Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo 80/60/22/3/HsuSTF-3/600/400...and a frankensub!

I would just like to say thank you to the wives and families of all involved for letting us take part in this GTG and a special thank you to Robb(Hutzal) for the loaning out of the M3's and dropping them off and picking them up from the other side of town, greatly appreciated. Another special thanks to Tex's (Mojo)family for putting up with us and the DB levels. It was good to see Al(ctown) and Robb again, no matter how brief.

Mojo where do you find the time to do these write ups? It's 10:30 and I am just now getting to it.

I will say Mojo's write up is pretty much dead on. Al kept saying he liked the more detail of the mystery speaker while Mojo was switching them all up, whenever the Bose's were flipped he said "I prefer that one", while I liked the M3s better during the switcheroo between the two. I still prefer the more detailed sound of the M22's over the M3s or the Bose 601's. To me the M22s had a crisper sound, a little more forwardness than the 601s.

I will admit, as Mojo said, the M22s revealing nature makes it hard not to listen critically most of the time, my usuall non-critical listening is done through 6 channel stereo mode which wrecks the soundstage to a degree so you really can't be critical, but it sure fills the room with sound.

The M3s do sound more like the M60s, that 6 1/2" driver is very warm sounding but seems to dilute the mids just a little, making them more neutral sounding.

Now the subs were lots of fun to fire up and the Mojostein sub was quite good as long as you didn't drive it too hard.

The Hsu was solid and would probably be much better suited to my basement than Mojo's. That open area he has is hard to fill with LFE. The Hsu was tight and showed some good strength during the U-571 scenes but it just didn't have the linear build and drop of the EP600. The Hsu also wasn't capable of filling the room during some of the lower volume LFE scenes it was somewhat subdued, you could hear it but you really had to be listening for it.

The EP400 was definately out muscled in that large area but having brought it back to my place and had some time this afternoon to set it up and compare it to my old D-Box sub, it is a truly great sub for smaller areas. Nice and tight sounding for music yet enough power to shake the walls in the house during the Nemo submarine sliding scene that Al mentioned was really good for LFE. My D-box was purchased back in 1995 for $300 and held its own against the EP400 which is 3 times the price I paid back in 1995 for the D-Box. My old timer has enough muscle to rattle the walls pretty good during movies and thumps away during music but you can hear?/feel the extra depth the EP400 achieves and it sounds cleaner doing it. The punch the EP400 delivers is more forcefull and is not just loud and resonating like my sub. Is it worth the $1000 I can't say($850 no problem). I know if I had a spare grand to drop on something I think I would keep it, but it just isn't that much better than my old sub to spend extra money right now.... and the EP500 is only a couple hundred more with lots of head room if I ever move

I am in the process of hooking these 2 subs up in my basement and will report (with pics) back when I get them located and run through some more tests.

Chess,

The speakers were calibrated by placing the SPL meter at the sweet spot 8 feet away from the speakers, playing in-phase pink noise, and adjusting the gain until a reference level of 69dBC was reached. This 69dB reference level is achieved on my 80s when I have my Denon gain set to -20 (about 1 Watt). This is with no sub. With my 600 on, the SPL climbs to 81dBC. Interestingly enough, there is no difference in SPL level between direct and stereo modes or between mojo toe-in or facing straight ahead.

I wish I had some way of auto-adjusting the gain similar to what Axiom, Paradigm and others have. During calibration, I kept notes of the master gain level and had to adjust the gain between speakers. It's not ideal, scientific or a proper A/B test. All of these speakers however are so different that your audio memory retains them quite well.

For reference, here are the main gains per speaker to achieve the same 69dBC level as the 80s:

M60: -19.5
M22: -15
M3: -13.5
Mystery speaker: -13.5

All of the above speakers were connected to the MojoSelector.

It could be as you say. But then again, the mystery speakers lack bass and treble and yet they are "pleasant" to listen to. The difference is in the midrange I think. If the M22s had more midrange, they would sound absolutely wonderful. And that's what I love about the 80s. Bass, midrange and treble are in a wonderful balance.

I'm anxious to hear the 400 in your area sometime this week. Maybe I should bring my Sony and the Clapton CD too. Track 4 will hopefully show us what the difference is between the 400 and our low end subs as far as music is concerned. If the 400 can weave the bass between the music and involve you the way my 600 does, then it might be a keeper.

