Your waffles need some tasty Axiom syrup.
I want great sound to put me there; to simulate as accurately as possible the band playing the music - NOT to simulate as well as possible the way an engineer mixed it. That's not even really what the engineer intends when it is mixed. I want the bass to kick me in the junk, and the screaming guitars to rip my face off. (quoted from a guitarist I worked with for a while) Do most audiophiles want everything to be really smooth and well behaved like soft jazz? Am I alone in wanting some hard edges when the music requests it?
Well, a disc can only sound only as good as the mixing engineer makes it. A good speaker will be completely honest with you: if the mix sucks you'll know, and if it doesn't it should take you to audio nirvana. Both the Axiom M3s and the M22s easily do this. As for bass that kicks you in the junk, the M3s have a slight edge over the M22s in that department, but you really need a sub for a proper junk-kicking. (And they are
not a dime-a-dozen if you avoid the kinds found at Best Buy or Circuit City.)
From what I can see, I think the M22s are the kind in-your-face, hold nothing back speaker you're looking for. Their
flat response curve help them stay true to the source. If, on the other hand, you don't plan on adding a sub any time soon, the M3s may serve you better since they have a
slight hump around 100Hz that help them sound fuller in the low end.
Really, though, you can't go wrong with either.
