I had a pair of 70's vintage 10" 2-ways for many years, paper cone tweeters and all. I looked a number of times but never found anything I liked better enough to spend the money to upgrade.Then the woofer surrounds disintigrated from old age so I bought some 8" 3-ways from a pawn shop for $60. Lost a little bass, picked up some midrange but the sound was about the same. Finaly, in 2000, I bought a pair of NHT super ones (similar to m3's). Lost far less bass than I was expecting and gained an obsene amount of detail. I would never go back.
The other thing I gained was placement flexibility. Those big-ass boxes have a huge footprint and in my case they were placed where they would fit- filed like cardboard boxes of crap.
When I got the nht's they were like 20% the size of my first pair- I was now able to put them in the optimum spot(well, almost). Placement alone made as big of improvement as the speakers did.
Have a look at the basic shape of all the Axiom line- they ain't cubes. Now look at the shape of other brands- Paradigm for example. The lower priced models are all cubes- the higher the price the more like axioms they look.
I think once you get your M50's dialed in you will just "know".
The 50's will be less of a jolt than 22's,60's,or 80's, but I predict you will feel a jolt of improvement.
