Overall a decent review and the writer is quite good at fence sitting.On one hand you could ask why would you put the M100 against a $18g set of speakers, on the other you have to wonder what else they should compare them to. I am no audiophile, I don't pick music apart in the same way the author does. I think given the price difference the M100 stood up pretty well. The only problem I have with the review is that the author somehow believes he can recall what taj mahal sounded like in a certain venue years ago, honestly. The author's electronics speak to his eccentricity as a whole. He believes wires etc affect the sound,and as such maybe the axioms required a different wire combination than what he was using. I still put this in the win column.
richard
In all honesty, I am actually quite impressed that this reviewer did a review comparing speakers in which there was an enormous difference in cost between the two and if I was the owner of this other speaker company(Carmel), I don't think I would be too pleased. One usually never sees this type of head to head comparison. I think even the reviewer was surprised at the outcome and that was despite his little quirks in what he liked and didn't like about the sound of either. As we all know, the reviewers of so-called high-end(high priced) products, with no exceptions, usually always justify the differences by the cost and speakers costing considerably less, in their mind, would just not match up. It is all essentially long term brainwashing. Reviews like this sort of throw a monkey wrench in to that idea and it is long overdue.
I dunno, but if I was looking to buy speakers and even if money was no object, after reading this review, I certainly would still have to question why it would be necessary to spend 18Gs on a pair of speakers when I could buy a pair of M100s even in a custom finish and get similar performance for a fraction of the price.
