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.
Of course you're right, there are always limitations based on the recording. I just meant that I felt like the Studio 20's were flattening out some things that weren't meant to be flattened. It just didn't feel lively. I'm curious whether anybody else has heard them and can tell me what they thought. I want to know if axioms will give me better "jump up and slap you in the face" dynamics when I turn them up, without sounding like the treble is "hyped" or the upper mids are bumped for effect. The JL components in my car, for example, do a great job with dynamics, but can sound sibilant at times. I had to adjust the tweeter levels at the crossovers to counteract it.
I absolutely plan on adding a sub with anything I'm considering here. I was mostly marvelling that the salesman seemed to think that the Studio 20's with no sub had plenty of bass, because they most definitely did not. I never did go into detail about the sub, but he always adjusted the volume so you could barely tell it was there. Not in a seamless blending sort of way, but in a "now I can tell there's a kick drum but it sounds pretty anemic" kind of way. Maybe he just didn't care for bass. Now, I did pick up that the pdr-10 has more bloom than punch, and while it was fairly smooth and detailed, it didn't have the oomph I needed. I know he was downplaying subs a bit unfairly, but I was curious how good these bookshelves were that would cause me to not desire one, lol. I'm considering something from HSU or SVS. The VTF-2 mk3 is attractive because it gets me into a 12" driver just at the bleeding edge of my price range. Of course I'm willing to consider used, but I haven't seen many deals out there that would top what's available direct from those two. Not a lot of HSU or SVS on ebay. Axiom's either for that matter, except for the axiom ebay store, which is the same price as the website.
I'm a touch concerned about the size of even the M22's to be honest. 19" tall right? My wife could care less about audio, and getting any electronics into the living room can be a battle. (I know, I know, sell the wife) I would be setting M3's on some existing furniture that happens to be about the right height and at symmetrical locations to the tv. M22's would likely require stands. The anticipated unobtrusiveness would be hampered. Still, if I wouldn't be happy with M3's I might try to make the M22's work.
