Here is the one picture I took. It didn’t look blurry on the camera.
Part of this is easy as I can say I concur with everything Sean said but will expand on a few things.
First I was shocked at how much of a difference repositioning the M80s made in their soundstage when compared to the Loreleis. I’ve experienced that the M80s are somewhat finicky with placement. I’ve also read a couple professional reviews supporting that opinion. However, I’ve never placed them as close together in this room as our first test nor had another brand of speakers in this room to reference them against. Where the Loreleis were throwing sound out about a foot outside each speaker the M80s sound was coming from them. So that when we repositioned the speakers with the M80s on the outside both speakers sound stages seemed about the same width. We did not play with toe-in or anything else to see how things changed. If there is a lesson to be learned by potential and current owners play around with your speaker positioning.
As Sean said in the second position (M80s outboard) there were tracks where it was hard to tell them apart w/o listening carefully. These were what I would best call the less busy passages like acoustical guitar and the Cello. OTOH, in the busy tracks like some Boston, Jethro Tull, Sonic Bloom, and Vivaldi the wall of sound the M80 presented seemed much more forceful and room filling. This was this characteristic of the M80s that lead me to choose them as an “all-around” speaker over some Focals and B&Ws I also liked.
Another big difference I noticed was the vertical positioning of the soundstage between the speakers. Despite being as Sean said a little “darker,” when sitting at tweeter level the the Loreleis seemed to project more ambiance into the room. Not that the M80s weren’t putting out ambiance but the array of drivers running down almost to the floor cause their overall soundstage to be pulled down distracting from the ambience. Hence the reason I’ve for years now elevated my M80s off the ground so that the tweeters are above ear level.
Both these are capable speakers that as Sean said often sounded similar, but also often gave very different presentations of the same material. Main lesson to be learned here is try (in your room) before you buy (w/o option to return). Pay little attention to what speakers others think that you will like unless you have experience listening to speakers with that person or at least have both heard the same speakers and both described them sounding the same way so you have a common frame of reference from which to describe other speakers.
