I am looking to get two new main speakers for the setup that I have in my home office. The two speakers that I had are being moved to my work office.

The room is probably about 12 x 12. I would mostly be listening to music. I do watch some movies in this room. The breakdown is probably about 60 - 40 music to movies.

Since this setup isn't my main setup it is not the most ideal setup in terms of matching equipment. The receiver is a Yamaha 5540, which I believe is rated 75 watts a channel. The center channel here is about a 10 year old DCM, don't know the model. The surrounds are Klipsch bookshelves. The subwoofer is a Paradigm PDR10.

Would a 75 watt Yamaha be enough to drive the M22's?

Anybody use a Paradigm sub with M22's? Anything I should be concerned about matching a Paradigm sub with the M22's?

After reading lots of posts here and reviews of Axioms, I am not clear on one term that gets tossed around alot. Transparency. What does that mean? When reading reviews and things of other speakers I just don't see this term used.

Any comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Welcome.

I don't think that the M22's would be a bad match for either the Paradigm sub or for the Yamaha.

When people talk about "transparency", I think they are generally referring to the notion that Axiom speakers do not color the sound - they accurately convey the source material. That is, in the context of the music-listening experience, the speakers do not call attention to themselves.

You will have a hard time trying to find anyone who dislikes the M22.

Tom answered your question pretty well.

To put it metaphorically, think of each piece of equipment between you and actual source CD as a piece of glass. Ideally, you want each piece of glass to be as clean and clear as possible so what you hear coming from the speakers is exactly what was recorded onto the CD.

If a piece of equipment degrades the music -- such as a really old receiver with badly oxidized connections might -- that piece of glass would by cloudy. No matter how clean the rest of the pieces of glass are, that one cloudy one will adversely affect the sound.

Of all the links in the playback chain, speakers are the most likely to affect the final sound of the music. By using transparent speakers, you will remain "truer to the source", so to speak.

All very true and well worded.
I would only add that the one downside to 'transparency' is that you will notice when something was mixed/recorded poorly. The speakers do not help the mixing engineer hide the bad job they did. Though, from what I understand (precious little admittedly), occasionally CDs are mixed that way on purpose to sound better to the 'masses'.

To continue the metaphor: You might have a nice clear clean window to look through, but it's still a crap shoot as to whether you end up looking at a neighbor’s sweaty, hairy man-boobs or a hot neighbor scantily clad while catching some sun. :-)


jr

LOL! I'm choking on my giggles to avoid strange looks from my office-mates.