Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Axiom m60 vs. b&w 683

What a coincidence! Just last week I was at some fancy audio/visual store in manhattan (on 58th street between lex and 3rd ave -- though I can't remember the name of the place for the life of me). They had a number of stunningly beautiful demo rooms, including one room that featured the flagship speakers from Wilson Audio(an MSRP of about $135,000) and another featuring a bizarre speaker from B&W called the Notilus. They seemed to specialize in a very select few speaker companies, Wilson, B&W and another company called Linn. I was fortunate enough to be given a quick demo of many of the different speaker lines in these companies and one of them was the B&W 600 series, I was especially interested in these because they were about in the same price class as my epic 60/500 series. The 600's are a beautifully designed speaker, and in the 5 minute demo they gave me of them, they performed very nicely -- a very warm soothing signature, but it doesn't hurt that the rooms were acoustically treated and the speakers were being powered with, by the looks of it, some extremely high end seperates. I don't imagine you could go wrong either way between the 600's or the m60's.

If I may quickly pay a compliment to the M60's, I spent that day listening to some of the best equipment in the industry, in rooms treated by experts, and with interconnects that cost more than my whole system(ONE of the speaker wires connected to the Wilson Alexandria cost $4500!!) and when I got home, my m60's sounded not even slightly worse than it did the day before. Don't get me wrong, my system cant hold a candle to those sonically, and the M60's are just a tad bright for my taste, but they perform much better than the price difference would indicate, and I don't imagine the 600's specifically would be an upgrade over them(WAF maybe, not sonically though). From there, the choice is yours.

B&W Nautilus

How were the Linns?

Linn seemed to have a thin line of speakers but what was there was pretty wonderful. There speakers and electronics seemed a little more real world than the Wilson's did. I have to say I was rather dissapointed with the Wilsons, although I listened to them for less than 2 or 3 minutes. They were massive, ugly boxes that cost more than most mercedes' do and didn't sound as good as their price. For me the show stealer was the B&W diamonds(i think thats what they're called). They played some nice jazzy songs, and I have to say that some of the trumpet lines just melt into your ears.

If I may offer one piece of advice to the topic creator, the only thing I ever regret in my system is the AV reciever, a yammie v2600. I can't say with confidence that I will never buy another do-it-all AV reciever again, unless its only for processing. Do yourself a favor and get a rotel or nad.

Hey, thanks for the response.

On the advice...I meant to say I CAN say with confidence I will never buy another All-in-one reciever. The upconversion and the DSP's have proven absolutely useless. Unless you're going with a higher end Denon that has those fancy silicon optix processors then go the seperates route instead, with companies like Emotiva and Rotel, there aren't anymore excuses not to.

Pair up the M60's with dual ep500's and the Qs8's surrounds, and add that to a rotel or a nad and you can feel confident that there aren't ANY speaker packages in this price class that can top your system in any significant way.

A little side note on the dual subs; ever since adding the second ep500, i've been astounded by how well bass is now integrated into the room... one was good, but at this point I feel like dual subs is almost essential. I could never go back. If you can't get dual ep500's then try dual 350's or dual Hsu's. I can't begin to describe the immediate and dramatic difference it has made on LFE loaded movies.

I was referring specifically to the sweet spot when I made those comments. Its tricky to put into words the difference dual subs has made...I don't want to say it has more impact now because a single ep500 doesn't lack impact, but whatever the ep500 was doing before is now twice as good and twice as smooth.

As for the amps, I got my lpa-1 just yesterday and it's absolutely blown me away. The things that have improved most are the things I never even considered, such as surround effects, which sound clearer and cleaner than they ever have. Although Dialog sounds bright, it doesn't ever get quite as irritating as it did previously but I'm not expecting that to be completely fixed until my new tweeters get here. Overall, I didn't anticipate this much of a difference, while certaintly not night and day, it is atleast 15-20% better than before. Now all I need is acoustical treatment.

Dual subs sound better at your sweet spot probably because that's where there is a dip in your response. And two subs have smoothened that dip out.

As for the improvement in surround "understandability", do you think that may have something to do with an improvement in your bass as opposed to the LPA-1?

I've had the dual subs running for over a month now, the lpa-1 was only hooked up yesterday, so I can say with certainty that the lpa-1 was the result of the improvements. I'm just amazed by the results i've gotten from the lpa-1 and have been listening to music and watching movies non stop since I hooked it up. That 15% was exactly what I feel was missing. Not to flog the yammie too much, as im sure that something is damaged in it, but there just is no comparison -- my system never sounded this good.