Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater VP180 First Impressions

Then that's all I need to hear Like I said before, this is probably as close as you can come to an M80 using a horizontal design.

It may be just as well, as the twetter over mid driver design may lessen the vertical off axis performance, which I need. Thanks for letting me know that they tried it, now no more wondering.

Thanks for posting more impressions of your VP180.


On several occasions I’ve gone w/o a sub w/o realizing it for some time until I play something that I know well enough to realize some very low bass is missing. My M80s routinely shake my seats just playing music in 2/ch direct.



They do, as demonstated in an Audioholics test done awhile back:

http://www.audioholics.com/education/lou...evaluation.html

Where a $115 vertically arrayed bookshelf speaker bested all the horizontally arrayed center speakers when tested off axis. Only two centers, the $600 and $2,500 arrayed vertically bested the little $115 vertical bookshelf off axis.

Also note that a speakers location in the room can have a profound effect on how it sounds. Even with identical M80s across the front I can still detect slight time mismatches when certain sounds pan across the front even though the speakers are identical.

I’m just glad that Axiom is now making a center speaker that seems worthy of playing with the M80s for those who can’t fit an M80 center.

"Tweeters in the middle" isn't T/M.

That's very true, and the version that had the drivers "conventionally" oriented (tweeters vertically stacked in the middle) actually lost out early on during our development of the VP180. It may not be obvious to some, but there is a tonne of science, measurement, and listening that goes into determining driver positioning, even more so when it comes to a centre channel. I'm not sure how a tweeter above the mid orientation would be implemented with the M80 driver complement without the cabinet becoming as tall as an M22. Everyone can rest assured that the VP180 is THE best centre channel match to the M80 that we know how to build as of right now!

Andrew

I don't think I said tweeters in the middle, but if I did then I actually meant tweeter over mid driver.

For sure, using dual tweeters and dual mids in a tweeter over mid config would be too tall, but I was wondering about single tweeter over single mid. I know this wouldn't really be an M80 equivalent, just wondering if that layout provides better horizontal off axis performance. Thanks for the reassurance though, I'm loving my VP180

That would put the speaker at either 11.5" or 13.5" tall, using the specs of the M2 and M3 since it would be using one of those driver configurations. That is a tough sell for most people who don't have a projector since it seems very difficult to get a TV stand that would be able to house a 1 foot tall speaker that is probably quite wide as well. Right now with my VP150 is slightly blocking the bottom of my TV when I recline my chair. If I were to go to the VP180, I would be more than slightly and I am not going to do it right now. A 12" tall center speaker is out of the question for me right now. Again, once I go to a dedicated room with a projector, it is much easier to fit such a design.

Dean, rest assured that the VP180 sounds far from coming from a tunnel, the best way to put it is as Hnut said:

I completely agree with this statement also it seems to me from your previous posts that you are more picky or should I say expert in this type of things and you might hear things that most people won't.

You are right. The only comparison that I did was between the VP180 and the M80s with a phantom channel and as I said, the 2 sounded way more similar in terms of SPL, timbre and overall sound as the VP150 would ever dream of. As for comparison between a VP180 and a M80 as center, I would like to hear a review on that (maybe by you ) as I think they will be nearly identical at the sweet spot and will start differing when shifting left/right due to the horizontal design.

ALMOST yes but there is.

I really hope so but I can't comment since I don't have surrounds yet

Exactly! You can now add the VP180 to that category

Thanks for the read! Very enlightening, for me at least lol. My $0.02 regarding the article's concerns:

"The subtracting and adding of various frequencies at various angles can result in audible shifting in the speaker’s sound across the room."

I believe I am experiencing this with the VP180, but it is very slight and not likely to be noticable under normal listening conditions. Most of my friends only noticed it once I pointed it out to them and they started testing and listening for it, while two of them didn't notice it at all, even after I tried to explain it to them.

Personally, I found it more noticable with vocals (ie. singing) and less noticable with dialogue during movies. This may have more to do with the fact that movie dialgue bounces from actor to actor with sound and/or effects in the background, so it's masked somewhat.

It is more noticable when all other speakers are disabled and you start shifting from one side of the room to the other, but nobody (I hope) listens to music or watches movies like this. If I were to sit and stay in any (reasonable) listening position other than the sweetspot, I'd still be very happy with the sound coming out of the VP180.

"Off-axis, MTM speakers can often sound hollow..."

I can say that I've never found the VP180 to be even remotely hollow, regardless of where I am standing or sitting. I've even tried some pretty extreme spots, like almost 90 degrees off centre, and it still does not sound "hollow" in any way.

"...but the comb filtering, or lobing effect, can also shift the imaging away from the middle as a “phasy” sound."

I have no idea if this is going on, but if it is then I can't hear or notice it. I find that no matter where I am located in the room, the VP180 keeps the sound imaging centered to the screen. It's funny, because two of the VP180's strongest attributes are precisely this, the fact that it is always full and rich sounding and never hollow, and that it manages to keep the sound coming from it firmly anchored to the screen.

"...do your best to avoid or minimize wave interference across your room by being wary of horizontal redundancy."

This may be true, but whatever Axiom did to the VP180 sure seemed to work. I'm no speaker engineer so I don't know exactly how Axiom pulled it off, but my best guess is that the crossover points, the layout of the drivers, and the distances between the redundant drivers have all been carefully calculated and designed in order to minimize the shortcomings of an MTM design. Whatever the case, the VP180 provides great sound to every seat in my room, and amazing sound to one very lucky sweetspot