Klipsch, with their horn loaded drivers are up to the task, but we know who sounds better.

Yeah, I was disregarding horn-loaded designs which are used in such applications.

What model B&W was this?

500D I think. Its the Nautilus bookshelf.

Very interesting report FredK. Demonstrates 2 things:

(1) Axiom M3 speakers are wonderful, world class book shelf speakers;

(2) A/B testing does not produce unequivocal results.

Living with a component in a system for a period of time permits a conclusion which is the result of a gestalt as opposed to a snapshot.

Maybe gestalt is the wrong word ... more like accumulated experience over a longer period of time and more varied musical events.

fredk, you are right about the bookshelf part, but I think it was the 805. Not sure if it's the 805S or 805Diamond. MSRP on the 805S is $2500. Of course, the current price of a pair of M3s is $330.

Axiom could really get some cool advertising out of this if they wanted to:

WORLD-CLASS SOUND NOW COSTS 85% LESS

Doh! 805.

Out of the 5 songs I listened to I gave the edge to speaker 2 (M3) for four of them. I owned Vassallo M3's and currently have Algonquin M3's and could not believe that was what I was listening to.

I was really surprised by the imaging difference, the speaker 2 (M3) extended out so much further to the sides. I originally thought that speaker 1 was M3 and speaker 2 was M22 due to the difference in the highs.

The only song that sounded better to me on the B&W's was Holly Cole "I can see clearly now". This was the first time I had heard this version and I could have listened to it over and over again, which I did. For this song I think I liked the bit more laid back cool sound?

Regardless performance to price is a no brainer for me.

I'm now interested in how the M22 would compare to the same model of B&W.

The idea of taking the blind test seems very simple. You go into a listening room, play some music, and switch back and forth between two(or more) sets of speakers and then record differences or preferences by way of a 1 to 10 rating(in Axiom's case) in various qualities of the speaker sonics...bass, treble ect. It sounds simple in theory, but in fact it's quite difficult as many of us talked about after the test. What I preferred on one track, may not have been preferred on the other and visa versa. How to convey the differences you are hearing was extremely difficult to put into words, at least for me it was. I couldn't decide for instance, if the difference I was hearing in the highs of one speaker vs the other was because there was more detail, more extention, less distortion ect or because one may have had slightly rolled off highs for instance.

I'll admit that I went into this test without an open mind, which is a NO-NO...I was convinced Ian would be playing us an MxxV2 vs an MxxV3 so I pretty much went in the listening room thinking I was hearing two Axiom speakers. What I heard was two very detailed, enjoyable speakers with very pleasant sound characteristics and though I heard subtle differences in the two, I kept going back and forth between which I preferred...remember, in my head I'm thinking I'm listening to V2's and V3's of an Axiom speaker....in the end, I indeed thought they were very close on performance and summed it up as Alan would say..."similarly good".

Which leads to the conclusion, if you were going to buy a pair of speakers(bookshelf in this case) that sounded "similarly good", do you want to spend $2300+ on a pair and tell your friends how much you spent(bragging) on some great sounding speakers, or would you rather tell your friends how much you saved(-$2000 in this case) on some great sounding speakers. To me, the answer is easy.