Can anyone recommend alternative speaker stands for the M22's? Those FMS 16's are just too much.
Another question...Are the M50's significantly better than the M22's? Any opinions on this would be much appreciated.
Man...This is hard work...
I have an idea. If you have a Gordman's store near you, you could pick up a couple of those funky looking plant stands they like to sell. They seem to be fairly stable and they might dress up your room a bit. The M50s have more bass than the M22s, of course. I wouldn't call them better, just fuller sounding. If you have a sub, the M50s aren't necessary. If you don't have a sub, and aren't thinking of getting one, you wouldn't want the M22s.
Thanks for the advice...What's your opinion on the M60's? Are they worth that much more than the M22's? Please note that I am purchasing a subwoofer.
Depends on the size of your room, how loudly you want to play, and whether you are happy playing music with a sub or want to stick with "mains only" for music -- which seems to depend mostly on what you are used to listening to...
For a moderate sized room and reasonable volume levels, I don't think you will hear that much difference between M22s and M60s as long as you have a good sub and are using an AV receiver to strip the LF signal off the M22s. I have M2s and M60s, and found that M2 + a good sub sounded remarkably close to the M60s until I cranked the volume.
If I had it to do over again, I would get the M60s rather than the M22s, only because I do like to listen to music minus the sub.
I bought M60s because I wanted to listen to all kinds of music without a sub. After a couple of years I am getting a better understanding of why I didn't like the sub.
Over the last 30 years I became used to the sound of "good speaker w/o sub", ie decent bass but not flat to the very lowest frequencies. As a result, when I listened to any modern music *with* a subwoofer there seemed to be much more deep bass than I expected or wanted, although in hindsight some of this was probably because the "mains only" systems (including M60s) were not flat to 20 Hz and therefore were not accurately reproducing the the relative SPL of the lowest notes.
The complicating factor is that quite a few recordings seem to be mixed to sound good on "typical" equipment, which often includes pumping up the bass a bit to compensate for the rolloff of a typical playback system. When you play that music on a very flat system with subwoofer, you are really getting too much bass as a result.
I think this is why I keep coming back to M60s without a sub for music playback. I believe the reason I still liked M2s with sub is that at the quieter playback levels you can get with those speakers the extra bass is not so objectionable, in fact to some extent it is probably providing a bit of "loudness compensation". The same would apply to M22s but to a lesser extent, since the M22s can play at higher SPLs than the M2s.
Before I purchased a good AV receiver, I was only using the crossover in the sub, which resulted in a non-symmetric crossover. The results were not nearly as good -- it was only when I started using the symmetrical crossovers in the AV receiver that I started to get somewhat happy with a sub/bookshelf system for music -- and by that time I had already bought M60s and had cheerfully deep-sixed the sub for everything except DVDs.
>>One day I'll try the M60's but for now my M22's will have to do. Just cranked em up and it's hard to imagine anything sounding THAT much better...
The only time 60s would sound THAT much better would be if the room was just too big for 22s and they were being pushed too hard. We're talking about relatively subtle differences here.
Drew
I also thought Axiom stands were a bit pricey for my M22's, so I picked up a pair of
Quest EM series speaker stands. I'm quite tall so went for the EM400's (24" high). They also make an 18" version (EM300). They are well made (heavy gauge metal, stable and have lots of space in the column to weight the base even more with sand or lead shot). My only criticism is the rubber pads supplied for putting on the speaker plate for holding down the speakers isn't very sticky on the top side so doesn't do that good a job. That was easily solved though by purchasing some better material for a few bucks from the retailer I purchased the stands from.
you can build your own stands that look quite good for less than $40 per pair.
http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/stubby_e.htmlIf you don't NEED the M60's the M22's sound almost identical with a good sub (so I have heard).
-Hutz