They are replacing a pair of Polk Reference Series Monitor 10Bs circa 1989-92? Interesting so far the Polk sounds better, more open and less boxy, but I've had to balance the volume (turn volume way up for the M80) because the Polk is only 6 ohms. I've been very happy with the Polk 10Bs given a number of nameless upgrades to connectivity however I've noticed that Polk speakers in general haven't seemed to get great reviews, perhaps a $400 speaker 20 years ago might sound better than a $600 speaker now? I thought that the march of technology would demonstrate the superiority of the latter. Connection issues exist, more about that later but it makes sense to me now why AL recommends more watts for the 4 ohm M80s, the XPA2 was an insane amount of power for the Polks but does not seem excessive for the M80.
At the time of audition at Jason's (myrison) I thought the epic 80/600 setup or even the M80s/VP150/Qs8s no sub beat the Polks for musicality (although to me the bottom line is it's all about HT folks) but of course that was not a side by side comparison.
This is of course is a bizzare situation/speaker setup so any true audition/comparison awaits the arrival of the second speaker.
