You bring up some excellent points ONCE AGAIN grunt. Not even being an M80 owner I was kind of put off by the puff piece response from Axiom "touting" the M80 v3 over the v2 version. Its not appropriate to Axioms philosophy of remaining objective. If it was complaints being posted, then subjective opinions on the product would be scrutinized.
Well I held off as long as I could posting my comments on that review hoping that someone else would take a swing at it, but I bit my tongue (so to speak) as long as I could and finally felt compelled to say something. I agree if someone had complained several people would have chimed in.
I think most of the questions and concerns that are being raised could have been avoided by better communication from Axiom and the 4 man council regarding the transition to the v3 and explaining specific objective modifications made. Still to this point the modifications are quite vague. I am sure people are happy with their products no matter what version they have but the v3 execution to the public was poor IMO. Sorry folks. 
I agree that Axiom could have communicated better but I hesitate to draw the customer council into rollout discussion. I’m not 100% clear on their mandate but hope that it is strictly to act as a sounding board for Axiom and not a conduit of information from Axiom to the forum. IMO that marginalizes them as “members” by turning them into “spokesmen.“
The fact that even new VP180 owners didn't know they were getting a v3 speaker with cosmetic changes that were different from their current speakers, I just have to shake my head at. 
Had I purchased one I would have liked the option to have the older style drivers and grill shipped to match my existing speakers. Perhaps it was calculated that the majority wouldn’t care about that and anyone who did would be taken care of on a case-by-case basis.
