OK. So you get a pair of speakers to your house. You set them up. Move them around. Find the "sweet spot". Decide these ARE the speakers for you! They sound just perfect in YOUR house in this room. You are SOOoooooooo glad you went the audition in YOUR home route.
Something suddenly happens and you have to move everything to the spare room or the finished basement. OR you suddenly have to move. What good did it REALLY do to audition and pick out the perfect speaker for YOUR room?

I've just decided to not buy any new speakers after all.

It did good for the time they were in that room (environment). Life changes all the time and it changes our environment. There is no true constant. This afflicts almost every aspect of life.
Examples . . .
- My Camaro was perfect for me until a had 3 kids!
- My job was perfect until they made me boss.
- There was nothing wrong with my 8-tracks until HD Audio came along.
- My perfect neighbourhhod went downhill since the crack-house opened for business down the street.
- My jeans fit perfect until I ate that Christmas turkey.

We can only do our best, with what he have, at that time. Fortunately with Axiom speakers (as opposed to almost all others), they are one of the few companies that allow us some flexibility to our ever changing lives. We can do trade-ins, etc.

It is important that the speakers you have chosen sound good in the particular room you have intended for them. M80s and dual EP800s in a tiny room of a small studio apartment probably do not make sense. But, if you then move to large house in a couple of years, they will fit just fine. I guess one needs to decide what will make sense now and in the forseeable future when deciding on a particular set of speakers.

This is exactly why I will be ordering 4 ep800s for my 200 square foot dorm room.

Good Lord willing and the ocean don't rise there are no plans of moving from our home anytime soon but if we *had* to move we'd certainly look for a house that would have a like room or constructable area to accommodate our system as close to what we have now ... if not better.

Don't get a better room. Then your system will sound inadequate and you will have to upgrade (or even buy higher end equipment)

I think they get a little carried away with the 'in your home' bit at audioholics.

Yes, there are speaker room interactions that can at times be significant. It has as much to do with a dealer having a crappy demo room for the speakers as it does with your room.

There have been people who found that the speakers they bought sounded a lot different in their rooms than at the dealers. The dealers where I auditioned had decent rooms for their speaker setups and I doubt any of the speakers I listened to would sound a lot different than in my room. On the other hand, auditioning at your local bestbuy might not give you the most accurate representation of what a pair of speakers sound like.

Use some common sense when auditioning.

Bob, not really understanding your question, like many of the others.

Pick the speakers that sound good to YOUR ears, that is what is important. What we preach is to not go listen to speakers in retail stores like Best Buy or other chains where they have huge rooms with many receivers hooked up to many speakers and a switch panel to jump from brand to brand.

In home auditions, or audio stores that have actual rooms setup like a home environment is what is important. If you buy speakers you like, they will sound good if you move them into other rooms or move.

Now, subwoofer placement can be tricky and will very from room to room because of the way low frequency bass and the long wave lengths create dips/valleys. Even with them though, I would not stress over that you MIGHT move some day, it is no big deal.

This thread seems more like trolling than an actual question.

But I agree completely with fredk. The point of the home audition is two fold.

One: Axiom (and other direct audio merchants) don't have stores. So they have to allow in-home demos or there'd be no way to hear their gear. How many here would have bought their Axiom's unheard if there was no return policy? I wouldn't have.

Two: Speakers in a listening room sound different than ones in a living room. Living rooms tend to have more stuff in them, and that stuff changes the sound. If you have a 'radical' living room (concrete bunker, a wicker tiki hut, etc) then you're going to get even more changes. So it's just a bonus to be able to hear them in one's own home when making a decision. Sort of like taking a car for a test drive. It's nice to know what it will be like in your own environment rather than the showroom.

And 2b:
You really can't buy anything, from a banana to a million-dollar home, on the promise that it will perfectly suit your requirements forever. People buy stuff based on the need or expected pleasure that the item will deliver versus cost based on both current and predicted future needs. Since no one can predict the future, you never can be 100% sure that any product will perform perfectly in its expected role forever.

PeterC, FTW!

Not really trolling. More tongue in cheek. I agree that there might be some differences from the store to your home. It just seems like there are so many "out there" that make a big deal out of hearing in the home. So for those that I've gooten their shorts in a knot I apologize.

Curious why you would believe our particular system will be inadequate because it may be moved somewhere else? That's a strange notion I believe.

I see that I posted after your last reply and nope, after a quick check my shorts and the contents are just fine ... no need to apologize, we're just curious.

btw Rick, you have a great HT there. I would love to have a room like that!

I'm not... comfortable discussing the contents of Rick's shorts.

It is actually a fake picture..