Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Raising M80's off the Floor

Let me be more precise...I feel I am missing the transient highs...triangle, snare drum, tambourine & cymbals. I haven't experimented with my position yet to confirm this. I will do and report back.

Hello Captain,

How far away are you sitting from your M80s? The dispersion of the M80's tweeters and midrange drivers should be sufficient to supply all those details you believe you're missing. All of this makes me wonder if you've checked the "bi-wiring" gold links at the back of each M80 to ensure they're connected, secure, and that all your tweeters and midrange drivers are working.

Play some pink noise or musical selections with lots of cymbals and percussion and put your ear close to each driver to be certain it's working.

Regards,
Alan

Hi Alan...I'm not sure what you mean by "bi-wiring gold links." I have checked all the individual speakers by ear and they are all working. I do hear an improvement when turning up the treble control. But then the violins become harsh. I am sitting equidistant from the speakers...about 12 feet from them and they are toed in at about 20 degrees. One other possibility may be that I hear better with my left ear than with my right and I occasionally I have to adjust the balance to favor the right to compensate...but it is a very small margin of difference. Having been a percussionist most of my life I may have some hearing loss in the high range (I really enjoy playing cymbals). I would consider this serious had I not heard all the highs I wanted with my other Speakerlab speakers...but maybe they added some coloration that the M80's do not. Another issue may be that my old Denon only puts out 55 watts although I am unsure what wattage is operational with 4 Ohm speakers. I know John K would say no. Others may say yes, What say ye Alan? Would the addition of a super tweeter help?

Oh...one other issue may be the speaker wire I am using..they're pretty thin and were originally used with a cheap Bose satellite/sub system. I plan to get 12 gauge (I have my sub hooked up with 12 gauge) but haven't done this yet.

I would start with some thicker gauge wire first and see how that goes. The Axiom bulk speker cable is working very good in my room.

Yeah, if the speaker wire is 18 ga or less, that could be playing into it.

I just reserved 50 ft of 12 gauge wire from monoprice (it is on back order). I am looking forward to hearing the results when the wire is once again available.

Alan is talking about the gold clips between the speaker terminals on the back of the m80's.

Captain,

At the rear panel of the M80s, where the speaker cable connects to the positive and negative terminals, there are two sets of speaker posts linked by gold straps. These must make electrical contact between the upper pair of binding posts and the lower pair in order for the crossovers to function properly. You only need to connect the speaker cable to one pair of the binding posts. Please check those carefully.

In recent M80s, the v3 series, we've eliminated the dual sets of binding posts (except on special order) as they may cause malfunctions when the links are knocked out of place. We only added the "bi-wirng" sets of terminals as a marketing tool (both Ian and I believe there are no audible benefits to bi-wiring) and we had enough problems with customers not realizing that the two sets must be connected for the M80s to function properly that we decided to eliminate the extra bi-wiring set of terminals.

No super tweeter should be required for the M80s. They have extended and very detailed treble response that is highly praised by musicians, enthusiasts, and other owners. Clearly, there is something malfunctioning in your setup. The thin speaker wire should not affect the high frequencies; it just wastes power because of increased resistance. If it were ridulously thin, it could affect response, but I do not think that is the situation.

Regards,
Alan

UPDATE: My M80's are the v3 series so I guess there are no gold straps connected to the binding posts (that was confusing until I realized there were no dual binding posts as on v2 models). In any case I bought 12 gauge wiring...one thing I didn't mention before was that I still had the old Bose subwoofer hooked up to the system as well thinking it would increase the lower midrange with the Axioms for a synergistic affect. When installing the new wire yesterday I eliminated that sub and found quite a difference in sound and wow...I discovered that was the issue. In the Bose setup wires from the receiver connected to the sub's input and then another set of wires went out from the sub's output to the speakers. I think something was lost along the electrical pathway that limited the reproduction in some way. I can't really explain it technically (or maybe even possibly psychologically) but that solved the problem for me. My thanks to all who have assisted me!