Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Best Speaker Sys. Under 3000$ consideration within

I concur with almost everything being said here, with one exception:

If you do NOT have the room for a M60 as a vertical center, and are concerned about horizontal dispersion pattern of a horizontally oriented center (such as the M60 on its side, the VP150, or ANY MTM speaker for that matter), why not go with M60s, QS8s, etc like was suggested above, but for a center use an Axiom bookshelf, such as the M2, M3, or M22?

Disclaimer: I am still new at this, and haven't actually heard the VP 150, but do own M60s for my music duty. I only had room for floorstanders flanking my "stereo cabinet".

As to HT speakers, I was up against size and placement issues. Anyway, due to my odd layout, we all sit off center (some more than others) and in the past we had trouble following dialog sometimes. After much experimentation (3 center channels later), and finally some research, I ditched the horizontal center and the sold off my "micro system", and just purchased 5 matching "mini" bookshelf speakers, and am finally VERY pleased with the results.

-Alan

I do not have the space under my screen for a center M80, so I went with two M22’s. I haven’t heard the VP’s so I can’t really comment to their performance. They may be wonderful speakers, I just don’t know.

Another option is two M2’s and lay them horizontally. I have done that before with twin M3’s and they sounded great. One benefit with two bookshelves as a center channel is you can position them in numerously different ways. They can both be horizontal above or below the screen/tv with their tweeter together, or apart. You can put one above the screen/tv and one below ether horizontally, or vertically. Lot’s of options.

I wouldn’t do this with a tower speaker though. The tweeters are a good 30” or so away from the woofers, so the sound stage would be all screwed up if you lay them horizontally. With the little bookshelves, the effect is not nearly as great. Plus, if you have two bookshelves end to end, you effectively just evened things out.

One thing to keep in mind though, if you run two speakers in parallel, you just halved the impedence, so you’d be at 4 ohm again. In your case, I’d not go that route and just stick to a VP 150, or possibly one M22 in the vertical position. You could always by both, give them a try in your home and send the one you don’t prefer back to Axiom.

The VP 150 sounds great and does very well with my 80's.

these have been great replies people, I thank all of you

and Ajax much appreciate the piccy 4 me wee brain lol

one concern I'd love to hear comment on is axiom top end being brite , harsh or whatever discriptive you'd prefer. I've seen comment regarding this from beginner to pro reviewer. So straight up tell me your thoughts on it if u will. crisp and detailed is one thing brite and harsh another.

Also if this IS a characteristic that is present, is it something that could be um.... maybe eq'd out? or lessened?

Again I hate to sound like a broken record but I SO much appreciate the honest and insightfull (<<-- SPcheck that , I'm to lazy ) replies I get it on this forum.
Keep 'em comin'
Peace B)

Well, you'll find that just about everyone here thinks that Axioms are quite harsh and unlistenable.

Um, wait...

I would have to say a better word for the 60's and 80's would be accurate and precise rather than bright, room acoustics also will make a huge difference on how the speakers sound.

Well first off you need to take into consideration what these “other” folks consider harsh. Ask them what speakers they currently have and then research those. Some folks prefer a laid back speaker and call a detailed speaker “bright”, “harsh”, “in your face” and other names. When in fact, these speakers do exactly what they should. - Accurately reproduce exactly what’s on the disk. Axioms do that very well. So if that means that an accurate speaker is a bright speaker, then so be it. I guess I like bright speakers. I want to hear everything, like those subtle guitar picks and finger squeaks on the strings. I like to hear the drum stick tap and slide off cymbals instead of a blurred crash. I don’t like to hear a fuzzy mess of treble, but the individual taps. Laid back speakers don’t do that. Some folks like a little extra bass and they tend to prefer speakers that have bumps in certain spots of the frequency range that really does nothing more than color the sound. I’d rather have a neutral speaker and tweak the tone controls to my liking rather than have a speaker do it for me.

The downside to detailed (bright) speakers is that those recordings that were not done very well sound like crap. But, they sound like crap on warm speakers too, but just not quite as bad. I struggled with this when I first got my 80’s and blamed the speakers and was all pissed off that some of my favorite CD’s sounded like crap. It took me a while to come to grips with that and ended up ordering as many that I could that have been remastered.

Isn’t there someone in your area with Axioms that you can audition? If so, take you favorite CD’s and Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon. That’s my favorite auditioning CD. Time sounds pretty friggin cool on a good set of speakers. You get the high’s, lows and mids. The clocks and chimes intro is way cool on a detailed speaker. I’d hate to loose that.

It's been my experience that people who call Axioms "bright" tend to be idiots.Around these parts they use the word "tinny".The last person who thought my system was "tinny" bought a 20+ year old fisher system at a gagage sale for $50.00.Best he ever heard "WOW,look at the size of those woofers!!!!".After 30 seconds of listening I walked to the back of them and hit the high and midrange re-set buttons that the previous owner had popped.If you like dull the Axioms won't be for you,if clear and accurate is your thing you'll love them.Sorry for the rant,I've been meaning to say this ever since I heard the first "bright" comment.

kcarlile thats funny stuff LOL

kingaljr , I found your reply interesting but lacking . . . something.

If I may.

Firstly audioholics is where I first found out about axiom speakers (as noted above) and maybe I'm being played the fool by their reviewers. but I don't think I am, every one of audioholic reivews I have read seem very well done and articulate, honest if you will.

The m80 review was the very first time I have ever heard the term "brite" and "forward" used to discribe speakers. ((admittedly I don't know much at all about the nomenclature used in this hifi circus)) I am learning as I go though . I have seen those two discriptors used in professional reviews of axioms, and as i found more sources of info in my research, I see it has trickled down to the "regular joe" .
I also have seen "warm" being tagged to onix rocket speakers, while in more searching for info I find that ONLY the 750 was warm, and none others, but still "average joe" still uses it to discribe the rocket line. So.... that being said i can "sorta" understand what you are getting at. As it seems axiom has fallen victim of the same "average joe" , spreading the same MISinformation about axiom's speaker line as has happened to the rocket line. So, to call everyone an idiot that has refered to axioms as brite, well, that just isn't right.

now a new question to all.

Can someone tell me when the "V2" designator was started? I have seen it on the forum for awhile. Now I see the V2 in the storefront listings. Also were all the changes made to all of the line? driver/s? crossover point/s? cabinet? Also is there a price difference between the ummmm... older V1's i guess I'll say and the new V2's? thanks

In reply to:

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alan
(connoisseur)
12/22/05 11:52 AM
Re: version 2? [re: bray] Reply




Hi bray,

Yes, the crossover in the M80ti (M80 v2) has been unchanged for the past three years and a bit. Several ongoing changes were made in the crossover at that time.

It was time for a new review of the M80 at Soundstage.com because the existing graphs and the old review on the Soundstage site did not accurately reflect the tonal balance of the current M80.

Regards,

Regards,

Alan Lofft
Axiom Resident Expert

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After seeing your questions concerning V2 posted multiple times, I took it upon myself to use the SEARCH function.

I hope this answers your question(s).