Hey, Alan, thanks for answer.
Funny you know the Revel-designer guy. Seems spekaer design companies are like my job, couple companies doing basically engineer recycling from a small pool of experienced guys ;-) I think after Axioms I'll try to sneak by my wife something like Revels and use the M80s for my home-theatre setup. Interesting you find them pretty good, I heard couple others ~20K and Revels stroke me as pretty outstanding bar some electrostats. Will be a hard choice between the two ;-)
As well, nothing against M80s, anything up to $8-10K I heard had a hard time to sound better and I'm _very_ happy with the purchase and glad I didn't go for high-end Alphas. I recommend the Axioms highly to anybody who can cope with a black, ugly cube. Actually, to be frank, I think you're missing in your line-up some smallish cubes to compete with someone like Bose. Most times I help people with sound with end up with the minicubes, size overrides sound quality often unless it's a dedicated hi-fi room.
As to your suggestion, yes, I'll take some fun out of the whole thing and do some blind testing to see whether there is a difference ;-) Right now my impression is there's a tradef-off, my soundstage is wider and more 'solid' but instrument placement smears a tad with aroiund 12kg on each M80.
Yes, Robert is surely a tad too-high-strung-refined for my abilities, budget and taste but I failed to find a more solid and accessible book than his. I think he's still a voice of reason and authority in this corner of the world and best source to explain the current (maybe incomplete sometimes) scientific thinking of what's going on in high-end sound. He surely reads his 'stereophile' as well ;-)
-- tony
