Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater M80ti's small room.

Yes, you are wiser than I am for sure.

It does indeed become a problem as I've pointed out on these boards before. As my buddies have listened to my environment and have had these qualities pointed out to them, they find it difficult to enjoy what they have.

BTW, my environment is nowhere ideal but it's a far cry from Generation 1. Generation 2 was brought on by the Onk with XT32, generation 3 by moving from 8 feet away to 14 feet away from the mains, generation 4 by "treating" 70% of the wall surfaces with art and generation 5 through the replacement of the VP160v2 and EP600v2 with the VP160v4 and EP800v4.

The one quality I lack that is eating at me right now is soundstage depth. I have none to speak of. Do any of you?

Are your L&R toed in at all?
Straight ahead works well in my room.

I tried toeing in...and out . The response is more "natural" pointed straight ahead.

I hear drums a few inches behind singers when they should be many feet behind. Instruments and voices are present across the entire soundstage and I can clearly point to them but they are all in 2-d...on the same plane. Not good!

I tried bringing them into the room more but that negatively affects the soundstage width and does nothing to the depth.

Here's something interesting. When I had my Bose 601s set up in the same room, I had a ton of depth and width. There were so many other problems though and I prefer the M80s by a long shot. The 601s have made terrific surround speakers though at a my good buddy's place.

Ian says I need LFRs and maybe so although I am not sold on them even though as an engineer I appreciate what he and Andrew did and I'm envious . I was really hoping M100s would do the trick. That's why in a previous post I said I'd love to hear from those who moved from 60s or 80s to 100s and I was hoping their feedback would be less about bass and more SPL and more about improved soundstage especially depth.

I suspect he would be perfectly fine with that

Seriously, I read the original post as "I am happy with my current system; will I be happy in this new smaller room ?", so his basis for comparison is the same system in a larger room.

I don't remember if we asked how big his current room is.

Are you saying he would be perfectly happy not having an experience that will give him an itch?

I was perfectly happy with my Bose 601s for 12 years. Then I made the mistake of listening to a pair of Polk bookshelves that were set up just right. That guy knew what he was doing. I got the itch that led me to my current system.

So if chaos was to say "Bugger off, Mojo. I don't want to get an itch.", that I can understand!

I looked at a post of his previous room before giving advice. He was in a 10'x19' room based on posts from 8 years ago.

BTW, I am not saying he's going to like the KEF bookshelves over the M80s in that room. It all depends what is most important for him. However, he will certainly have a different perspective regarding his two options.

Ha, strong thread! 😁 I was in a room that was about 18ft wide by about 14ft deep before my current house. Speakers worked well there. Before that I lived in a loft, massive space....I was actually scared it was too open but the speakers worked great there. This room is substantially smaller than I've had in awhile. I'm not in the mood to spend money but many things I've read on other forums lead towards the use of smaller speakers being beneficial. I can on here to see if maybe the plugs plus some settings would make my speakers work well. I definitely am trying to put the audio experience first, but can't really afford to buy expensive replacement speakers. I can relate to the vanity of loving to look at how massive my m80s are. I prefer them without the grill so I can see all the drivers, now these small ass q100's are en route.... 😁

Chaos, I'm glad to see you're still here man (lady?). In my mind, this post stopped being about you a long time ago.

18' x 14'? That sounds like M80 heaven.

I am really interested to hear what you think of the KEFs vs. the 80s. Let us know please if you can swing it.

No match.

The thread continues

I'm waiting for Socketman to jump back in here and give me some more hell. I absolutely love it when he does that! With his kids gone, he needs another teen to scold.

This is why you cant have it all in the Dojo. You like farfield envelopment, but you are giving other possibilities away doing this. It's a preference thing like always.

To get passive front back separation needs a symmetrical room setup. Then you need diffusion on the front wall and first reflections.

You can get the soundstage to form a U shape away from you by moving your towers out away from the wall. The drawback of this is usually a thin and off mic sound in the phantom image and louder sounds in the hard panned right\left positions. It comes down to preference. It is neat to have the singer drop back onto a virtual stage.

To really do it right and have separation front to back instead of a U shaped field is with diffusion. Is this real or accurate? No. It is signal processing just like anything else -just in the acoustic domain instead of a DSP. Does it sound natural and pleasing? Yes, extremely so.

Another way of doing it is to have an active setup like LFRs that intentionally send broadband energy in different directions (and time.) When they sum back in your meat computer the effect is three dimensional shapes instead of a flat soundfield.

Putting diffusion on the front wall between the speakers and at first reflection points will give you what you are after without going to LFRs. Going to LFRs is really the ultimate way of doing this because you can have much lower frequencies forming distinct placement in the soundfield. Diffusion can only do so much that way.

Hope this helps!