Hi Matt, and welcome to the forum.
I did a bit of searching and didn't find much that was sufficiently recent to be useful.
The general consensus from older posts though seemed to be that Klipsch and Axiom had somewhat different sounds. Axiom owners generally found Klipsch speakers a bit harsh and coloured, while Klipsch owners found Axiom speakers a bit dull and lacking in dynamic range. The complication though was that a lot of those comparisons seemed to be large Klipsch speakers against smaller Axiom speakers, where the dynamic range difference would naturally be expected, so that mostly leaves the harsh vs dull aspect.
Interesting notes:
1. 10 years ago Axiom speakers were considered "a bit bright" and Klipsch speakers were considered "really bright". Both statements are still hotly debated though.
2. What we call "brightness" (often a subtle peak in the 2-3 KHz region as opposed to "the BBC dip") seems to be more tolerable in an HT system than in a music system, since it arguably brings an increase in clarity of dialog as well.
Even the most passionate Klipsch owners felt that QS8's were awesome though, and a number of people had QS8s in an otherwise-all-Klipsch system.
Which Klipsch speakers do you have now ? That might help a bit... also there have been a few generations of Axioms starting with a "ti" suffix (or maybe even before that) and going up to v4 (current)- would be useful to know that as well, at least for the M80s and the EP500.
Depending on the Klipsch speakers you have and the generation of the Axioms you might end up best served by a mix-and-match solution, although that would make selling the speakers you don't use a bit harder.
Having more than one subwoofer is generally considered a Good Thing because it gives you both more output and more balanced bass across listening positions, and the EP500 is an interesting mate for most other subs because it has extremely flat frequency response at the expense of less peak output in the response bumps it doesn't have. I run an SVS PC+ 20-39 paired with an EP500, for example.
My first thought would be "keep the sub, keep the QS8s, and for mains and center that depends on the specifics of what Klipsch models and what Axiom generations you have".
Last edited by bridgman; 01/20/18 05:50 AM.
