Hi mxracer23 and welcome to your new obsession!
I have the M22tis as well and I love them.
Here you can find a thread on this board that Peter posted (and my own impressions of the M22tis).
I am sure others will say this as well, but the best thing you can do for yourself in figuring out what you want is to audition them in your own home. This can get expensive if you don't have a few grand sitting around not being used and you don't mind paying shipping or restocking fees. The next best would be to find someone who has the speakers you are eyeing and seeing if you can bring some material you know well to listen to on their setup. You can ask about auditions
here. And of course, you can do what you have been doing and listen to speakers in various stores. But, always remember that those areas and equipment are configured to make the speakers sound as good as possible and are not real world conditions. This means they may have a whole lotta eq in the back hidden so you can't see it, that you can't afford!
I read a LOT of reviews and opinions about the M22s on avsforum, hometheaterforum, thespot, audioreview, as well as the reviews linked to by Axiom themselves. None of them disliked the speakers. I think I found maybe 2 that had truly negative things to say, as opposed to “I just prefer a different sound” or “Towers are better” or “My [insert $20000 speakers here] sound better. The few really negative reviews/remarks seemed somehow personally angry instead of simply pointing out faults.
That said, you most likely will want to get a subwoofer. Even if you are not a ‘basehead’ (which I am not either) the bottom is missing below 60hz. These are wonderfully neutral speakers, but still only bookshelves.
I have had mine since the beginning of February and I am STILL surprised at times by just how wonderful they sound. My music listening has increased a lot. The first thing I do now when I get home is turn on my stereo and listen to some music. The difference from what I had before was nearly night and day.
My more than 2 cents!
jr
