Regarding Skiing Ninja and Dannie Richie's finding... They are ON THE MONEY on two points...

I'm an AV integrator/installer and have been using the axiom products on a few installs throughout the last 3 years. I even have sold/installed an A1400-8 (amazing amp) so I can honestly say I'm a fan of Axiom...

But there is a caveat, that being the M80 and VP150. Both have serious design flaws as outlined by Dannie Ritchie. I was not aware of the issues either of these speakers exhibit until I had a long weekend and all my test gear with me at my uncle's house.

He has the flagship M80 system powered initially with a Denon AVR4308. From day one I noticed something not right with the M80s and VP150. The EP500 was fabulous and so are the QS8s... I also liked the M60…

I attributed the sonic issues to the poor amp driving them. This is when next we purchased an A1400-8 but the sonic issues were still prevalent...

I tried to EQ the speakers to resolve the problems to no avail...

Well I left my uncle with a sub-par performing system until just this month when I had time to come over to the Island were he lives on the west coast. I brought with me various test equipment to get to the bottom of the issue...

What I found is perfectly summed up in this statement from the Skiing Ninja article...

"There is also cancellation from an out of phase issue between the woofers and mids in the 650Hz to 1,800Hz range. There is also a slight cancellation in the 2,500Hz to 3,500Hz range."

This is exactly what I perceived from day one with my wetwear (brain and ears)

With this knowledge in hand I then contacted some reputable friends in the AV industry. By AV industry I don't mean your local installer types but famous AV engineers I've come to know from my work in the media industry. One worked/contracted to THX and the other is the "Master of Time". I won't use names here but all I can tell you is they come from a pool of perhaps 50 people globally that really understand sound from both an engineering standpoint as well as applied... I also indirectly spoke with Vance Dickinson…

Essentially just with a glance at the business end of the speaker resulted in a, “that’s a very poor design decision”. Not to mention when I showed them the internals… The cabinet bracing is subpar as is the totally brutally low end components used in the crossover. I also noticed glue spills all over the place with next o no poly… Even the internal bracing was cut with a saw blade set to deep resulting in jagged splinters all over the edge of the bracing…

Also the article shows WHY the M80s have problems with the Emotiva XPA-2…

“The one place that you don't want to see low impedance is in the low frequency range where it will cause a high current demand on the source. Unfortunately this is exactly where the impedance is lowest in the M80Ti. It drops to 2.4 ohms between 10Hz and 20Hz. At the tuning frequency of the port it drops to 3 ohms. I can't recommend using this speaker with any typical home theater receiver though I am sure many do.”

It’s this crazy drop in impedance at low frequencies that pops the overload on the XPA-2 due to the bottom basement crossover and the horrible design decisions...

In all honesty I cannot suggest the M80 or VP150 to anyone personally but I have high praise for the M22s, the EP500 and QS8s as well as limited listening to the M60s



Last edited by SolidState; 08/12/09 11:07 PM.