Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners M22 questions Axiom or not? Help!!!

OK, white M22s and garage system.



Make car wash music so I can wash da car

Very nice. Me and white, we don't get along so well...

Wow, white actually looks pretty sharp! me like-ee.

I like your gear cool setup, love the old amps/receivers and the needle gauges!
__________________________________________________________________MY REVIEW PART I_

M22’s arrived yesterday but could not pick them up until today.

First impressions:

The visual:

Smaller than I thought they would be. The white maple with black grill looks nice.
However, on the edges you can see a little white glue here and there. So, the vinyl is not perfect but acceptable more or less.
What sort of upset me is that on bottom woofer on one speaker and on top woofer on the second speaker you can see white glue.
Not a good look that’s for sure at least I hope it is glue and not a tear.

Setup:

Hooked up M22’s with gold plated banana plugs and 12awg wire.
Set them up as B fronts, large, with 6 feet distance.
This is exact setup as my old 3-way fronts which incidentally are twice the volume of M22’s and go to 37Hz, left those as A fronts.

The good:

Female voices sound really nice. The ABBA’s - ‘Chiquitita’ sounds beautiful.
There are 2 female voices the lead and the background you can easily distinguish them. My old speakers cannot display them as good.
However, I can duplicate the effect with equalizer.
The middle and higher frequencies sound rather good.
The high frequencies don’t sound metallic like with my old speakers.

The bad:

The moment I turned M22’s they sounded thin.
However, I have been letting them warm up for the last 3 hours and they are starting to open up by the minute.
The bass portion of the speakers is weak.
The speakers aren’t too good for Heavy Rock at this point but I will let them burn in.
They seem to get 'tired' or rather congested when playing a lot of instruments at once.

So:

I have tried running both speakers at the same time.
It produced a very nice effect you could hear the bass of the old speakers and higher notes of M22.

This leads me to believe that M22’s need a sub, desperately.
I will let them work for a while and might pickup a sub locally so I can try it out and see the effect.
The crossover at 100Hz definitely!

Have not decided if I’m going to keep M22’s for I can duplicate a lot of the effect with my old speakers and instruments sound more massive.

More to come when the speakers are burned in properly.

Hello Axman

I don't think break-in is an issue with the M22s. As stand alone speakers IMHO they are inadequate. However, with a decent (quick) subwoofer they do their transformer thing ... all of a sudden they sound like sweet sounding full range speakers. If your sub doesn't integrate perfectly, the speakers sound like they are producing everything from sparkling highs to deep lows. If your sub does integrate perfectly, the speakers disappear and you are left with that glorious WALL OF SOUND.

Personally, I think a good tube amplifier will help in this quest, though the silver faced, Kenwood flagship KA9100 integrated amplifier does a pretty good job in its own right.

The garage stack consists of a KA9100, a Kenwood KT8005 stereo tuner and an Ah! Njoe Tjoeb tube output CD player.

BTW, as to subs, I don't think it is that important that the sub produce 20Hz or lower, but rather that it be quick, that is, not muddy, no 'overhang.'

Hey 2x6spds,

Your KA and KT look cool.
I'm not going to change my receiver at this point it produces very good sound to me anyway.

Which velodyne sub do you have? I could pick-up velodyne in future shop, easy return policies. Just in case it doesn't work.
And the cheaper the better as long as it performs, quick is good.

One more thing a lot of subs have R+L and my receiver has mono cable. Does that mean most subs are stereo and by connecting this way I will lose something?

Thanks

I think it's a CHT 10 or a CT 10.

I like it and think it compares very well (for music) to much more expensive subs I have. I have a Klipsch KLF10,Vance Dickinson Titanic 12", Dahlquist PDQ1500 (15"), SVS 20-39+, Modded Kenwood SW300 (10" Partsexpress Dayton driver replacing Kenwood after playing Dreamworks version of "The Time Machine" blew my OEM SW300 into small rubber bits all over the room, very impressive!)

For music this modest but quick Velodyne works very well. Inexpensive as well.

If the appearance bothers you, you should contact Axiom about that. There certainly shouldn't be any glue visible; I've never seen any on any of my Axioms (and I seem to have quite a few...)

My goodness Kcarlie, 12,000 posts, how do you keep that up and keep a job?

Arthur, those subs with L/R inputs are providing for possible use with receivers or separate preamplifiers that have two outputs, but not a single output, as most, including yours, do. Inside the sub amplifier the two inputs are combined, and there's no "stereo" factor. When the receiver and sub have a single output and input that's what should be used.

As to the sound of the M22s, particularly in the bass, "burn-in" isn't going to help because it doesn't exist, but hopefully you'll become more familiar with the Axiom sound with time. The M22s are by no means "thin" unless the comparison is with a lesser speaker that has a bloated bass response(which can be simulated to some extent by adding bass boost with the tone control). With room reinforcement my M22s have good response down to about 50Hz and much weaker, but still usable, response to about 40Hz(this is from both measurements and listening). As was said previously, this is adequate for most music, although for music having unusually low frequency content(e.g., pipe organ)and for occasional low frequency effects in movies a sub is highly desirable.