Ok, here's the down and dirty in a nutshell...
The in store test was definately fair (as for the eq, I have no idea if there was any processing, I didn't check, but my salesman isn't a big fan of processing and I don't think he would have all of a sudden started putting some on... he's been straight up so far. As for the volume, on a couple of switches both the Axioms and the Energys were the louder speaker and I still chose the Energys each time. Secondly, me and my wife alternated spots to make sure we were in the sweet spot for each of the speakers a couple of times). Here's where the difference was made... 4 feet from the wall.... The soundstage exploded, the instruments became much more defined and the spacial orientation was great, the voices were still a little enclosed, but not as bad as before. But herein lies the problem as well, 4 feet off my wall is just about the center of my family room, not really an option... So with regret I will let them go, but at least now I feel better that I wasn't snookered by an online site and would highly recommend these guys if you can pull them that far off the wall, as even two feet drastically cut down the performance in my room. I would have to say that the Energys were better when both were up against the wall, and that is basically a restriction in my room that I have.
PS-Thank you everyone for all your help, suggestions, and comments. I do appreciate the help, and it really was a fun experience doing all this testing. Thanks again.
