Digital Trends

Axiom Epic 80

February 4th, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Use and Testing

Associated Review Equipment:

• CD playback: Yamaha CDC-905
• Receiver: Yamaha RV-1105
• DVD playback: Toshiba SD-3109

Usually, when you build a nice home theater setup, you often have to make compromises as to the type of speakers you want. Music lovers typically will go for a system with large front tower speakers and a smaller subwoofer, while movie lovers are typically attracted to a smaller speaker setup with a larger sub-woofer. The Epic 80 will please both movie buffs and music lovers alike.

First of all, if you are installing this speaker system in a room smaller than what is recommended, you will want to place the front towers at least a foot or more from the wall both in the back and on the sides. This will create a more accurate soundstage without too much reverberation.  Both the M80ti and VP150 speakers are shielded so you can place them next to your television without worrying about causing any magnetic interference. We placed the VP150 on top of our Mitsubishi WS-55819 55” rear projection HDTV and the two M80it tower speakers a couple feet from each side of the Mitsubishi.

We placed the QS8 rear surrounds on the rear wall about 6 feet up from the ground. The included wall brackets work great and actually hide behind the speaker itself giving an overall floating effect. Unfortunately for the unique driver placement on the QS8, it will be hard to find a speaker stand which will allow the mid-range woofer to fire down without obstructing it; so we recommend you purchase Axioms speaker stands should you decide you do not want to mount the speakers on the wall. We placed the EP350 subwoofer to the right of our sofa and about 1 foot from the rear wall; the driver facing forward.

We would recommend that you consult Axiom audio about proper speaker placement if your room is unique in size and/or shape. The manuals that Axiom provide will help you with basic installation but lack any sort of technical information with regards to awkward room shapes and setup. We broke our speakers in for about 100 hours before taking any technical notes.

For our movie tests, we use the movies The Italian Job starring Mark Wahlberg and Edward Norton and Red Planet starring Val Kilmer and Carrie-Ann Moss. The Italian Job does not have a lot of deep sounding bass in the movie, but rather has a lot of dialogue both separated from background noise and mixed in with sounds from car racing, gunfire and helicopters. The VP150 center channel speaker did a great job of separating the voice dialogue from the rest of the action. There is one scene where Edward Norton is in a helicopter following multiple armored cars. We could clearly hear Edward Norton speaking from the helicopter cockpit while at the same time you could hear the chopper blades in the QS8 surrounds; it felt as if we were sitting right next to him in the helicopter. In the voice dialogue moments where there was no background noise, the VP150 center channel provided great clarity and dispersion from anywhere in the room. Voices where very moist and filling, not dry and flat sounding.

Red Planet is a Sci-Fi movie with a strongly emphasized soundtrack that tests the Epic 80 system in a completely different manner than The Italian Job does. More emphasis is put into the M80ti loud speakers and EP350 subwoofer. There is one part of the movie that plays out like a music video. The sun comes over the planet Mars, Val Kilmer is wearing sun glasses and dancing to the music being played throughout the space station while Carrie-Ann Moss pilots from the cockpit. The music could be heard from all 6 speakers and we felt like we were literally in the movie; the sound was astounding. The EP350 really got to show its stuff in this movie too since there was a lot of deep groaning, and big explosions on the planet and in the space station. Since we had the EP350 sitting next to our sofa, the room shook and it seemed like the EP350 would never bottom out — it sounded great.

For our music tests, we used regular CDs recorded in 16-bit since we did not have a DVD audio or SACD player available. We configured our Yamaha RV-1105 receiver for playback in stereo mode with treble and bass tones set at 0. We used Acoustic Alchemy's  Against the Grain, Paul Oakenfold's Great Wall, Linkin Park's Meteora and the CD sampler Pure Moods 3 for our music tests.