Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo W22 for kitchen ?

Thanks guys for your advice..so the W3 with it's single 6.5 inch driver has more bass than the dual 5.25 driver of the W22 ? that's a good thing if that's the case because like you said, the W3 is smaller and size does matter in the kitchen !, just look at my knives for instance

Seriously, I just need some clean sound with decent bass output, not subwoofer bass output, but not shelf radio output, which is what my wife said "why can't we just keep the radio we have now ? " Because it distorts like hell when I play my Supper Club Flacs on it !! that's why !!! anymore questions ??..I did not think so.

Yes, you are correct, imaging is not prime and no I do not do critical listening in the kitchen, I do it in EVERY ROOM. Just kidding, but good sound is what I am after.
Interesting about the "new" soon to come out thinner W V2s !. Anyone has a time frame on that one ? As this is a kitchen, it would be good to have speakers on the ceramic wall between the counter and upper cabinets that does not protrude to much, if they made 3.5 inch into 1.5inch, I'm going with that for sure.. just a question of when ? According to my current project schedule, I would be ordering at the end of July.

I'm going build a mock up in carboard of the current W3s to see what it would look like.

Stay tuned for that dual EP600 powered self battering chicken project

Based on the specs, the W22 will sound marginally louder. Since the W22 has two smaller drivers, I would expect it to sound more dynamic as it is easier to move a smaller driver than a larger one with same amount of power. In terms of frequency response, they are both rated the same. The W22's cross-over is a little higher. The higher the crossover frequency, the less audible the crossover is, since it is out of the range where human hearing is most sensitive.

Stephane, there's doesn't appear to be any good reason for the M3 to have an actual bass advantage over the M22. The real capabilities appear to be nearly identical, but the M3 has a bit of a hump in the 100-150Hz area which gives an impression of more bass, even much farther down, by making the second harmonic of those lower frequencies louder.

Axiom T series 4th pic down. I wonder if Axiom would send you the wall insert before the speakers are released so as to not delay the rest of the project.

>> but the M3 has a bit of a hump in the 100-150Hz area which gives an impression of more bass

Yep. The M3 sounds much fuller than you would expect given its size and driver complement. The M3 (and presumably the W3) is a nice design -- the bass bump is big enough to make the speaker sound much larger than it is, but not enough to distract from the sound.

But they don't sound like the mids are overemphasized right ?

In any case, it seems that the W3s are the better choice. I'm not going to need the extra loudness capabilities of the W22 and the smaller size of the W3 is more desirable.

Or maybe the T- Series if they come out in the reasonably close future.. like within the next 4 to 6 months would be good for me.

I am planning on powering them with a 50W per channel Sonos zoneplayer, anyone see any issues with that ? I would think 50W should be plenty for this application ?

The M3 is an excellent speaker and will no doubt play loud enough for you in that room size. Any Axiom speaker really is quite flat in their response, like others have noted, the M3 has a slight bump in the lower range provide a deeper response. The mids sound excellent and still contain the "Axiom" sound due to the same tweeter that is used in the M22.

The main difference is that you will get a warmer sound from the M3 than a "brutally honest" sound from the M22. IMHO this is perfect for a kitchen, because really, if you want to listen to MP3s, or less than stellar quality recordings in your kitchen, the W3 will sound better than the W22.

Exactly. When I did a direct comparison of M2, M3 and M60 I was surprised how small the difference was across most of the frequency range. What I like about the M3 as a standalone speaker is that it sounds full but you don't really hear the bass bump. My Paradigm Atoms, on the other hand, have a much greater bass bump to the point where it noticeably changes the sound of instruments in the upper bass range.

Thanks guys, that's exactly what I was hoping to hear.

Now if I can just get a time frame on the new in wall T series M3 that would seal the deal as it where. Also, I will want to get a pair of the new exterior model as well.

P.S. Allmost all of my digital music is on lossless format like FLAC or APE. I have very very little MP3s. It might be hard to tell the difference between a 320bps mp3 and a Flac, but the fact is there is a difference none the less. I'll go with the non compressed format and just get more disk space.