Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo M80ti's Advice, alan,owners help me!

Aloha, well i have been wanting to upgrade my speakers for around 6 months now. At first i had decided on PSB 6T's but now i think im definetly going for the M80's. But before i make my purchase ( if i ever get enough money) i want to ask you guys what you think. i would be using them for 100% music in a (WHD)13x9x20 room with carpet. The stereo would be firing into the long part of the room. And i would be driving them with a NAD C-370 integrated 120 wpc. I listen to mostly classic rock and some blues and various other things. Do you think these speakers are going to work well in my room? alan comments? I am currently running JBL ND310 speakers. How do you think the axioms compare to the jbl's is it worth my thousand bucks? Is there even a comparison? I recieved the sample axiom sent of the veneer (very nice) so hopefully all i need is more money and theyre mine! I cant wait! And also, who has biwired them, should i get another pair of speaker cables as well? Thanks guys.

Haoleb,

I'm not Alan and I don't own Axiom, but here's my input anyway.

The NAD c370 at 120wpc will be excellent as long as it can drive a 4 ohm load without difficulties. The M80's with that amp will really fill your room with sound and the amp is more than strong enough to have some good headroom for when music gets dynamic.

I would not concern myself about biwiring them. I can't say I have ever heard that improve the sound of speakers. Biwireable Axiom speakers come with bridges that you need to keep installed on the binding posts so you can wire them with one pair of cables. I would recommend doing this with decent quality 12 gauge copper wire. You can get this for less than 1$ a foot from Stereo Plus, or even Home Depot or Radio Shack.

You made a good choice, by the way. I recently read about someone who purchased Nautilus 802's from B&W, and Axiom M80's. The person kept the 802's only because his wife liked the way they looked more than the Axioms! He had a very hard time deciding which sounded better. PSB's are good, but not that good, in my opinion. They tend to sound a tad flat.

Thanks patchwork, The nad can go to 2 ohms, so im not worried about runing 4 ohm speakers on it. I was just a little concernced that maybe my room isint large enough for these.

Haoleb:

I think your room will be large enough. I have M80s powered by (you guessed it) a C370. I have the speakers about 9 feet apart, 1.5 feet from back wall, and I sit about 8-10 feet from the speakers, depending if I lean forward or backwards. My ears tells me that's plenty sufficient. I USED to have the speakers about 10 feet apart, playing in a room 25 feet deep, and I sit about 10-12 feet away from the speakers, and I feel I am sitting in front and away from the soundstage instead of almost sitting in it (front row seats vs 10 rows back)

The amp is more than enough -- I have a Bryston 3B which has similar specs and the NAD plays much louder. Bi-wiring adds a bit more air, but now I just use 2 runs of 12 ga Cu wire (~9 ga) instead.

Let me know if you have any more Qs on this setup. I'd invite you over for a listen but a return ticket may be a bit expensive

Thanks OGS20 just what i needed to hear. the way you have it setup is probbly how i would be setting up mine. And hopefully soon enough i will have them with what everyone has said i cant wait! I havent Bi-wired the nad before because my current speakers dont allor for it. Did you have both cables running from the A speaker outputs or say the highs and mids from A and the bass cable from B speaker output. thanks

Actually, no, I use 2 runs of 12ga wires, then braid/twist them to make '1' run of 9 ga wire. Hey you gotta use them for something after you buy a 250ft spool

With the amp, I don't think you should/could use both A AND B speaker outputs with 4 ohm speakers. The manual, all 4 pages of it (!), recommends at least 8 ohm speakers if you to use both speaker outputs (someone with a better grasp of the physics behind this can explain it).

I think cabling will play a large part in the sound you get though. I replaced the factory jumpers an actual pair of ICs, and that really tamed the trebles (for the better).

Good luck!

Well, i just ordered my boston cherry pair of M80's I CANT WAIT!! Thanks for all the help guys. I will post how it goes when they get here. Too bad i think its too late for them to ship outtoday aww man!

Haloeb
l just picked up the M60ti's today at a local retailer, l as well have the NAD C370, l don't have as good a cdp as you have (l frequent audio review, don't post very much though) but l think you will have an awesome setup. As we speak the speakers are hooked up and ready to go but the family is watching a movie right now , can't wait to get them going.
Cheers! Allan.

