On Tuesday I headed up to Dwight, which is a three hr drive from Caledon accompanied by my brother who I picked up along the way. The weather was great...cool as you would expect at this time of year in cottage country, but the roads were dry and clear, the skies were blue and cloudless and a lot of the snow had dissappeared(for the time being at least!) with some left in the forest and along the sides of highway 11.

So, we drove up to Huntsville, one of my favourite towns in cotage country. This area reminds me a little of Kelowna BC for some reason, the way the lake, hills and town is situated as we headed east on #60 toward Dwight, passing the famous Deerhurst Inn (perhaps most known for where Shania was discovered)on the way. Someday, I've got to move here...

So we got to Dwight around lunchtime, and walked into Axiom around noon...yes, Noreen was sitting at the very same desk, and greeted us as we came in. I'd already had the factory tour in the fall, so I decided not to ask for another one, although I'm sure they would have obliged. Noreen directed us to the shipping area of the 2nd building where my speakers were waiting for me. Upon seeing the size of the boxes for the M80s, I looked at my brother and kind of gave him one of those "H*ly Cr*p" looks. You see, I had invited Fredk up also, but due to work schedule he was unable to come up on a week day....now, I have an extended cab Silverado Z71....those speakers, plus the centre and surrounds filled the entire back of the truck cab, WITH both front seats nearly all the way up. To make a little extra space, I finished off a jug of WW fluid (mmm...no, I didn't drink it!).

We weren't at Axiom for too long before we headed back to Huntsville and had a coffee at Tim Hortons before heading south back to my brother's house for a couple of hours for some dinner and to visit his family before heading back home.

So now, I've gotten the speakers all unpacked, as well as the Denon AVR and Blue Ray, I've just taken the old Sony tv out for garbage pickup tomorrow...it will go the "audiopile" in Brampton more than likely. I've been looking at what I've got here and I know I need to decide on some things. Namely, how I'll set up the furniture/seating arrangement vs the position of the tv (52" Sammy). This will take a bit of trial and error, but that's getting ahead of myself here.

I'm in need of a few items that I'll be picking up this week...Banana Plugs, a sub cable, and it sounds like you guys recommend one to get an SPL metre to set things up, correct?
I may have to build a shelf for the centre, or possibly get a three teir shelf instead of the two teir I have right now. This may take some trial and error, on my part as this is going in my family room and is not a dedicated HT.

So, right now, I'm looking for some Banana plugs, I've seen the ones on Ebay(Nakamichi) from a seller in Hong Kong. Has anyone had any prob's ordering from overseas or are there any places more locally to order from (preferred). Also, re sub cable, should I get one made up from my local store or pick one up from BB or Future Shop. I'll need as much as 25ft. Again, I think you guys recommend an SPL metre as well to help verify the best settings on the speakers, correct?

Tks, Adrian

Check out monoprice or PartsExpress for Canadian shipping!

Congrats, Adrian!

Tks, Mark. I'll have a good look those links and check Amazon/Ebay more thoroughly this evening.

Monoprice, all the way.

The pictures didn't display correctly for me.

"Audiopile". I LOVE IT!

I have purchased cables, banana plugs and bbigwyres from Monoprice and Blue Jeans Cable. Both excellent companies to deal with. The only problem is (since you probably want to get your system hooked up ASAP) that it takes about 7-14 days for the package to arrive from the United States. Never had to pay any border fees beyond what each company charged for shipping when I placed my order.

Congrats on your purchase Adrian!

I bought a big pile of Monoprice banana plugs and have been very happy with them.

I may be able to get some Nakamichi plugs locally. Does anyone know if these are copper or are they brass?

That's great Adrian, congrats my man!

Monoprice for me also, I did pick up some odds and ends at some of the local home stores, namely bulk speaker wire and a few banana plugs from Lowes or Home Depot, now I have extras laying around. I am having the same issues as Tom though, pics are not coming through for me either ... might want to try reposting.

Congrats again and can't wait to hear your thoughts regarding the new digs, and oh yea...

SPL meter is a must!

I have not actually tried this place http://www.speakerrepair.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=AHH_Banana for banana plugs - and I don't know if they ship to Canada but the way this reads, these seem to be a good deal............Rob

Told ya that you'll have to post pics, Adrian!

I don't see the (required) pics

{{He says in a different voice}}

Hey! Howsabout some pictures!!??!!

{{He says into his cupped hands to sound like a guy in the back of the room}}

Yeah! We wanna see some pictures!!??!!

(In my best Rocky voice)

"Yo Adrian!!!!!!!"

So I guess I need the following: banana plugs, sub cable, SPL metre and....a camera!! lol. Hey you in the bleachers back there! yeah you! lol.

Ok, I've emailed about some banana plugs(Nakamichi) locally, hopefully I'll get a response either tonight or early tomorrow, the guy's not too far away so I could pick them up. Ordering on the internet's fine(thanks for the links, guys) but it may take a while if I go that route, unfortunately.

I looked at the back of the Denon and it looks rather awkward to hardwire it temporarily, which surprised me...I think they WANT you to use banana plugs or forks on the connection rather than hardwiring.

