Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions M22 Question

Yep. You would need a larger cabinet to get real decent bass out of the 6.5" driver. Remember the M40 ? Now *those* had nice bass, albeit thanks to a 3-foot tall cabinet, and a number of us wondered about adding a 5.25" driver to the M40 to get a 3-way system.

The real issue, I suspect, is that home theater sales, ie systems where you can pretty much guarantee the presence of a subwoofer, outnumber "pure music system" sales by about 10 to 1 in almost every sales channel, and the M22 is a better speaker "with sub" than the 3-way bookshelf speaker you were discussing.

I think that was why the M40s didn't sell well -- if you already had a subwoofer, the M40 didn't offer much benefit over the M3.

WITHOUT a subwoofer the M40s are wonderful speakers and in a totally different league from the M3s. I still think the M40 configuration (2-way with a big enough cabinet for good bass extension) is my favorite for pure music applications.