Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion What's New At Axiom Introducing the M5 and QS10

OK, started the first speaker-swapping (between M5HP and M60v4) and ran into the usual "D'oh !!" discoveries.

Some (but not all) of the difference in perceived tonal balance seems to have been caused by different relationships between drivers and ear height. The M5's are on fairly tall stands and so the midrange driver is roughly ear level, while the M60s are on short (5") stands which bring the tweeter to ear level.

The first big difference I noticed from switching in the M60s was the impression of more treble and a more dynamic sound from the M60s. Moving my head up and down several inches allowed me to reproduce a good part of that difference with the M5s (by getting my ears aligned with the M5 tweeter), but the obvious question was what that meant I should do with the setup. First thought was that I might need to take a chainsaw to the M5 stands, but then I remembered that I was planning to put the chair on casters, lifting it by ~5" and making it about the right height for me and for the M5's.

That won't help with the M60s though... I would hate to have to buy LFR's or M100's just to get the right tweeter height

Stepping back 15 feet or so eliminated most of the impact of ear height so the two speakers sounded more similar, but there was still a slight but noticeable difference in tonal balance between the M5s and the M60s, with my preference being for the M5's.

The M5's are definitely less efficient than the M60s. The level control on my receiver is not marked in dB but from previous testing with an SPL meter it felt like "a few dB" of adjustment was needed to match levels.

There were still some cases where the M60s seemed to have too much bass as set up in my room while the M5s seemed "just right". The "too much bass" was only on certain notes so probably still need more bass trapping if I can find a place to put it.

I am gradually coming to the conclusion that my listening area may be too small for ideal placement of larger speakers - raising the M60s a few inches helped but not completely. It occurred to me that my next step probably should have been playing with port plugs in the M60s rather than buying new speakers, but I still really like the M5s so no regrets.

Anyways, next thing I am going to try is pulling the M60s even further into the room ("stupid far") to see what difference that makes. IIRC when I started playing with room acoustics in this house I originally oriented the system across the living room and found the M60s sounded best almost 4 feet from the wall, but the bass was incredibly uneven (seemed to be a function of the long cathedral ceiling) and so I ended up having to rotate everything 90 degrees which gave me the current setup.

In case you are wondering why no pics, my ISP's servers seem to be in a pissy mood and are not allowing me to upload or download anything. I will note that the grills are shaped differently on the M5HPs, with a slight angle to the top and bottom edges. I like it. The wood finish is Knotty Pine with clear semi-gloss finish, and looks extremely good.