Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Ready to buy...need help

Your room size is large enough to push you to floorstanding speakers if you want a good "all round" system. With your specific musical preferences you could probably get away with M22s since there aren't any "loud, bass heavy" genres on your list but overall I think you would be happier with floorstanding speakers. If the room arrangement is going to have the listening position fairly far away from the main speakers then definitely go with floorstanders.

How "live" is the room, ie mostly bare walls & bare floor or lots of rugs and absorbent furniture ?

If you are looking for a "mostly music" system you might want to think about getting conventional bookshelf speakers for the surrounds rather than the QSx speakers. I have used both M2s and QS8s with my M60s and *slightly* preferred the M2s for music. The QS8s are far superior for HT though, and are the obvious choice for a dual-purpose system.

I bought my speakers & system primarily for music but was quite blown away the first time I played a DVD through a good sound system -- most of my friends had amazing TVs but crappy sound -- so my usage went from 90% music to 50/50 very quickly.

Have you heard a really good HT system before or is there a chance you might have the same experience ? The reason I'm asking is that you might want to spend relatively more on the sub if you think you are likely to do more HT listening in the future.

Some people prefer listening to music in stereo without a sub (I'm one of those -- the M60s have all the bass I need) while others much prefer to have the sub handling the lowest notes. Don't know what drives that difference.

Anyways, 80s are probably more than you need for that room size unless you're looking to play REALLY loud; I think it comes down to 50s or 60s. The 60s are a bit more forward (and, strictly speaking, a bit more accurate) while the 50s are a bit more forgiving of less-than-perfect recordings and have a slightly more "relaxed" sound.

My thought would be M50s or M60s for the front, M2s for the surrounds, probably VP150 center (I think your room is big enough that the VP150 would be a bit better) and not sure about the sub...