My thanks to Nick once again for allowing me to listen to his setup. He did a great job of explaining what he knew about the speakers and his experience with them. Also letting me know it's ultimately up to me which brand of speakers sound best to me, and not to feel forced to by Axioms.

The system I currently have is a $400 Sony 5.1 HTIB. So basically any speakers of the magnitude I'm looking into will blow it away.

The room I listened to them in was about 8 x 15. Of course Nick would know the exact dimensions. The room my speakers will be going into is 12 x 23 x 7 so sound wise not sure if that would make much of a difference. We started off the audition by listening to some music I had brought with me. The cd contained a variety of music ranging from Rock, Pop, Instrumental, Classical and Gospel. I really wasn't sure what music to audition a system with. One track that stood out to me was 'Breaking Benjamin - Diary of Jane'. It's a pretty heavy song with lots of heavy guitar and the speakers really sounded clear and distinct, even at very high levels! The music tracks I had brought were burned from my music on iTunes so the recordings may not have been top notch. Nick explained that more often than not it's not the speakers that sound bad, but the recording of the song.

All in all I was very impressed by the clarity and pleasant sound from the speakers. The sound wasn't overbearing or bright that would make my head or ears ache.

Next we moved onto movies. 80% of the speakers use will be for movies so I was anxious to hear how they sounded with a lot of action taking place.

Some of the dvd's I brought with me were Gladiator, Drumline and Master and Commander. The most impressive clip to me was the opening scene from Master and Commander. At the beginning there are a lot of creaks, thumps, water hitting the boat, sails flapping, sailor talking and yelling etc... it almost felt like I was in the ship. I was very impressed by that scene and how well the speakers handled it. After a few minutes the battle heated up with cannon balls flying by, explosions and wood splintering. The speakers performance was outstanding, especially the M60's and VP150. The sub wasn't on loud so most if not all the sound was from the 5 speakers. I'm sure with an EP500 kicked in that experience would be even more jaw dropping.

I listened to the ending scene in Drumline were the two drum lines are competing. This was mostly for listening to the M60's. The crack of the toms, snares, and bass drums was very impressive. Although the recording on this dvd was not that good. I think we had it up to -5db or so and it still wasn't that loud. Nick said -18db is usually the highest he'll ever need to go.

My last scene was the opening from Gladiator and the big battle between the Romans and the Barbarians. It sounded good, but I wasn't as impressed with this one as with the Master and Commendar scene. I think the performance of the QS8's in this scene wasn't up to what I was expecting. I cover this in my next paragraph.

My overall impressions are that the M60's are definitely an awesome pair of speakers. I listened to some Klipsch RF-82 and RF-63 speakers and the M60's sound better IMHO. More immersive and enveloping. The VP150 was very impressive as well. Even with all the action taking place in the opening scene you could still hear the dialogue very clearly and distinctly. I think my only question is about the QS8's. I've heard these are awesome speakers, however I didn't come away thinking that they were amazing. As I said earlier in the opening scene it felt like I was in the ship that I'm sure was some of the work of the QS8's which was impressive, but when it came to things flying by or moving from the front to back, I wasn't amazed. Perhaps it might've been the content, I wasn't focusing on them enough, or my expectations were way to high. I was expecting when something flew by that it would feel like it just whizzed by my ear and I'd have to dodge out of the way. I'd appreciate your thoughts.

Nicks system is awesome though, and when he gets the room completely finished it will be even more amazing. I will be going with Axiom though, I really liked the sound and the aesthetic looks of them.

Thanks for reading, I'm not that great at writing reviews.