Hi all,
Just wandering by. . .
Yes, you can get an excellent idea of what the W22s will sound like without drilling any holes by positioning them close to the wall roughly where they might be located. The enclosure is self-contained and ported, however as Mark points out, the W22s will have more bass when they are recessed into the wall because of the increased boundary reinforcement of bass.
The W22s will play loud in a "normal-sized" room--i.e. about 2000 to 3000 cu. ft--but they can't duplicate the clean SPLs in a big room that the M60s or M80s are capable of. Axiom's listening room is very much smaller (about 2,400 cu. ft. if that) than the room described in this thread. Generally speaking, the limitation of smaller speakers with fewer drivers, and smaller woofers, is maximum output before distortion or compression begins, along with deep bass extension.
Regards,
