Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater The world's newest Axiomite it born...

Yes I'm certainly not ready to give up on it yet, I am willing to try everything first. The comment about handling everything down to 18 hz is actually just a guess. I said that becuase it wasn't doing that during musical playback, and I don't think very much music is recorded below 18 hz (besides possibly 'Bass Boys'), so I was throwing that figure out there. It might be highter or lower than that for all I know, I do not have an SPL meter.

I played with the crossover between 40 - 150 hz and it didn't seem to help. Turning it down to 20 hz may possibly solve the problem, but if it did that would leave a gap between it and the M80's that roll off around 36 hz. So that would be an unacceptable cure in my opinion. The Denon's bass level is set at +4. I turned it down from +12 when I was using just the M80's (which sounded spectacular cranking out this much bass) because it was too much bass during music once I hooked the EP800 up. Mind you it didn't bottom out at +12, it was just too freagin much bass!!!

I will try setting it at zero, and possible even take some bass out of it to see what that does. But honestly, I would have expected it to be able to handle +4 with ease. I mean when you spend $2200 dollars on a subwoofer you have the right to expect it to pump out massive amounts of bass don't you think? You wouldn't think you would have to turn the bass way down in order for it to handle it sufficiently ya know? I mean sure there is always tinkering to do when you're setting up a system... settings to adjust, experimentation to go through in order to get it just right. But no matter what I never would have thought I'd be able to bottom them out so easily. I know everything has it's limitations but this simply can not be all the EP800 is capable of. Like I said, that wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting it to blow me away during movies, even more than it did during music. So something tells me I have a faulty unit.

CV, I figured as much. You no doubt are experiencing the EP800('s) the way they are meant to be enjoyed. I can't wait until I can enjoy them that way as well.

With the 800 basically laying inside the "walk-in" that houses all of the components etc., I was thinking the exact same thing. I know when my EP500 rattles my room it's very hard to locate exactly where the noise is coming from; the sound almost immerses me (if that makes sense ) .

I was looking very hard at things around it that could possibly be vibrating and tricking me into thinking it was the 800 as what happened previously to me when it was just barely resting on the wood frame, which made it sound very similar actually.

Ok I tell you what, now that I have that possibility stuck in my head I think what I'll do is move the sub out of it's location, away from all the stuff that surrounds it now, and see if it still sounds as f it's bottoming out. That would be so awesome if it was something else entirely and not the speakers themselves. Because like I said they perform flawlessly during music playback. If I could get that kind of performance out of them during movies (or perhaps even better), I would be as happy as a pig in shit!

Of course wouldn't you know I'm not at the house right now. So now it'll be driving me mad wondering if that's the culprit until I can actually get home and tinker with it!

Ok I got home and moved the sub around and. Have good news & bad news... first off I'll tell you the bad news. The bad news is that I'm more sure than ever that the noise is in fact eminating from the subwoofer, and not from any other source surrounding it. And I know what you're thinking, that doesn't leave much room for good news, right? Well the good news is that where I had previously thought it was both speakers bottoming out, I'm now almost positive it's only the right (when facing it) side speaker that is producing the noise!

That is big IMO, because it seems a lot more feasible that one of the drivers could be defective then both of them! I mean what would be the odds that I got not one, but two bad drivers as well as a bum amp shipped to me all in the same enclosure? They would have to be astonomical! The chances that I got a bum amp, and that amp caused a problem with the driver, or vice versa even, seem a lot better.

Before, although I was fighting it, I was seriously starting to wonder if the EP800 just wasn't able to hit those low notes. It was a depressing thought, but it seemed more likely than receiving a subwoofer with 3 out of 3 bad components! Now I'm feeling huge relief over the fact that its just the one driver that's bad! Still uncool I might add, but fixable at least.

So next I'm going to pull the driver & see if I can't find a visible problem with it. Does anyone know what I should be looking for? Has anyone else here had an Axiom driver fail in any subwoofer? I'd like to disconnect the bad driver & listen to just the good driver so I can make sure I'm right, how would I do that?

Micah, Eric's mention of the "20Hz filter" didn't refer to the variable low pass filter control. It cuts off the response sharply below 20Hz and has nothing to do with the crossover to the speakers. It doesn't serve as a cure-all, but it might indicate what frequencies were causing the problem.

Would that be the subsonic filter? I would imagine that's what you're talking about. I didn't really pay much attention to the way it sounded with it engaged. I will play with it more later. My next project is removing the bad driver to search for clues.

I believe one way to test for a blown driver is by very carefully and gently pushing the cone and feel/hear for any "scratchiness" or "roughness". If you get any those characteristics you have a bad driver.

I would talk with axiom before doing anything like that however.

I thought you were supposed to pee on it on a full moon. Oh, wait, thats warts...

Would disconnecting the driver's indvidually work as a good way to figure out which driver is causing the noise? The system runs in parallel so loosing one driver just increases the resistance for the amp to drive which shouldn't cause any issues. It would be like having a sealed EP600, which is what the 800 is based on any way, IIRC.

Or I could remove the driver and it would be just like the EP600!