Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Deep Dive M5

This thread will be all about my purchase, setup and tweaking to the enth of some new M5hps in Rosewood with high gloss finish. These replaced some small bookshelves in my 2ch listening room setup that lacked the grunt to stir up the grin factory once I spun the room to fire with the long axis in the speaker setup thread.

I havent owned the M5s long enough to comment on their strengths and weaknesses yet properly, but I can say I like them and they are here to stay. They arrived sturdily boxed and in great shape. No issues with shipping in my area. Live in PEI? The FedEx depot here seems civil here. Good stuff. Order up!

Initial impressions- The finish is pretty good. Not stellar. The driver cnc routing is 1/32 larger than the woofer, I can see bare MDF barely up close. Mid and tweeter are snug. There is masking tape to be seen looking into the port on the rear of the front baffle. The lacquer finish orange peeled when curing. Of course, you can’t see any of these issues from the listening chair (and they dont affect sound quality) but out of the bag on the kitchen table I thought hmmmm.....

Upon initial setup I was less than impressed with them atop their shipping boxes. Too high! Duh. Definite bass exageration and treble shading. Typical for a vertical TMW config. All good. Using these as raised surrounds is a good idea if you want full range punchiness. With the woofer at eye level the tactile presence was undeniable!

I dropped them down onto a couple of bulk wire boxes from installs of approx 14 inches. A little too low but the balance swung to favour more treble. Aha! Height tweaking possibility to flavour balance later...

I grabbed some cinder blocks from the yard at work and unlocked the Axiom black bag hack. Listening happily now at 16” AFF for now. Going to build some stands later.

They sounded pretty grainy for the first few hours. Not sure if it was my imagination. I mess with different speakers all the time with installs. Dont think so. Not atypical either.... Out of the box speakers are like ball gloves. They work, but not quite double play material yet. Pretty normal I think (based on the setup of about a dozen systems from JBL, Tannoy, Mordaunt Short, ELAC, DefTech, Proficient, PSB, KEF, Yamaha, Yorkville, Leema, RSL, Polk, and some big Ole DIY towers and now Axiom.)

Anyhow, more to follow once I start dialing them in.