Originally Posted By brendo
Dear Digital, Matt and spbob have good insight as to your question. But don't just think that the speakers mean all, even if you went with the 60s. Your amp. is most important, some say there's no difference in competent amps. but a decent external with more power eg.400 plus watt will bring out more life than ever on Axioms they really love power!!!


There is an ounce of truth to what is being said here but I don't think it really paints the true picture. The speakers are 4ohm speakers, and as such do require quite a bit of current to work properly.

I have owned a set of the M80 (before I upgraded them to the LFR's). I also own a few receivers and a power amp. Plugging the M80 into each of the different units got different results for the most part. WHY. Well, to put it rather blunt, most manufactures are very creative in writing their specs to the point of almost lying about it.

My favourite receiver that I have ever owned (and still do) is the Nakamichi AV1. This was a rather expensive unit and weighs a lot. It has a real A/B class amp inside with a massive toroidal transformer. The specs call it a 90watt amp, but that is rated at full frequency and is probably conservative in that number. The specs rate it at 8ohms but I have heard from many that it's stable down to 2ohms. When I hooked up the M80's it sang.

I replaced that amp back around 2005 with a Yamaha that was speced as a high current unit when everyone else just put out watt's and didn't tell you if that was just a play on putting out a hight voltage to get the wattage number up. This unit was 110w @ 8ohm and said is supports 6ohm but didn't say much beyond that. The M80's did work on it but is lost a bit of the WOW factor in playing but still very listenable.

When I moved into my current house I bought a Pioneer Elite SC1527 that is supposed to be a high current amp that supports 4 ohm speakers. They simply lied. Its a class D3 amp rated at 130w@8ohm (1kHz) its the last bit that is the kicker to it. So it will give you 130w of power when playing a note at 1kHz, but when you cross reference that with any speaker, it's the frequency that has the speaker is probably up around the 10-15+ohm range to power the speaker. So the number you are getting is how many watts the amp can produce when the speaker is running at it's most optimum lest power hungry mode. But what happens when you try and play bass? That is where the average 8ohm speaker drops down to 5-6ohm and needs all the current it can get. And the amp falls far short of real power to drive 8ohm speakers let alone 4ohm speakers that drop down around the 3.2ohm level at <450hz.

So where brendo was saying that you need to have a large amp, it is partially true in that an average receiver that uses these creative specs to boost up numbers to be large when really they suck will not have the current to power these speakers.

I have an Anthem MCA5ii that is rated at 350w@4ohm full frequency and has more than enough to power the LFR1100 that is sort of like the M100 speakers with an extra set on the back. But I'd hazard to guess that even a 150w@4ohm full range amp world work just as well depending if you are wanting to run the speakers at reference levels that I find to be simply too loud to ever want to listen.


Anthem: AVM60, Fosi DAC-Q5
Axiom: ADA1500, LFR1100 Actiive, QS8, EP500, M3, M3comp, M5