Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners New HT Room Advice

Are you sure you can't do 9.1 DSX wide + height with no surround back? That should be something which DSX offers.

No it won’t play both the from both the wide and height channels at the same time. The manual also clearly states this in a note. So I can get 9.1 based on the standard 7.1 and adding either height or wide channels, but 9.1 with both height and wide channels and no surround backs is not possible on any of the Onkyo 1007, 3007 or 5007 receivers. They probably just patched this onto an existing 7.1 design. Maybe the next generation will be fully customizable because I agree if Audyssey is touting wide and height being superior to back channels you would think they would offer that option.

Dean, very interesting. Maybe I misunderstood one of your observations, but it's one of the basic DPLIIz points that opting for front heights rather than back surrounds would be advantageous especially for someone sitting near the back wall without enough room for a good rear sound field to form.

It just looks long cause of all the “white space” I put in to hopefully make it easier to read.


Right.

I probably wasn’t clear about what I was saying. With Dolby PLIIz engaged both the surround back and height speakers are active if connected. So it’s not an either use the heights or the backs situation both can be active using PLIIz. However none of the Dolby settings on this receiver line allow you to use the Audyssey DSX wide speakers if height speakers were connected during auto setup. It won’t even default back to PLIIx at all if height speakers are hooked up. OTOH Neo 6 allows the DSX wide speakers to play along with the backs even if height speakers were connected during setup, but doesn’t give any option to use the height speakers if the wides were connected during setup.

So in order to do A/B/C comparisons between standard 6.1, standard 6.1 + heights and standard 6.1 + wide I had to use Neo 6, PLIIz, and Neo 6 + DSX respectively. I could only do 8.1 and not 9.1 due to lack of speakers but the system is capable of driving a full 9.1 but just not the wide and height speakers at the same time.

I’m not sure if the inability to use both height and wide speakers in place of using surround backs is hard wired or something they can update later in the firmware. You’d think since the surround backs can be reassigned to another zone or bridged to the mains you could also reassign them to support either the height or wide channels but it doesn’t seem to work that way unless I’m missing something in the setup but the manual clearly states that you can’t get sound from the heights and wides at the same time.

Right now I have it hooked up in a 9.1 configuration (standard 7.1 plus two M22s as DSX wide speakers). I liked the effect of the height speakers better but they didn’t seem to come into play as much as the wide speakers. So the wide speakers seemed to have more overall impact but it wasn’t as noticeable when they were missing. Now I’m going to give each one a try for some time with a range of material not just my demo stuff to see which one seems better over time and not just when A/B testing them.

My preliminary judgment is that I wouldn’t rush out to buy any new speakers to upgrade. There may be some setups that would benefit more than my room. So now I’m hoping to see if after getting use to these new modes if things just sound wrong when they’re missing. I think that will be a better way to determine if they are worth buying the extra speakers.

What is the deal with the 4000 review:
"Panasonic is touting a new lamp design, with a stronger red component (better matches the 6500K standard), to provide that extra brightness in best mode. That lamp doesn't improve the projector's brightest mode's measured brightness, by any noteworthy amount. "

Followed by:

" The end result is that the PT-AE4000 gets a significant boost in lumens in best modes."

What? I wonder if I can put a 4000 lamp into my "old" (six months) AE3000?

My guess is it won’t work well even if it physically fits. The reason the 4k is brighter in “best” modes but not “brightest” is that with the new lamp is they don’t have to filter the non-red part of the spectrum down to match the low red output of the 3k bulb. Less filtering means more lumens get through. The “brightest” modes either don’t use filters or it’s only minimal filtering. So even if you put a 4k bulb into your 3k it would still have the “darker” 3k filter. Not only would your picture be just as dark the colour balance would be all screwed up.

Cheers,
Dean

Playing a little Bioshock and figured out something real fast. Don’t like the DSX wide channels for the hard pans in gaming. As you turn your character around and the sound cycles through each speaker there is a long period where both the L or R main and it’s corresponding wide speaker are both producing the same sound. The effect is a very noticeable and sudden increase in volume as soon as you pan off dead center lasting until about the 90 degree point where there is a sudden drop in volume as only the surround is firing.

Since there is a lot of motion especially back and forth across the front the sudden drop in volume when crossing center is really annoying. Plus the increase in volume from the front sides obscures the queues coming from the surrounds that something is coming up behind you.

Looks like I’m pulling the plug on DSX wide.

I’ll have to set up two rows of seats and see if the VP150 or M22s can still perform back duties as well as they do with a single row of seats. If so they will free up the QS8s for the height channels.

What are you using the VP150 for in the back?

I’ve used it as a single surround back speaker. I first tried it back there when I was running a phantom center between my M80s. Later I picked up a 3rd M80 as dedicated center so I permanently lost it’s starting position. Now with the QS8s sounding better in the height position than as surround backs I will likely put the VP150 in the back as a single surround back speaker again.