1. Don't know for sure but a number of people seem to be happy with M80s in a small room. You just have to be able to get them away from the walls a bit.
2. Ideal distance from the wall will probably be different for every room. In general, you will get more bass as the speaker gets closer to the back wall. You can also use distance from the wall to correct for peaks in your room response, eg.
15 x 13 x 8.5 room has peaks around 40 Hz (OK) then in the 70-90 Hz range (not so good). If you have the speakers ~3.5 feet from the back or side walls that should give you a bit of a dip around 80 Hz which will counter the room peak and flatten your response out a bit.
3. I run M60s for music and normally prefer them without a sub. M80s would be even better. There are a few things that even the 80s won't fully handle without a sub, eg. low pedals on a pipe organ, but 99.9% will be fine.
4. I'm gonna abstain; the 60s sound better than anything I listened to in the last few years but I didn't listen to anything exotic.
5. There are two questions here :
- Does the 235 have enough power to sound really good and play at decent volumes in your room ? Absolutely, unless you like to play real loud.
- Is the 235 enough to take full advantage of the M80s, particularly if you move to a larger room in the future ? Nope... but going up one or two models won't make much difference either. I'm pretty sure the 235 has pre-outs so you are covered in the future for when the guys here talk you into needing 200-300 watts per channel.
Just to be really clear, other than the 4 ohm thing the M80s don't need any more power than the lower models, they can just handle more power and play louder. If anything they need a bit LESS power than the smaller Axioms.
6. Oh... well never mind about #5 then
