Originally Posted By: CV
Originally Posted By: Andrew
We also need to have far more control over the acoustic response of both sections of the speaker, something impossible with conventional crossover networks on their own. 4-channel DSP to the rescue!


Andrew, thanks for taking the time to shed a little light on the design of the new speaker. As for the code in the DSP, do you think this is something that could be refined over time? If so, is Axiom including a way to do something along the lines of firmware updates? It seems like software is becoming a major part of new developments in Axiom's designs. At one point there was talk of the USB port on the backs of the DSP-based subs being a potential way to update the DSP's code, but I'm not sure it was ever utilized for that. Maybe they had Mojo try an update that way once? Or did I dream that? In any case, now it seems to simply be there to plug in a USB light. For a lot of consumers, it would probably be nice to know that performance would continue to be improved over time with simple software updates.

Ideally, it would be nice to see Axiom release a pre-pro of their own, as they planned to do back when the original A1400s were coming out. I can certainly understand why it never happened. People want the world in features these days. I think a lot of the design of the pre-pro would need to be outsourced, and probably production of it as well, but it seems like it would be great to have one central unit doing all of the DSP stuff necessary for these new speakers as well as having the potential to import extra profiles for whatever other Axiom speakers are in the system. A processor that's fully aware of the performance characteristics of every speaker that's connected to it. I know, I ramble a bit.

Besides my unwelcome opinions on how you can cater to me, I do want to say that I like the grills on the new speaker, and it's nice to see some outriggers after people have so often requested them. Will the outriggers be made available for the other floorstanders?


The outriggers will be available as an option for the M80. Depending on demand we will look at a version for the M60/M50. Before we can do this we need to establish final pricing which is in the works.

The DSPs can be factory updated if the programming changes in the future. Once the 2-channel version is released it could be purchased for an M60, for instance, and if you wanted to upgrade to M80s at a later date the DSP can be changed to work with the new speakers. I investigated a number of field programmable techniques and all of them were buggy to some extent and added significant cost to the DSP board that we would have to pass on to you. We also prefer to actually measure the unit after reprogramming to make sure the update was successful.

The topic of a pre/pro is something that has been discussed internally a number of times and quickly dismissed. Why? Without using a core platform from one of the major electronics manufacturers we would always be one or two steps behind the times. For a small company to design a custom pre-pro, along with all the licensing requirements, it either impossible or the end product is years late to the game, obsolete out of the box and VERY expensive. I have witnessed this on a number of occasions. If we did use a core platform there is still the matter of integrating custom audio DSP code into the system and development tools for this purpose are very limited and very costly. At that point you would end up with a rebadged model from someone else which we would have to charge much more money for.