Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Multiple Subwoofer Set-Up & Calibration Guide

I thought this way of calibrating the subs was interesting, in that I hadn't seen it before. I'm certainly not as well-read as a lot of you. I always assumed measuring at the listening position was the way to go. What do you guys think?

John, do you have a photographic memory?

Fred, I've got the book; so even if I got one of them pornographic memories I didn't need it for this.

Its wierd seeing the two 'K's talking directly to each other like this. I've always envisioned you two as siamese twins connected at the shoulders. Each with your own computer and keyboard, your own identity and all that good stuff...

But I guess I always figured if you ever wanted to say something to one another, you would just turn your head and say, "dang, you got some kinda photographic memory bro? I didn't get one of them darn it".

I did turn, but he had a book in his face.

John, you have a lot of enthusiasm for this hobby then. I'm happy to point people in the direction of reference material, but I am not motivated enough to look up specific page references to make a point.

Guy's

I've been in constant contact with Dr. Toole, and the senior folks at Harman (Sean Olive, Tod Welti). I don't want to speak on anyones behalf but Floyd was pretty clear to me that he preferred 4 corner placement with SFM (sound field management) vs 4 midwall placement with SFM or proper EQing. 4 midwall is very inefficient and a waste of sub power in most cases. I've never heard a 4 midwall placement that I thought exceeded a 4 corner placement or 2 midwall placement. I have Harman running real world tests and Matlab sims of my recommendations in my article and will be posting a followup. I also have some updates coming to this article based on my convos with Harman. They also invited me out to their facility to do further testing.

I've been slammed the last few days doing our annual speaker shootout for $1k towers which happened to include Axiom M60v3s. Very interesting results to post.

Rest assured there will be many followup articles to this sub article referenced here. Please also realize these are general recommendations to start with. Experimentation is key of course and not every configuration will be suited for any particular room. The main purpose of my article was to provide a methodical way to setup and calibrate multi subs to achieve the best results and minimize the guest work.

Hey, look what the cat dragged in.

I look forward to the sub articles and the speaker shootout. I'm curious to know how the M60 ranks against some of the more recent contenders in the $1k range.

Gene, good to have you stop by again and comment on this topic discussed in your excellent article. As I pointed out, Dr. Toole specifically endorsed the two mid-wall arrangement with two co-located subs at each position as being the best, by a narrow margin, of the options for four subs.

Guys;

I updated the article to remove the "uneven" comment of 4 midwall sub placement and also added a comment about the 4 corner placement as follows:

Used in conjunction with global equalization, this option provides nearly as good frequency response and seat to seat variation as the midwall placement with the huge advantage in efficiency.

There is much more coming trust me. This article is already over 8600 words so I didn't want to turn it into a novel. Its also been read by many of the key players in the industry and most of them have an interest in furthering this topic for industry education since its very confusing to people how to properly setup multi subs.

Regarding the Shootout
The Axioms did nicely in the shootout and more importantly we ate a lot of great food, consumed mass quantities of beer, and had fun doing it. But moving around the speakers on carpeted floors was quite a pain