Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Athena speakers

To everyone who responded about my receiver issue, much thanks. Still watching prices, if things work out, I could wind up going with the Onkyo 806 still a toss up. Curious what everyone thinks about the Athena LS 300. $200 a pair. http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=ATLS300

You get what you pay for in my opinion. Athena, like Energy and Mirage, builds a good speaker that represents good value for those on a budget. However, when comparing their floorstanding speakers for example, they are not in the same class as say a M60 or M80. This would hold true when comparing their cheaper bookshelfs to the Axiom lineup. You would have to go to the Energy "Veritas" series of floorstanding towers to get neutrality comparable to the M60, and the Veritas are 3 to 4 times the cost of the M60.

Athenas would be much like the regular line of Energy speakers.

If your looking to set up a system on a budget have you thought of Insignia speakers from Best Buy. They get real good reviews and look pretty good too. I think I'm going to buy some for my daughter for Christmas. Granted I would love to get her some M3s but that's not going to happen.

I could second insignia. my son has a set of computer speakers that I absolutely love the sound of.

I was close to getting myself some for the bedroom but they were a tad to big for where I wanted to put them. They are something else for the price.

I don't think I could bring myself to own a floorstander with only two small speakers in it. I figure if you're going to sacrifice that much space, you might as well use its full height to move all the air you can. (otherwise, i'd just get some book shelves instead)

Athena speakers are the entry level product of the company Audio Products International (API), manufacturers of Energy and Mirage, but up until the Klipsch Group acquired API, these speakers where and probably still are, in my opinion, some of the finest loudspeakers available. Back in their day Energy’s Connoisseur series and Pro Series would compete with Axiom products head on. I don't believe Energy loudspeakers are considered “budget” products anymore than I would consider Axiom products budget.

And we are all on a budget to some degree.

Is this to say that the athenas for the price would be okay, even though not the best. By the way I bought the Onkyo 606, amazon had it for $325. I also picked up some cheap bookshelves. Polk audio T-15. They sound a lot better than the sonys did. Don't know how big of a deal it is, only because I have not seen any specs on the axiom speakers, nevertheless I see or at least I think I see How much sensitivity and freq response have a lot to do with the way a speaker sounds....... But if you take two different speakers with the same specs, and each have different designs, outside and inside, how much does this affect the sound quality

Every aspect of the speakers design would have an affect on how it sounds.

With this in mind then how does one choose what works best?