Still, has anyone used these Nakamichi plugs? my only concern is that they might be brass rather than copper.

sorry, I've always used bare wire connections, less links in the chain that way. :0

You are using a Denon AVR?

Denon 2805 and some Odyssey monoblocks for my m80's..then denon powers everything else.

I'm looking for some cables myself, but it looks like neither of these ship past the US and Canada. They are SOOO much cheaper than Bluejeans.

The binding posts on the speakers are easy enough to hardwire, they have those cross drilled holes in the studs, the connections on the receiver don't have that type of connect, unfortunately.

You haven't hooked them up yet? After all this time?

If you did, how do they sound to you?

Adrian, brass is an alloy of 70% or so copper with the remainder mostly zinc. It's harder than pure copper and makes a better plug than one of pure copper(if there are any); there's no good reason for concern.

Congrats Adrian...don't forget the required pictures. please advise if you need little Nathan for speaker breakin..better not go there again.

anyway congrats once again..

I've just finished hardwiring, and hooked up the BD/DVD player. Listening to "Wild Horses" right now...Sundays version...beautiful. I've got the M80s about 7, not quite 8 ft apart slightly towed in. Similar sound and same kind of imaging I remember in the Studio 100s and the Mon Auds and very detailed. Similarities to the Studio 100s are correct, the Mon Auds are slightly less revealing(not implying bad/good) than the M80s and Studio 100s although I've not compared them A/B.

I tried playing some Pearl Jam a little earlier and felt the speakers opened up as I played them somewhat louder, lots of bass in these M80s...I also know I'll have some work to do on the room. Right now I've moved out my old TV, I've got chairs in the middle of the room and some bare walls and empty stereo boxes strewn all over the place, lol!! This is my trial run, so I have some experimenting to do. I'm liking what I'm hearing so far, and with some room adjustments it'll likely be much better as I've got mostly uncovered drywall, double glass doors and a brick fireplace to contend with.

"Wild....Wild Horses.....couldn't drag me awaayaayy"

Tks, John.

Never dealt with parts express but Monoprice ships to Canada. In my experience I recieved my cables in 10 days from when I placed my order from Monoprice. Highly recommended!

Edit: Opps wrong quote above ...

Tks Doc, I've got the M80s hardwired for the moment but I think I'll order some Banana plugs just for convenience. Debbie, at Axiom told me back in the fall that they generally hardwire their speakers, I guess it all depends if your moving them around much. I don't feel I need to rush out and buy some overpriced plugs at BB or FS now, lol.

Oddly enough, I'm listening to some "Live" right now--explanation; When I was auditioning other speakers, I used their song "Lightning Crashes" but was dissappointed with the guitar intro because there was alot of background hiss that is quite prominant at the beginning until the song builds up and drowns it out. That hiss is there on the Axioms, as well of course...NO!! they didn't magically get rid of the hiss, lol, but one thing I did notice was how the guitar intro kept moving slowly across the soundstage and back a couple of times. I'm sure it was there before, but it was very noticeable this time.

I've got hardwood floors that are partly covered with a thick wool rug, I may need a couple more of those very small rugs to put under end tables too, to help with damping reflections. Might put a nice rug up on the wall above the couch too, for acoustics and appearance as well.

Congrats, on the speakers Adrian.

I love that version.

Why not get Axiom's banana plugs you have them much faster than from monoprice and they are the best I have used, just like the binding posts on the back of the speakers. Yes they are a little more expensive but well worth it IMO.

Funny thing is you could have bought them when you were there and this would be a non-issue.

I bought 10 Nakamichi banana plugs thru e-Bay in January from e2wholesale in Hong Kong. Paid 11.93 for 10 and they shipped for free.Took about 10 days to get here. They look real good and are decent quality and they do the job well, I will say this though, Having never seen a real Nakamichi plug to compare to, I'm not sure these are the real thing. For $11.93 . I also have the Axiom banana plugs and they are a much better quality.

I tried the Axiom banana plugs (both locking and regular) and found the non-locking ones were very loose fitting in the speaker post (M80,VP150) and I had to constantly tighten the locking ones as they tended to loosen. I went to the GLS locking bananas and have had no problems with them. The Axioms are just sitting in a closet.

That sounds like my last room - the image was good, but it moved around. I figured out it was the reflections as the voice/instrument changed Hz and triggered different room modes. Try towing the speakers in more and moving closer to your seating position, if you can. Aiming the tweeter more at me, helped clarify the image in my new room.

Do you have the song "Lighning Crashes", Charles ?....it almost sounds like it was intentionally recorded like that. I could be totally wrong though. The speakers are toed in at an angle that would put the sweet spot about 18 to 20 ft (right at the back wall/fireplace), maybe I need to toe them a little more to intersect at 12 to 14 ft or so.

Lightning Crashes by whom? There's been about 5000 recordings of that...

Really? I've only heard the original.(Live) Maybe there is an Elmer Fudd version....Witening Kwashes?

Lightning Crashes by Live.

