>>John, would you mind running up and down the stairs a few times more just for the fun of it?
Once more and that's it. This speaker testing is hard work, I don't know how Alan manages it
>>One question though. How much more forward sounding are the m60's compared to the m3's? Is it subtle or significant?
That was the big surprise. To my ears there was only the tiniest of differences, maybe like putting the speaker grills on or something. I was almost disappointed
The difference was comparable to turning the vocal track down literally 1 or 2 dB, barely enough to notice. I would have had a VERY hard time time if I was listening to music where I couldn't rely on bass response differences.
Note that I had the speakers along the long wall of a room so the off-axis response wasn't a big factor (that's where Alan says the difference comes from). In a long skinny room I imagine there would have been a bit more difference.
There is much more of a difference in bass response, of course, and that is quite noticeable with some music. The nice thing is that the M3 handles the low frequency instruments well enough that you don't feel like you are missing anything.
After playing a few more tracks the only intelligent thing I could say was that the M3s sounded a little bit "smaller" than the M60s but that the difference was much less than I expected.
The M3s sounded best with their fronts ~2 feet away from the back wall while the M60 fronts needed to be at least another foot into the room to avoid sounding boomy.
I didn't do any SPL measurement but the M3s seemed to be closer to M2s in their ability to fill a large room with loud music, while with the M60s I never felt I had reached their limits even when playing quite loudly.
Bottom line -- even after direct A/B testing with M60s I could be very happy with M3s as my primary music listening system. Not at all what I expected. For now the M60s will stay upstairs and M2s will become HT mains (with a big sub).
Thanks to everyone for the questions and ideas !