Cool, i bet its gonna sound great. I am dying waiting to get mine. i must have gotten my order in too late friday for them to process it, because they havent contacted me. And i found out that Fed ex ising going to be working on wednesday :-( Oh well shooting for thurs if they ship tomorrow. ... Now im just gluing some peices of wood in my old JBL's so the next owner doesnt have them fall apart or something! lol.

Well, yesterday i got my M80's and wow. All the things i have been missing! Unpacked axioms great packing job, no shipping damage at all. And i got the outlets and like everyone says, i could only find a couple really small marks, i mean, not even noticeble unless you looked for them. Wow what a great way to save! Hooked em up and the sound was amazing. soo detailed, and WHoa those little 6.5 inch woofers blew me away! they have much better quality bass then my old speakers with dual 10inchers in each speaker. Never again will i doubt small drivers for bass. Im hearing alot of things i never heard before also. hearing alot of the hiss in recordings i never knew was there. The beginning of pink floyd's Wish you were here was soo detailed and clear, i was reading the manual and the axioms immediatly caught my attention when the guitar started. I cant wait to go through my whole cd collection! so thanks to everyone who has helped me. And thanks to axiom for such a great product at such a great price with superb customer care. THANKS!

Wow... the memories of my first encounter. lol. I just found this post while browsing through the archives..

Fast forward 4 years later and I have a Epic 80 7.1 system with the 600 ON ORDER for my parents' new dedicated theater room. Which leaves me with the opportunity to dump off my M80's. I currently have a pair of cherry m80's and so They are going in the theater room and on order with the rest of the boston cherry system is a pair of HG cherry M80's that was going to be my set, but I recently started working at a custom a/v theater etc place and I get stuff at cost so It looks like perhaps, I am ending my personal journey with Axiom speakers right in the same post where it started.... That is IF, its not too late to cancel my HG m80's, and if i can get Paradigm Studio 100's at a reasonable cost (as in close to the price of the 80's)

Sorry if this is rather "outer limits" of a post but im sure some of you will understand

Good luck with your choices, if you do indeed go with the Paradigm Studio 100's I would love to hear your thoughts on how they compare to the M80's.

Hi Haoleb,

Interesting going over the earlier threads. If you are ever in a position with your new job to do an A/B comparison (preferably blind) with an instantaneous switcher between the new M80s (the ones for your parents) and the Paradigm 100s, I expect you'll hear slight differences in tonal balance--the M80s will have somewhat more midrange and upper octave detail than the Paradigms, and the Paradigms will have a somewhat boosted 3-dB lift of bass in the 80-Hz to 150 Hz region. Other than that, I suspect you'll find them comparably good, and you may have preferences one way or the other, depending on what music you're listening to.

The reason I suggest you use the new M80s is that there were tiny changes in the M80s' crossover made three or more years ago--extremely subtle but audible--that improved the midrange linearity and neutrality, which is one of the reasons we decided to give the "v2" designation to the M80s as well as the other Axioms that had slight changes introduced.

Thanks Alan, I knew that the sound of the 100's is supposed to be similar, but the main reason I really would like to "upgrade" to the paradigm's if i can get them cheap is because of their cabinet's, my only gripe about the 80's is the cabinet's tendency to have some vibrations which, im no expert on sound but when i stand next to them it seems like i can hear quite a bit of coloration coming off the cabinets. Hence wanting to get the 100's with their higher weight, and more bracing.

Plus, the logo on the tweeters that says Axiom Hometheaters is totally wrong in a 2 channel system.

But either way, I'll either end up an axiomite once again with a shiney set of HG cherry's or the use of my parent's 7.1 kickass system

Haoleb,

All speakers will have some residual output that you might detect if you are standing next to them or put your ear next to the enclosure, but that "coloration" is not detectable at your listening area with program material--music or movie soundtracks.

As to bracing, the notion that "more bracing is better" has not been demonstrated in a number of tests that Axiom did last year on the audibility of distortion.

http://www.axiomaudio.com/distortion.html

As you increase the amount of bracing in a speaker cabinet, you raise the resonant frequency, which may make the resonances more detectable, not less. Axiom's wedge-shaped anti-standing wave enclosure design suppresses the formation of resonances before they can become a problem.

The old "knock test" of a speaker enclosure says nothing about the potential detectability of any resonances. It's about as useful as kicking the tires on a car.

Here's a relevant excerpt from that article:

"For the designer, this presents an interesting paradox to beware of: Audible distortion may increase if distortion is lowered at the price of raising its occurrence frequency."

A good speaker design aims for no audible distortion and this means getting the proper amount of bracing not the most amount of bracing.