The theater ( albeit a poor one ) has one of the 25' walls all to itself, there are no chairs, end tables, decoations etc. They need to be smaller because speakers are ugly in her eyes. *gasp*

My understanding is that its because the speakers still deliver some sound below the crossover (rolled off). I do not know how much below the crossover they contribute, but clearly there is some effect there.