Hello ottoinct,
My listening room is 17 x 13 x 10 ft. On certain vocals and some jazz, the M80tis are almost indistinguishable from the M22tis, except for the bass. The M80's bass is very precise, deep, and beautifully balanced with the midrange. By comparison, the M22ti sounds a bit thin (it's fine to about 40 Hz). With large orchestral material, I kept switching to the M80ti's because of the very full (but not boomy) wide-range sound. On some lighter music--a disc with chorus, tenor vocal (Jose Carreras, with quite a wobble, but tolerable), accompanied by Latin/Spanish acoustic folk instruments--I preferred the soundstage of the M22ti's. It has a wonderful sense of depth: Carreras is up front and the chorus spread out way behind him. (The CD is Philips Classics 420 955-2, and the work is "Misa Criolla" by Ariel Ramirez. Try cuts #8 and #10. Absolutely demo quality and a great speaker test.) There are also some deep Latin drums that test bass very well. On jazz, cymbals sound very real, with a delicious ring (old Dave Brubeck CD). Sometimes, the M80ti is a little bit more forward on some vocals; these comparisons aren't done blind, but I did have to look at the switch to see which speaker I was listening to on quite a lot of material. If the tests were blind, I'd likely use a phrase like "similiarly good, but speaker A (the M80) has deep, profound bass output"
These comments are based on listening comparisons without a subwoofer. (I threw my back out on the weekend and I can't easily get down behind the sub to switch connections; the sub runs in a separate home theater system.) However, I have used the M22tis in my home theater with the sub, listening to 5.1 and DVD-Audio. With some diddling of the sub level and crossover tweaking, the M22s integrated beautifully with the subwoofer.
I sit about 8 feet from the speakers, but even at the back of the room, the M22s sound very loud and clean (without the bass impact of the M80s, of course). You'll need plenty of power for the M22tis--they're much less sensitive than the M80s. With my peak-reading meters, the M22's sometimes drew between 40 and 60 watts per channel at quite loud levels (peaks of 90 to 94 dB SPL). The M80s, on the other hand, never seemed to peak over about 20 watts per channel in my room. I'm driving the stereo system with a separate power amp of 150 watts per channel.
Regards,
