I want to start out with a big thanks to everyone who has been participating in this process. It is a very fun way to create a new product. From all the information supplied so far I think we are looking at two distinct products: a high-quality pair of indoor speakers, and a high quality portable system.

Starting with the indoor pair we are looking at doing the following based on the M3:

1. A powerful internal amplifier that runs off the wall socket with no wall-wart. The amplifier will be an Axiom-worthy 150 watts (the 20 watt market seems saturated already and not conducive to the level of quality sound we are going after with this product).

2. On the rear of the M3 we’re picturing a selector switch for Right, Left, and Mono. The mono setting is for those places where you can live without stereo separation. Frankly having the right and left channel side-by-side, as is the case in many current offerings, is virtually no different than just blending the right and left into a single speaker (In a somewhat ironic side note: the advantage to a side-by-side right and left speaker is the added effect of the comb filtering. . . a phenomenon that I would be one of a handful of designers to call an advantage).

3. We will also have right and left RCA inputs, an Ethernet input, and of course a reset button on the rear panel.

There is also another possibility here which we may need to get through the pricing stage for anyone to give us an opinion about, but we could have a version or perhaps a selection on the switch for a slave M3. This would mean only needing the Airplay receiver and amplifier in one of the speakers and then running a speaker wire to the other. It would be 75 watts per channel in this case and there would be a speaker output on the rear to go to the slave. This would bring the price of a pair down dramatically.

The other model would be a portable unit which I will give a brief description of here but will also get some renderings drawn up and posted here for a real detailed discussion point:
1. It will run on 12 volts with a brick in the power cord and a lighter socket cable.
2. It will have an optional rechargeable battery pack. I am thinking about 4 to 8 hours of use is needed on the battery between charges assuming normal listening levels.
3. It will have a centre-mounted 6.5” sub-woofer flanked by two 4” two-ways. The 4” two-ways will be detachable with retractable speaker cables built in for full stereo separation when desired.
4. The total power will be 150 watts.

Please let me have your thoughts on these two directions for the new Axiom Airplay products.

Ian Colquhoun
President & Chief Engineer