Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater M60 of M80...

Well ok guys, I am trying to make a 7.1 system, with the surrounds for 7.1. I want 4 floorstanders because of DVDA and SACD, well my big pickle is, should I get M60 or M80. My room is 20 by 20 by 10(Height). My First concern is HT, and secondary is Music. THanks!

M60's or M80's as surrounds? Sure seems like MAJOR overkill to me. Most of the DVD-A discs I've listened to still use the surrounds more for fill/effects. The majority of music still comes from the front three speakers.

Anybody else agree?

If you can afford it, i dunno whats holding you back from 4 M80's! i sure love mine!

EHhhhhh...... I'm trying to be on a budget. How much of a difference is their between the M60 and M80. I will be running them with a Denon 3803... Thanks alot.

Like I said guys, I won't be listening to too much music, but I want some good performance.

I am hoping the Axioms can provide warm, but not too warm, revealing but not TOO revealing music.

I am looking for a sound that will not be harsh in HT. You guys know what I mean? Like when your watching an HT movie, the highs start ringing in your ear.... anywho, any help would be awesome.

The M80s have a deeper bass extension over the M60s but otherwise sound very similar and will play louder according to Ian.
If you are not sure about surround speakers vs. direct, here is an old post of mine in which i tried to compare QS8s to M22s as surrounds.

i have the m80s, and unless your able to get a good 12-15 feet away from them,i really dont think they would be a good choice,dont get me wrong i love the m80s but they seem to need their space....using 4 of them for surrounds in a 20x20 room will definitly blow you away volumewise,but,you probbably wont get seamless sound experience your looking for........just my oppinion ....... ron

So what your saying is...... 2 pairs of M 60's, and one surround right?

thuway

here's what i'd get

M60 mains AND side surrounds
VP150 for center
QS8's for rear surrounds.

The M80's are better for very large rooms.
The M60's sound better than the M80's anyway, in my opinion, unless you're playing them extremely loud.

Four M80's would be hard to utilize effectively in a 20x20 room. As others have said, they want you to be a good 12 (preferably more) feet away. They also typically want to be away from the walls, so 4 of them would be non-ideal in a 20x20 room; placement would likely be constrained to not-so-good positions. I think the decision between the M80 and M60 for mains comes down to how loud you need/want 2-channel material. I have M80 mains in a ~ 16x24 room with a high cathedral ceiling, and if it weren't for entertaining and my habit for loud 2-channel sources, M60's would work just dandy. The M80's are certainly overkill for movies; with 5 channels and subwoofer driven, the room gets very loud with the gain set fairly low on the amplifier and the M80's giving no indication of overdriving. No one with their hearing still intact could sit in my family room with the M80's maxed on 5.1 material, it'd be painful.

The QS8's are nice surrounds. I also agree with spiffnme; multichannel audio generally uses the surrounds for things like crowd noise from a live concert recording, etc. There are exceptions, but I find a lot of the exceptions annoying, not unlike listening to early stereo recordings where there was plenty of playing with the technology w/o regard to the long-term listening experience (I know Hendrix wasn't sprinting back and forth on the soundstage :-)). I just don't think we're ever going to find multichannel audio appealing if the surrounds go way beyond being mostly ambient sounds. It's not how we experience live performances (if you're on stage, you're not sorrounded 360 degrees by individual instuments.. I think you only are if you're in the center of the orchestra pit, and most of us have never had tha experience and even fewer would say they prefer it to say the conductor's position).

So I'd pick your mains for 2-channel considerations, and your surrounds for movies. Today, the requirements for DVD-Audio and SACD aren't much different than that for movies, for the reasons above. In fact, I dare say I have been happier with some of my DVD concert video than most SACD and DVD-Audio titles. The reason being that it takes a good recording engineer to get multichannel right, if the objective is to recreate the live experience versus parading the technology. For example, I think the James Taylor 'Live At the Beacon Theater' DVD (recorded in 1998) holds up well to most DVD-Audio and SACD titles, as does the more recent Diana Krall 'Live In Paris' (2001).