Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo M3v2 impressions - LONG!

I wrote the majority of this before receiving a sub, though I did add some of my thoughts of the M3’s + sub at the end.

I have had the trio of M3's set up for a little under a month now and just wanted to share my early impressions.

I'm running the speakers off of a Denon AVR-590. The LR speakers are on bookshelves and lying on their sides, tweeters in, about 7 feet apart. No toe-in. They sit slightly below ear level, but due to the cabinet design, the speakers are angled up perfectly to the listener. The center is mounted on a shelf just above the TV and angled down (using doorstops) towards the listening area. Pics are in the Gallery.

A big part of fitting speakers into a common area (family room for me) is getting a speaker with a high WAF rating. With its tapered cabinet and very well done black wrap, the speakers ‘looked nice’, so says my wife, and was a reasonably good compliment to the shelves they would reside on. Passing the biggest hurdle to keeping the M3’s, it was time to get them up and running.

I hooked the M3’s to the 590 and at first, I was not terribly impressed as the speakers sounded very thin and distant, with no mid-bass to speak of. Exactly the opposite from what I've read about them. TV was 'ok' and music was not so good. I was a little bummed, and my wife tried to cheer me up by noting that they sounded better than the speakers that came on the UN40B6000. My 15 year old $30 Sanyo ‘boom box’ has better speakers than the TV….

Knowing that with any new setup a certain amount of tweaking is needed, I fiddled with the bass and treble tone controls on the 590, and these M3's started to exhibit the kind of character I was reading about. Good midrange, clear highs, with decent loudness and low range extension for a speaker this size. My oldest daughter liked them and my wife gave me an approving 'sounds a little better' nod. I was determined to get better results, and after a day or two had a sound that was pretty good, though not great. I compare it to the ‘loudness’ button effect on my Technics receiver from the mid 80’s with in-your-face mid-bass and highs a little on the shrill side.

I know from reading around the forums that Audyssey is a hit and miss thing with people. After going through the calibration, you can put me in the 'believer' category. Where Harry Connick Jr's voice was fat and resonating, it was now well balanced and just a hair laid back. Brushes on drums and the pluck of the strings on the Bass became detailed and life like. Slack-key guitar numbers came through very well, and I could pick up the sound of the guitarist's fingers as they were sliding back and forth along the strings. Audyssey DEFINITELY made a difference in my less than ideal listening area, and helped the M3’s to perform to their reputation. BIG smile on my face!

Audyssey set my center channel crossover at 40hz, and because I don't have a sub my LR channels were Full Range. As a personal preference, I bumped up the center channel trim a couple of dB and I found that all movie/tv dialog were easy to understand and came through clearly no matter which speaker it came through. No difference in tone and timbre from speaker to speaker as can be expected.

Bass response on the M3 is pretty good. LL Cool J's Going back to Cali came though ok, and some Victor Wooten funk didn't cause any chuffing out of the vents at a moderate volume. A sub is definitely needed here, but kudos to the M3 for doing a decent job.

The great extension was evident in movies as well, though the need for a sub was enforced even more. Darla tapping on the glass in Finding Nemo had some impact, and the opening scene in Star Wars epIII was ok, but that low-end just doesn’t come through. There may have been a hint of the LFEs in Gandalf’s battle with the Balrog in LOTRTT or the beach landing scene in Saving Private Ryan, but there was no ‘oomph’ behind it.

Stereo imaging is excellent, even with the speakers on their sides. Singer’s voices are easy to locate, and end up a bit elevated (physical height) and just a hair recessed. I have a big null spot just outside my right speaker that could be attributed to the speakers sitting on their sides. In the listening area however, everything is detailed and rich, though low bass notes seem a little loose. I’m not yet into listening to music in surround mode, but Dolby PLII and DTS Neo 6 does help to anchor singer’s voices to the center and adds a sense of space to some music.

There is a noticeable difference in the highs with the speaker grilles on versus off. When off, there is a slight sharpness to ‘S’ sounds and cymbals take on more of an edge. With the grilles on, the sharpness is gone. I like the crispness when listening to jazz as it seems to add more air/space and a hint more detail to music, but do not prefer it for pretty much everything else. With two young kids around, the grilles are better left on anyway.

Overall, a spectacular set of speakers to use for music (Jazz, classic Hip-Hop, R&B, Hawaiian, and Reggae) if you don’t have a sub. It does an admirable job with some bass heavy Rap, Jazz and Reggae, and makes a decent effort at creating the more demanding LFE effects in movie audio.

