Your M80v3s are a little over one year old so they have the v4 crossovers. This means you are in the same family of products from a family of curves perspective (M80, M80HP, and M100) all v4. But given your large space and powerful amplifier you are going to be able to fully utilize the advantages of the M100 with its much more powerful low frequency max SPL.

Due to the higher mass of the individual bass drivers the M100 will be slightly less efficient than the M80 regular version. This will affect the A/B results outside of the expected differences in the bass region as you are not quite at equal level. There is also the position to take into account. I would suggest disconnecting the wires from all the speakers and flipping their positions so the M80s are where the M100s are now and vice versa. Hook the wires back up so what is now A becomes B. You will still have that slight efficiency difference with the M80s playing slightly louder than the M100s but you can try to adjust for that with a small movement of the volume knob.

At the end of the day though you may be better to just put the M100s in the position that they sound the best and spend a few weeks just listening to them in your normal way; then draw your conclusion at the end. Without an exact level match and a blind screen A/B testing is a tough thing to garner results from.

The overall performance should be quite similar in most respects between the M80 and the M100 but with a big gain in the low frequency area with the M100s, especially at higher volume.


Ian Colquhoun
President & Chief Engineer