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

Yes, very nice. Dean, I'm interested in what you think of the curtains after you have them sorted and have spent some time with them.

That looks like a nice viewing environment. Thanks for your views regarding PLIIz.

Per a request to see the DSX speaker layout I did the best I could with extremely limited photographic skill and trying to show black speakers against a black background. If anyone remembers way back when I bought my speakers the goal has always been for the speakers to be heard and not seen during HT use.

Originally when I set these up all front speakers corresponded to the DSX angles for placement. In this picture I’ve moved the mains closer to and under the screen as part of my experimenting with positioning otherwise the wide and height speakers are still properly positioned per DSX standards. They look closer together than they should because the picture is take with the camera sitting on top of the projector which is about 5’ back from my seating. Almost impossible to see but the little dots of light near the sides about level with the top of the screen are the QS8 height speakers (close-up later).




Here’s the back of the room from just off center at the screen. The QS8 surrounds are to either side a few feet back from the seating while the VP150 rear is on the two unused QS8 stands in the back. I plan on wall mounting the surrounds, probably with full metal brackets, but am holding off until I get the positioning right which isn’t going to happen until I replace the VP150 rear with a couple M2s.

I’m not happy with a single rear speaker because of the psychoacoustic issues often mentioned by Alan of it being hard to tell if a sound from directly behind is coming from behind or in front. I already have tried the M22s and QS8s as rears and found both work better than a single rear VP150. However, due to the limited amount of audio coming from the rears I think using anything more than M2 or M3s is a waste of money in my room.



Well this one is sort of a throwaway shot. I was hoping it would better show the L/H QS8 height speaker in relation to the other front speakers but it blends in to darn well. BTW it’s tweeter is the little dot up high between the L/H M22 and L/H M80.



Close-up of the L/H QS8 height speaker. When I first mounted them I wasn’t thinking about how high the curtains would go. If I find having the curtains that close below the heights degrades there performance I will move them higher, however so far I don’t think that's going to be a problem. I put them at that height to adhere to the DSX angle for how high to place them relative to the seating.

Very, very cool!

I wonder how much the cutains are killing the sound from the lower driver. Dean, you should try mounting the QS8 so it is positioned away from the wall so the lower driver has some room to work before being muffled, I bet it will sound like a curtain has been lifted

I haven't done any A/B comparisons but so far I haven't noticed any negative
impact on the performance of the height channels since I put up the
curtains. With the ambient nature of the sound coming from them and the
extra height from the vaulted ceiling I don't think the proximity to the
curtains is an issue but I will be checking that later when the other
curtains has been fixed and I have it installed. I have no desire to run
the Audyssey setup any more than I have to so I'm waiting.

Holy crap!

So only the side surrounds? No back surrounds?

Presently I’m using the single VP150 as a rear speaker right now but IMO a single rear speaker isn’t very effective. I’ve tried QS8 and M22 rear speakers and again IMO there isn’t enough coming out of the rear speakers to justify the cost so I’m probably going to get a pair of M2s to use in the back.

I haven’t rerun Audyssey yet because I haven’t gotten my one defective curtain returned yet but I did a little test to see which music listening mode I like the most. Unfortunatly the Onkyo 3007 unlike my Denon 2807 doesn’t allow easy switching directly between modes. Instead it requires you to cycle through all the modes to get back to one with no way to go backward. A real pain but in this case a slight benefit as it allowed me to do a sort of pseudo blind test since there are so many mode I can’t keep track of them.

I put on something with both good vocals and a lot of ambience and started switching. Some were very easy to skip over but a couple seemed to clearly sound better than others. Eventually I settled on one that seemed to just sound the best compared to all the others.

The winner was Dolby PLIIz THX Music mode.

Also just last weekend I bought a Samsung 6000 series 46” display to replace my aging Samsung DLP. Wow is the picture better. It’s also so bright it’s made me realize just how much my projectors lamp has dimmed after nearly 800 hours.

I did the math and have put an average of 8.5 hours a day on the AE4000. That will drop off with the new TV and the passing of the holiday season. Federal employees really do get a ridiculous amount of time off from Thanksgiving through Martian Luther King Day. Add to that the reduced flying schedule for the holydays and being on night shift . . . .

That's interesting because with my Pio for Movies, I like the PLII THX Movie mode the best. (Doesn't have the z capability).