Hello there,
I was wondering if the M100s are HP speakers. There is no option to make them high power on the purchase page.
The LFR-660 and the LFR-880 can be ordered with regular or HP drivers? The M-100 is a LFR-1100 without the rear firing drivers? Both of them are only available with the HP drivers?
Jeff
They can be ordered with HP drivers although that option isn't available on the order page.
The M100 and LFR1100 come with HP drivers.
It would be an over-simplification to say the M100 is like an LFR1100 without rear firing drivers. The M100, as good as it is, still "colors" the sound. The active LFR1100 does not. Bass on the active LFR1100 is more linear, soundstage is wider and deeper and images better defined and more stable. With proper placement, the actives acoustically disappear. I was never able to get the M100s to do that.
Odd that the regular and HP drivers are readily available (according to the specifications section) but there isn’t a mechanism for actually selecting HP drivers within the ordering process. For the 660 and the 880 models.
It appears the same cabinets and drivers are used for 60/660, 80/880, 100/1100. With the LFR version having rear firing drivers and extra vortex ports.
It’s not over simplification, what I have stated about the M-100 and the LFR-1100 which first was introduced as a passive speaker. Remove the rear drivers and vortex ports you’re left with a M-100.
It sounds like the actives are a different animal all together.
Jeff, if you disconnect the rear drivers of a passive or active LFR1100, it doesn't sound like an M100. It sounds like a Bose turd!
Also, the cabinet of an M100 is different than an LFR1100. The LFR1100 is braced different, contains more stuffing and has fewer vortex ports.
Hey Mojo, do the actives have the double thick frontice that the model T has that McBlue was describing?
It's a 1" baffle vs. the 1.5" on the Model T.
The Model T has a wider front baffle due to the 8" woofers. That extra width and the size of the woofers likely necessitated the extra half inch for improved stiffness.
Double-thick front baffle sure looks great in marketing literature. I'd love to see the science that led to the selection of front baffle thickness. I'd like to think science was done but maybe not. Maybe it was purely experience-based.
Comparing the two models they are more similar than not. The passive model cabinets are dimensionally exact copies of each other, both triple vortex ported, both crossed at the same frequencies.
Different bracing? Because of the additional rear drivers? Thicker rear baffle because of the additional drivers? Have not found those specific details yet.
I personally have not heard either model but based on Axioms' own description of their products I would venture they are quite similar.
I would speculate the rear firing drivers create an ambiance that some/most audiophiles will find pleasant.
The DSP switch and the actual physical positioning of the speaker offers the type of tweaking we all enjoy toying with.
Bye the bye, which Bose model does an LFR-1100 without the rear firing drivers sound like?
Ok, I'll allow you hear what you hear as so would I.
Jeff
My Bose 601 series II sounded like swaths of bandwidth were cut out of them. The active LFRs without rears also have swaths cut out of them.
The rear firing drivers achieve what Bose, KEF, Mirage and a bunch of others couldn't.
The active LFRs are more than a refinement of the M100s. I couldn't live with the M100s. I'd take the M5s or M2s over them because they acoustically disappear when I sit in the diffuse field. With the actives, I get it all!