Hi Storm. I'll add my voice to those suggesting a drive to Dwight to listen to Axiom's full line.
Unlike greater than 90% of dealers, they have a proper setup for direct a/b comparisons of speakers that are properly positioned in a room and level matched.
As for opinions, yes, toss out those at the extreme ends. The best review I ever saw was from someone who owned a pair of Paradigm Signature 8's. Were the M80s as good as the S8? No. But, the had the same family of sound: neutral, open ...
for the money spent he was thrilled to get a sound close to his S8 and thought they were a very good value for the money. Needless to say, he kept them.
The post is somewhere in the Axiom gallery. I don't know if you can find it using search though.
Edit: I tried searching the Gallery section, but kept getting a database error. I did a quick browse but could not find the original post.
On the upside, I did find that picture of Lampshade's wife holding the pink M3's.
