Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater VP180

Steve, if you're able to get a little time to temporarily turn it upright(even if it partially blocks the screen), your impressions would be interesting. The little comparisons I've done in the past with "conventional" MTM centers indicated that they sounded better when upright.

So you're saying they're going to give you between $325 & $350 dollars credit for your VP150??? Holy crap, that is AWESOME!!! So in other words Axiom is charging you about $70 bucks to use their center channel speaker for the past 2 years... Axiom never ceases to amaze me!

Steve mentioned a very, very, VERY slight change in timber matching between the M80's and VP180... I don't know exactly what difference ports make, but I was wondering if this difference could come from the M80's having 2 ports out back, and one port up front as opposed to the VP180 having 3 ports out back?

I think if I were just now looking at putting a HT system together, I would very seriously have to look into getting 3 VP180's and using them as L/R and center... at least give it a try. I know how much even the slightest difference in sound drives Grunt absolutely crazy, so this would probably be ideal for him.

It certainly gives us all a lot more options when putting a HT together anyway, that's forsure!

My opinion is that any minor differences Steve might have noticed in timbre would not be solved even by buying 3 VP180's unless you oriented them all the same way and treated the room aggressively. You're just not going to get "perfect" - even out of the same speakers - because of different room interactions.

Those damn rooms! <shakes fist in the air>

Hmmm... Horizontal L/R mains you say eh? Now that would be an original set-up!

There is a picture posted here on the forum (can’t remember where) of somebody, I think in California who set up 3 VP150s across the front.

I am very interested in how the VP180 sounds vertically. I can’t see why it wouldn’t sound as good or even better (often horizontal centers arrayed vertically have better horizontal dispersion). Assuming it does match the M80s well (can’t imagine why it won’t) then being able to have 3 VP180s up front arrayed either vertically, horizontally or a combination of both opens up some interesting placement possibilities and tweaking opportunities.

I’ve already toyed with the idea of using the fabrication shop at work to make 3 stands that would allow the VP180 to rotate 90 degrees from horizontal to vertical. I could have them arrayed vertically for music and have the center or all three turned horizontally for movies. Just so happens that three of them will fit horizontally under my screen with just enough room to spare to allow them to spin.

Also with symmetrical driver placement I think the VP180 might even work better than the M80s on the sides of the screen elevated up off the ground. This would give the option like some have done with the on/in-wall speakers of having the screen framed with VP180s.

Lots of interesting possibilities with this design IMO.

I spent a considerable amount of time over the weekend scanning the internet and looking at many speaker manufacturer's websites(at all price levels)and quite surprisingly the only companies that I have found(other than ED)that have designed and are offering a center channel that is similar in size and driver configuration to their floor standing designs are Axiom and Paradigm. There may be others out there but all of the others that I have seen generally have center channels of various configurations with only "some" of the drivers and considerably smaller cabinets that they still "tout" as being "timbre matched" to their L/R speakers and these include many in the thousands of dollars in cost.

It would seem in the end, when all is said and done(and it would seem the folks at Axiom realized this), I guess you can't defy the laws of physics in that unless you can have identical vertically matched speakers across the front, OR in order to get that maximum performance in a horizontally oriented speaker, you still need the "box" and in one configuration or another, ALL the matching drivers.

Hope I didn't miss it in this thread, but I don't see what the recommended minimum spacing from the wall is for the three rear ports to work properly. Any information?

I have mine about 6 inches off the back wall (the same as my M80s) and it seems to sound fine that way.