It's odd that you never noticed the effect before, it's pretty obvious. I believe the effect used on the guitar is called "rotating speaker", heck it might have been a real rotating speaker, not just an effect.

Oh, wait, I'm mixing it up with Landslide.

Alan needs to retrain his audio experts. " Would you like frie, er, bannana plugs with that?"

I have the song, but have not listened to it in years. Thus, you threw me with the moving image fake. Nice one. Surprised no one called me on saying to tow in your speakers. That was easy one. Normally I get

Sorry, Charles . I haven't listened to that Live album (Awake) too much in the last year and most of my listening has been while driving in my truck. Imaging on my factory GM radio is a little more limited.

Posting has been changed at my request, never intended to offend anyone if it was taken as such. Appologies to those who were offended.

Alan's going to be deleting my post referencing it as well.

Come on guys, lighten up. I don't think that could be taken as offensive in any real way. But, I'm not easily offended (as you can see by my baby smoking photo), so I have exhausted my two cents.

Hey, maybe he's not inhaling.

Agree..it seems some people are just looking to be offended or are looking for an offense in nearly anything nowadays.

We all need to take Clint Eastwood's recent advice when he said, "The world would be a better place if we could still laugh at inoffensive jokes about different races. People have lost their sense of humor."

And for the record, I didn't see anything in that thread as a racist remark. Intent must be a consideration when ascertaining whether a comment is racist or not.....lighten up people!

As I told Adrian, I have an exaggerated sensitivity because my sister takes racism against Asians very seriously. I know he wasn't meaning any harm, but I don't see how it's hard to see that it could be interpreted as offensive by visitors to the board who don't know him.

This is true about the binding posts Adrian. On the Denon's you slide the twisted bare wire along the side edge, then when you tighten the posts it grabs onto the wire and twists it around clockwise.

Happily I missed the exchange Charles, but in principle I completely agree with your sister: people can complain all they want about political correctness when they feel everything they are saying is all in good fun, however, push so easily continues to come to shove in our society and unconscious prejudice continues to escalate and blossom into denigration/devaluation, exploitation, or even full blown violence; we need to nip these things in the bud, worry about restoring the niceties of social exchange later ("Can't we all just be friends and get along?").

Keep listening to your sister, women are not fools, it's us white guys who myopically continue to believe we have a God given right to be fatuous ("Who loves ya!?"), yes that's the gift/fruit of our karma, for better or worse (pretty soon to become much worse but hopefully not too much before I leave the planet, have to stick around for my daughter, she actually likes it here ).

Wow, glad we cleared up all the pc problems and got back to the root evil of it all. Alan my need to delete this whole thread.

Classic, textbook in-group self-justification, yes let's delete this thread and suppress all verbal expression counter to our supremacy, and shame/scapegoat any who would suggest otherwise with snippy responses to out-of-context quotations. Agreed?

I say we ban SatKartr for even suggesting it!

Careful, Myrison. If you are in the wrong group your opinion is, by definition, just an unconscious prejudice which will continue to escalate and blossom into denigration/devaluation, exploitation, and even full blown violence. But I think the same pop psychology pamphlet says you can blame your unconscious prejudice on the detrimental impact of Adrian’s post, so keep that in your pocket.

SatKartr, I'll let you have the last word on this. I have derived all the joy I can get from the irony of your posts; over reacting to an expression of innocent humor by lauding the virtues of verbal expression. Priceless.

The thread is yours.

Zimm - I can't tell if you're serious, but if you are, my last post was complete sarcasm. I didn't even see the original comments and have no idea what they said.

*myrison goes and sits in the corner*

what was said? it could not have been that bad i'm sure!

Referencing what?

I thought I was good at derailing threads.

I'm forever missing the good stuff!!

Guys, for those of you who didn't read my original post/retracted post that seems to have generated more discussion because of the the fact that I asked Alan to retract/change it, it's certainly not worth fighting/arguing over.

Maybe not Adrian ... but if you don't get some damn pictures posted up here soon you're going to have a lot more issues going on than some forum thread getting deleted, might even be YouTube 'got the hell beat out of me by a bunch of online geeks' material.

You hear?

Levitating cable lynching?....HELP!!

You all are so white. The first rule of . . . being the ethnic underdog is to escalate adversity! It's no use making nice, just look at the status quo and that's what you get. Are you happy now? Didn't anyone see the Kings of Comedy?

If Charles states that there was a racist over- or under-tone to the comments that's good enough for me. Be as dismissive as you want, ignorance is your right, we call it free speech. It won't change the fact that the most important social changes to occur in the last hundred years or so (more like a couple thousand, but who's counting not much happened for a while) have all stemmed from the willingness of people to speak out against prejudice.

So do I get the last word now for real Zimm or shall I await your comeback? You want to say something in return, I know you can't resist. Oh please share, let us hear whatever clever phrase you can coin, and don't forget how much joy you can derive from even more irony.

Oh wait, I hear a great fish with your name on it, or is it a whale, he's calling to you, yes he says his name is Moby, or perhaps it's Marlin, or could it be Macho, oh how unPC of me . . .

The Incredible Mr. Limpet?