Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners 7 New speakers, reviews, and questions...

I ended up starting with the M60s and after receiving them (and originally wanting the M80s) I never looked back. I listen to a lot of heavy metal, ska, punk, surf rock, and other "oldies" and I have never been disatisfied with them or thought that I needed to go more and get the M80s. Also I have a lot of crappily recorded rare punk, ska, and 60's folk music that I am sure the M22s and M80s would have brutalized with their "honesty" =)

I have not heard the M22s or M80s so I can not give you a comparison but my M60s do not shrink away from the heavier parts in songs or movies.

I do know that on an old Coal Chamber cd I have it was mixed that way, it sounds horrible. You would think everything would just open up and rock on parts but it feels like they intentionally silenced the loud parts. It took me awhile to figure out that it wasn't how I had the reciever set up, it was just the crappy cd.

And like most everyone else here, I never had a point where I felt like they broke in. It was a big change going from my old Cerwin Vegas that disorted fairly quickly to my M60s that I can not even phase. That took me awhile to adjust to and to realize that the distortion really colored the music and what I thought sounded hard and powerful was just crappy easily disorted speakers adding their own bit of flavor to the songs.

Dan

I am really starting to warm up to these speakers, I rocked out to some Dethklok today and they really seemed to shine. I am starting to see that my older towers were pumping alot of extra noise into songs and basically ignoring other sounds. Vocals being one. I think upon a bit more listening, I will start to love them. I didn't notice any distortion today so maybe it was the recordings afterall. I 'll listen to a little pantera and see what I think, updates to come. And also, small w/sub sounds worse than setting large with sub, weird eh?

Max, I think the break-in has happened...only thing is, the break-in is your ears not the speaker.

When we have speakers we're used to and you switch to an accurate speaker like Axiom you need to get used to the new sounnd. I also had this when I switched to M60's. I initially felt the bass was lacking until sitting and listening to lots of music and realizing that I had very nice bass and excellent mid-bass....I was just used to sloppy boomy bass, not anymore though.

Enjoy the 22's.

Max, I usually ran my M22s as large, so you are not alone, I just felt they sounded better to me. It could also be your sub isn't up to the challenge to fill in the room with good clean bass as I also fell into that category. I had an old sub that wasn't upto the challenge and I can now say the M22s with the PB13-Ultra(or any of the quality subs I have heard them with) sound pretty nice, just not as good as the M80s with the PB13

I have moved my couch back, now sitting roughly 6 1/2 feet from the speakers. I also have the 22's facing me (toed in) and I think it sounds quite a bit better. I do agree that my sub is definetly not up to the challenge, I am really excited to mate them with my upcomming purchase (SVS PC-Ultra). I can't decide what height to have my 22's and vp150 sit. Does anyone have any advice on this? Right now I have my 22's on my old speakers (which are on their sides) sitting 11.5 inches up. The tweeters are just below my ears on the couch. The vp150 is on my qs8 box (I know...so ghetto...) which is about 12 inches. I also have the vp150 tilted slightly up (using 2 decks of cards to angle it up) and I can't get a good mixture. When I am watching a movie using ANY processing mode the Pioneers' full band phase control does a really great job of cleaning up the audio and separating the sounds into their respective channels. But the vp150 is PAINFULLY bright with these settings, althought everything else is better sounding. With all processing off (pure direct mode) the overall sound is softer, with all sounds being less concise but not really in a bad way, I kind of prefer it on some soundtracks. However, with this setting the vp150 is muffled and hard to hear, especially the dialog during more action packed scenes. I know that the vp150 in particular is sensitive to placement, so how can I fix this? Also, I cannot for the life of me get my sub to play when in pure direct mode, regardless of the speaker size setting, the subwoofer setting/level/cross-over/phase. It's the damndest thing, it works in all other modes except pure direct. Anyways...any ideas on this stuff? Thanks in advance, you guys have been very helpful.

max

BTW, JAKE- When you had the 22's and PB13 did you still find that the 'large' setting sounded better, or at that point was 'small' a better choice?

Looks familiar to me, exactly how I did my initial setup!

Jason

I don't think you mentioned the source for the music. Is it possible that some of the compression and/or distortion you are noticing comes from the format, DAC, player, etc?

Upgrading the sub could make a meaningful difference in how you perceive the M22's, especially at high volumes.

I still found it a little warmer but really not much difference. I could have left them as small and still felt like it sounded warmer.

I have always felt the VP150 worked better when it was mounted above my TV.

Doesn't Pure Direct shut everything off except the Left and Right Front? That's the way mine works...

I suppose it does shut everything down, but it has, in the past, with my towers kept the subwoofer on. Odd....Anyways. I highly doubt any distortion is from my Pioneer Elite 94Txh, PS3, etc. It definetly has to do with the recording and the minute impurities or unbalanced tonality that is exponentially increased when the vloume is increased. I tried many, many different recordings today and they are definetly the culprits. The great recordings are magnificent while the mediocre ones are hardly listenable at high volumes. Thanks for all the help everyone, I will let this thread die peacefully