PS – Post Sub

Like in my good old car audio days, the bass bug has bitten me. While the M3’s sound great and have pretty good extension in my setup, I needed that something extra down low. Rationalizing to myself that I just needed something in the interim to fill that gap, I decided to pick up a budget priced sub until I could figure out what to get.

The BIC F12 (brother/sister to the H-100?) seemed to get a resounding thumbs up from the ‘bang-for-your-buck’ crowd. After some searching, I stumbled on to a great deal, and after a week in transit, I got my BIC F12 in house, positioned, and hooked up.

The sub is ugly. A big ugly box. Still, the black vinyl finish matches surprisingly well with the finish on the M3’s and passed the WAF test. The F12 blended well enough into the space I put it in that my wife didn’t notice until I pointed it out.

It is sitting on the carpet, adjacent to the long wall that is to the left of the listening area. The rear facing port sits 6” off of the wall and the driver faces in, but is not toed-in. Very fortunate that the placement works well for me as finding another spot for the sub would have been difficult.

With the volume on the sub turned up just around half-way, Audyssey cut 12db from the channel. On my second run, I had the volume on the sub at “3” and Audyssey cut only 3.5db so I left the volume knob there.

The M3’s crossovers were set at 40hz, but I decided to raise it to 80hz to leave more of the heavy lifting to the sub and give my relatively low powered receiver some headroom. With the sub set to Auto on/off, it takes under a second or so for the unit to sense low frequency material and turn itself on.

For movies, the F12 does a great job at producing the low frequency rumbles and impacts. The Jericho missile scene, and the cave scene from Iron Man got the couch vibrating, and the battle scene at the beginning of LOTRFOTR could be felt in my chest. The M3’s performed well too and sounded similar to when they were running full range.

From a music standpoint, I’m hearing the low notes and tones at good levels, but not getting the refinement I’d like. Listening to Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten, and Fourplay tracks (some GREAT low end material in their tracks!) I get somewhat monotone sounds with a bit of overhang at the end. I wouldn’t call the sound ‘muddy’, but certainly not ‘tight’ or ‘detailed’ either. In a somewhat contradictory statement, I will say that the addition of the sub has brought more realism to the whump of kick drums. I don’t know what it is (maybe just better low end reinforcement) but they sound much better.

Once or twice, I find some bass notes to come through on the fat side, to the point that it seems to recess other instruments into the background. This comes up in certain tracks of Diana Krall’s Love Scenes CD that I didn’t notice when I was running the M3’s full range, and am not sure if that was the intention of the sound engineer, Dynamic EQ doing it’s thing, or the interplay between the speakers and sub. Other than that, I find the M3’s and the F12 to play very well together.

The BIC F12 is a welcome addition to the setup and fills that second to last void in my movie watching experience. Everything that should rumble now RUMBLES! All I need now are some QS4’s and I would be set! Musically, the F12 is not the greatest, but for under $200 to my door (a virtual miracle for any large parcel coming to Hawaii) it is a spectacular bang for my buck, and integrates very well (with the help of Audyssey) with the M3’s.

Welcome to the club!

Thanks! Great club to be associated with!

During the trial period, I did my best to really listen to a wide variety of material and be nit-picky about performance. After deciding I would keep the M3's, I relaxed and just enjoyed the music. What a wonderful experience.

Enjoyed reading your experiences with the M3s Brian, and it wasn't a word too long.

When you do add surrounds(preferably the QS4s)you'll likely find that your enjoyment of both movies and music(using DPLII, etc.)is significantly increased.

Yes, I'm STILL trying to get through your "M22 7 1/2 year review".

Welcome BigHonu, good to hear you are enjoying you speakers.

JohnK,

A couple of other members mentioned listening to music in 5.1/7.1 to me as well, and I admit that I was a little reluctant to go that route only because 1) I grew up on stereo and dammit, I like music in stereo, and 2) my surrounds (Panny HTIB units) are not the greatest from a sound standpoint. However the last two days, I have tried listening to a variety of music in 5.1 (mostly PL II), and I have to say that it is growing on me. Makes me want those QS's even more just to see how it enhances the overall effect.

Brian

I love the wife's "sounds a little better nod", like we need reassurance from our better half that the money we spent was needed...haha thats so funny, that happened to me exactly like that.