Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater VP150 or two M3s'

I currently have a VP150 also and older VP100 acutaully two of those. I am wondering has anyone had the VP15- and switched it out for two M3s'. And if they did how was it set up. Do you set them up side by side or one on top of the tv and one under it. I have Mt80's for fronts.
I just don't want to order a couple Mt3's and find they are no different than the VP150.
I also have 4 M2's. I only have a 32" tv now .

Also is there a reason for this. I know my VP150 is sheilded and it is under my tv now, but if I put it on top of the TV it discolors the tv.

I would swap in a set of M2's and see if the sound stage is different, I would expect a huge difference in sound from the M3's to M2's as centers. I know Huztal is going to mount a some M3's one above and one below his screen and has them side by temporarily and he loves the sound. I am sure he will be along shortly to offer more.

I like my dual M3s,

I can't compare to the VP150, I have never heard it. The reason I got 2 M3s over 2 M2s is because if I want to upgrade again in the future, the M3s can easily be resourced to other areas in the house, the M2s cannot hold their own as good as the M3s without a sub. I also plan on building a studio, in which I want to test both the M22s and the M3s in the studio environment, I suspect I will love the M22s as studio monitors.

With that said, the frequency response of the M3 is closer to that of the M22 than the M2 is to the M22, which is another reason to grab the M3.

In all honesty, you won't notice a big sonic difference from the M3 to your M80 mains at all. I don't notice anything with my M22 mains, it is an even soundstage throughout, I haven't done any SACD or DVD-A playing yet tho, so I can't comment on that front.

Your vocals will have a more "full" sound because of the 6.5" woofers, much warmer than the 5.25" woofers. My M22s are crisp and clean (which is what I like for 2 channel and for movies), but the vocals on the M3s for movies are still very crisp, but I suspect produce a warmer feeling than the VP series or M2s would.

And it almost goes without saying, that an M3 or pair of M3s is an ideal match for those with M50 mains.

...or even M40s!

Hutz, I don't know that that's the case. Although I've never heard M2s (especially not in comparison to M3s or M22s), from what I've read, the M2s are more tonally similar to the M22s than the M3s are.

I once overlaid the Soundstagemagazine FR graphs for M2, M3, M22 and M40 into a single chart. The results were very interesting.

M2 is much closer to M22 than M3 is, down to 100 Hz. Below 100 Hz, the M2 drops off sharply while the M22 and M3 both have relatively more output, but the shape of their curves below 100 Hz is very different.

I think the issue is that the M22 and M3 sound relatively closer than the M2 because they both have "decent amounts of bass", if you were to repeat the same test with the speakers set to "small" and a subwoofer crossed at 100 Hz I think you would find that the M2 was now closer to M22 than the M3 was.

If you cross over at the more common 80 Hz it's kinda hard to say which would sound closer

Having said all that, Hutzal's original point was that the M3 was more generally useful in the future, and that is absolutely correct. The timbre difference between M2 and M3 above 80 Hz is going to be fairly small, particularly if sidewall reflections are reasonably well controlled (since the biggest difference AFAIK is the off-axis response dip of the 6.5" driver around the "few KHz" range.

M2s, M22s and M3s are probably equally likely to cause colour distortion when placed near a CRT. I don't know if the 6.5" M3 woofer has a bigger magnet than the 5.5" M2/22 woofer, guess we could ask Axiom that.

I tried placing the M3s on my 27" CRT, they cause color distortion, when placed upsidown it was reduced quite a bit, enough that it could work when placed upsidown.

Thanks for clarifying my statements Bridgman (seems I had a hard time clarifying myself ), interesting about the frequency response charts. Thanks for your input.

Hopefully bugbitten will post in here, he has parallel M3 centres with M80 mains and loves them just as much as I do.

>>Thanks for clarifying my statements Bridgman (seems I had a hard time clarifying myself ),

I had to edit my *own* post twice and it still didn't seem all that clear to me. This stuff is just darned hard to communicate

EDIT -- I just noticed that axiom_man's original post talked about colour distortion from the VP150, not from the bookshelf speakers. My mistake. I don't have an answer for that question other than to mention that I found even an inch or two made a huge difference in the amount of visible distortion so if you haven't tried a small lift that might be all you need.

ahh yes , bugbitten
hopefully he does as that's the setup I have for my mains