Here's one of me.

When I read this part, I felt as if it was something I’ve wrote in the past. I couldn’t agree more….. the 600 gets recognized for killer LFE, but not very often do folks recognize how musical it is. I find it extremely smooth, but yet tight when it needs to be. I love this Sub with music of all types.

My take is that the M22 has good mid range and highs but the lower mid/upper bass and of course lower bass is what is lacking on them. A little bass adjustment can present that upper base/lower mid region better on the M22s giving them a more pleasant sound, yet still more detailed than the M3s, even with a treble adjustment for them. The 601s, I felt, had nice middle midrange but the highs were just not presented fully/forward/clearly? which is why they sound similar to the M3s and possibly more pleasing than the M22s but not as full/airy sounding as the M80s, with their nice punchy bass and crystaline highs.

Mojo when you come over, bring your Sony, mine likes to go to sleep to often and doesn't wake up as much as I would like and I can tell it should be now that the EP400 is in the house. That audible click mine gives lets me know when it turns on, so I could tell during The Twin Towers last night that there is way more LFE that should be produced and my sub just sleeps through it. The 400 just may be staying......

Thanks for changing the title, Andrea.

I don't think the lows between the M3s and M22s are any different from a technical perspective. However, the M3s sound like they have more bass because the mids are depressed. And the mids aren't really depressed on the 22s but rather they are depressed relative to the highs. Maybe by the time I'm ready for bookshelves, the 22s will have been improved.

Come to think of it, they audiobytes may be all that I need because based on the pdf that Amie posted, it appears they'll sound as mellow as an M3 but detailed like the 22s without the higher end detail...which would make them perfect for background listening. Of course they'll be less efficient but that's not of primary concern for my living room space.

This is kind of what i figured.

I don't agree with drawing this conclusion at all. Results can greatly altered especially in regards to the details that are being reported, as opposed to gross results, and the dubious conclusions drawn further from them.

With an instantaneous and adjusted switcher, with a blacked transparent screen (or blindfold) over the eyes (part of the 'blind' aspects of the a/b switching tests), i've found the specific descriptions of speakers can change dramatically from the subjective ones.
For example, speaker #1 described as having less tight bass than #2 were both described as having the same bass in a blind test, though overall the person still preferred the same speaker #1 over #2 that was chosen during the subjective run. That same person described the first speaker as having less tight bass, but when listening to #1 again after a blind switch (they incorrectly guessed it was now speaker #2) they stated that the bass sounded tighter.
How is this possible?
Unintentional, unavoidable bias.

I ran this 'experiment' twice now with a few different people including myself, obtaining subjective opinions first and moving to the blind version of the a/b switching.
A true blind test is much harder especially if you never know if you are listening to the same speaker or not after each switch!! (and yes this is still dependent on the units being compared since a 1" tweeter, 2" box computer speaker will NEVER sound anything like a M80 under any test conditions, but pairing M60 vs. M80 WOULD be a much more difficult test).

As honest and objective as one may try to be in A/B tests, i find alot of the reported details mixed which may prescribe to the different tastes of the listener. No one ever chalks it up to bias of any kind.
In an older A/B (and then blind) test i ran with Tannoy Definition speakers and the Axiom M60s, both listeners found the M60s to be bright during the subjective tests and then guessed the M60s were the more articulate speaker during the blind test and both guessed wrong! I figured for sure the M60s would be the brighter speaker, more forward sounding and in comparison, during blind tests, they actually sounded slightly muffled!

Believing that one's audio memory is good enough to retain the required information between even the few seconds it takes to switch a speaker, adjust the gain and start listening again is a big assumption. Throw in the fact that a person KNOWS a different speaker is playing and the expectation to have a different reported description is obvious. Given the circumstances, having a gain adjustable switcher is the limiter.
I've considered buying a used Parasound Halo A23, or the larger A21, for the very purpose of having an amp with independent, gain adjustable channels for A/B tests. The A23 is what i used in the past for the blind tests. It was very useful and can be had used for under $700 now.


I use a home built switcher for the instantaneous part. You can flip it back and forth as many times as quickly as you want and the listener will never know which item is playing at any time (if blindfolded). It is simple, but effective.