Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater System is shipped as we speak (so to speak)

Does insulation inside the walls play a big role? I doubled the R-value in my home theater/den to R-30 and have always wondered if it would be beneficial or detrimental.

That room is going to be a challenge to make any speaker sound it's best. Square rooms have issues with standing waves (the speed of sound / 24' is 46 Hz). Plus all those hard surfaces are going to cause reflections.

A $1200 speaker plus $800 (probably don't even need to spend that much) in treatments will sound better than any $2000 speaker in that room.

Look at a rug for the floor between the speakers and your listening position. Then some diffusion for the first reflection points along the walls and perhaps ceiling. Also some bass traps tuned to the major modes of the room for the corners.

To keep it short, aside from Bob's negative comments how many others have you seen here? Of course on other forums you will see more, but you would think another unsatisfied owner would post here as well.

I would not worry about your decision until you actually hook them up and give them a chance.

As a side note, it seems a large majority of people come here wanting M80's or decide to go for the best once asking questions or being persuaded by members. However, everyones perception of bright/detailed is different and it may not be the sound signature that you're after. If that's the case then people should really be looking towards (in my opinion) M3's or M50's and potentially the M60. And yes I've heard them all, some at Axiom and some in my house.

I love my M60's and have no desire to get M80's. When I upgraded my old M60's the upgrade was for High Gloss. I could have easily went for the M80's but choose not to. I also had a beautiful set of Vassallo M3's that I loved and their sound was very different but just as enjoyable...wish I kept them for another room, instead I replaced them with rear QS8's.

I would LOVE to audition some M80's, but where? And where could I put them up against some fairly competetive speakers (price wise) that are a different approach? I guess this is a unfair expectation really, in this realm of high end audio there just don't seem to be very many venue's in which you can compare similar brands head to head. Which is a shame because it get's expensive and truely time consuming ordering in equipment, testing it out, then sending it back to test something else out that you're curious about. I guess what I'm after is the impossibe.

Too bad the EP800 wasn't availible earlier, I would already own the M80's and probably be in love with them by now, blowing Bob's opinion off as unsubstantiated. But as it is, I'm just afraid I'll end up the next 'Bob'! =(

Insulation inside the walls will have next to no affect on the sound inside the room. It will turn some of the sound energy which would have normally escaped to the next room or outside into heat.

The surfaces in the room have the biggest influence over the mids to highs, and the dimensions of the room over the bass.

People say "sound absorption" material. But in most cases one doesn't want to absorb (that is capture and turn to heat) the mids and highs. What should be done is to treat the first reflection points with diffusers which prevent the reflections from reaching the ear only a split second after the direct radiation from the speakers (which causes a smearing in the sound), but doesn't remove the sound energy from the room.

Low frequency energy doesn't really reflect though, it more builds up in a room making it sound boomy. So in this case one does want to capture that excess. This is best done in the corners or at least where the floors or ceiling meet walls, this is where the greatest pressure build-ups can be tamed.

After all this is handled it is then much easier to clean up the rest with an EQ.

Bob's opinion was the first truely negative response I've read here. That is a good thing I suppose, but then again we're talking about an 'Axiom' forum. Not everyone here has Axiom mains though, is this because they couldn't afford the M60's or M80's? Or was it because they found something they like better for the same or perhaps a little highter price?

The wall treatments are sort of an issue... (this is all in planning, it's not operational yet, but this is the plan) you see our living room will double as our sales room. We are photographers, and we will be bringing our customers in to see their photo's on our 65' television so that they can order their pictures. We will be combining music with the slide show to enhance the emotional response upon viewing their pictures (very important and a huge sales advantange). So we have very large wall portraits all over the room to show our customers how impressive a large wall portrait is. Therefore there is no room for wall treatments (hence the question on whether or not wall portraits could count? we have both gallery wraps as well as framed pictures with glass).

We are planning on an area rug somewhere around 12 x 16 or so to go in the middle of the room around with two couches and a love seat will sit. So what I'm wondering is will the M80's fill this room with warm, emotionally responsive music? Or will they fill the room with shrill and sharp treble that will make the experience more uncomfortable than accomodating? You see I have more than just personal taste to worry about here. I also have my customers to worry about. Of course that could be an entirely impossible journey (to find a speaker that EVERYONE would enjoy). So I guess what I'm wondering is do MOST people find the M80's to be enjoyable?

On this forum that answer is definately a yes. I don't suppose there is really any way to know the whole truth though unless I knew what the return percentage is over at Axiom. A number I'm sure they aren't ready to discuss unless it is indeed rediculously low.

Micah, I'd never describe my M80s (or any Axioms I've heard, including M80s in a giant cavern of a room with a marble floor and a severe lack of furniture and room treatments) as being shrill or sharp. How loud are you planning to play this stuff for your clients? If you're under 80 dB, you should be just fine. If you're going to blast them out of their seats, well, you've got more problems than just a live room!

On the positive side of Bob's research, in the end he did discuss (as did everyone attending the Song Towers vs M80's showdown) that the M80's had great bottom end. Of coarse they used 'boomy' to discribe the M80's compared to a 'tighter, more subdued' bottom end for the Song Towers. What this really tells me though is that the Song Towers don't reach as deep, or play as loud of bass more than anything. And that is a good thing in my opinion (concerning the performance of the M80).

I do likey the bass!

How far is Richmond from Indy? There are folks in Indy willing to audition.

Well, that was a painful thread to read. I don't know if I would reach the same conclusion as the testers did, but clearly the M80s are not the speaker for Bob.