Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Sean and Dean’s Excellent Adventure

Well for Sean it might have been more of a Bogus Journey since he’s the one who schlepped a good portion of his audio equipment to my place over the course of two days. The result was that Sean and I just spent the last 8 hours or so geeking out on audio stuff.

We set up the equipment (tube preamp, 2xtube amps, Oppo 981 and 2xM80s) in an empty room (Sean has the pictures). You’ll see the room has bare walls with blinds as window treatments. We listened to a lot of different stuff we both brought but I’m only going to list what I remember of mine:

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of The Moon SACD
Bangles - SACD
Boston - SACD
Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Spring SACD
Carl Orff Carmina Burana: Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi SACD
Bliss - Quite Letters
Nena - Nena
Dire Straits - On Every Street
The Manhattan Transfer - The Definitive Pop Collection

I’ll try to just hit some highlights. Sean’s tube amps worked flawlessly and sounded great with the M80s. I can’t comment on tube vs . . . since we didn’t use anything else. With nothing absorbing sound in the room the ambience was fantastic and only occasionally did certain bass frequencies sound either overbearing or rumbling. I found the folding chairs I had were to high and we both ended up sitting on the floor for a better presentation.

I knew of certain tracks with distinctive sibilance (Bliss had one) and listened for that. It was noticeable and IMO enhanced by the room. We also demoed that track with my Sennheiser 600s and while the sibilance was still there it was less noticeable. Later we demoed that track in my HT room and the curtains also seemed to lessen the sibilance.

We tried two different version of Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi and though we were comparing two completely different presentations the SACD version did seem both more articulate and dynamic to me.

The real stand out was The Manhattan Transfer’s “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. A simple A Cappella piece that sounded so 3d it was freaky. I think Sean nailed it when he said it seemed like you could reach out and touch it.

We took a quick break for some Panda Express (time was factor) and then migrated to the HT room where we set up again (Sean’s tube preamp, Odyssey amp, 2xM80s and 2xSeans Odyssey ? Speakers, Oppo 981 and an A/B switcher.

Oops ran out of space on this page and have some Panda Express to finish, back soon.

It was a very fun day for audio geekery! I'll post some pics and my thoughts later today after I get home from work.

Mmm, a double dose of pandas. Eating endangered animals is always the funnest.

(deleted by me because I must be drunk this morning)

Looks like someone has a case of the Mondays!

We have achieved derailment.

That was quick.

I like Panda Express.

Looking forward to hearing more from both of you!

Like Dean said, we first set up everything in his empty room. Here's a pic:




Overall, the room wasn't that bad at all as bare as the walls were. It wasn't entirely rectangular, the wall behind us had an angle into the room where the door was and there was a cathedral ceiling, which probably help tame some of the reflections. We did find, however, that if we pushed the volume a little too hard the room got easily overloaded. The bass wasn't bad at all in the room. Dean will have to provide the dimensions. There were moments where it honked at us a bit, but, for the most part, it was evenly balanced.

Dean and I traded off on listening to CDs. The Manhattan Transfer song was a very nice highlight. Their voices really did float out into the room and had a palpable aspect to them. Very nice indeed.

And, I must say, my Weezer "Maladroit" sounded the worst (sorry JP). It was muffled and jumbled. Really hard to separate anything out of the mix. It's a fun CD and I like it, though.

Like Dean mentioned, we had two different copies of Carmina Burana. Mine was this version and it did sound a little flat compared to Dean's SACD version (no link ).

After lunch we moved some of the stuff into Dean's theater room. We took his M80s and my Odyssey Loreleis along with the tube preamp, Oppo, and Odyssey Khartago amp and ran the speakers to a switch box--which, sadly, only has impedance matching, but no volume matching capabilities. Yeah, okay, so I'm cheap!!

Here's some pics:





Again, we took turns selecting music, while alternating working the switch box and sitting in the sweet spot. Never mind those pics up there, our first orientation had the Odysseys on the outside and the M80s on the inside. It was easily obvious which speakers were playing as we switched back and forth. Honestly, we weren't going for a true blind test, but more of a way to get the gist of both speakers by being able to go back and forth instantaneously (well, as long as I didn't keep getting the buttons stuck on the switcher).

As Dean put it, what we got were two diametrically opposed musical presentations. To describe it, I'd say the M80s threw out a sound stage that was convex to the listener (the bubble being closest to us) and the Loreleis were more concave. In this respect, it was easily noticeable which speakers were playing. The M80 sound was very centered and right there and the Loreleis were a couple rows further away with imaging cues to the side. All the music was there, the presentations were just so different.

After a few selections we decided to swap positions of the speakers--and, here, the presentations really evened out. It was stunning the transformation it had on the sound of the M80s. Moving the speakers about a foot further apart really gave them some breathing room and opened up the sound. This time, when we switched back and forth between the two, it was somewhat harder to tell them apart.

I'll continue in another post to give my overall impressions.

Cool write up Sean, you guys must have had some fun! If you hadn't have told me those speakers were Odyssey Loreleis(first time I've heard of them), I would have bet money they were Totem speakers.

Totem Columns

You're right, Adrian, those do look really similar!

Sorry, guys, I don't know why the pics came out so small?

Instead of setting up the speakers in the AB-BA formation, did you try the AB-AB formation? Just wondering if that would be easier and/or more accurate since you could stay put and still be in the sweet spot for both sets of speakers by just slightly turning / swiveling the seat. Sounds like a fun time

One of the main differences between the speakers still remained presentation. While, earlier, it was of a horizontal nature, once we put the M80s on the outside the difference became more about top to bottom. The Axioms definitely present a wall of sound with the array of drivers on the M80s. This driver array really brings forth an energetic midrange. I found the M80s to be an exciting speaker that really brought the music to the listening position.

The Loreleis, on the other hand, are a tad darker. They seemed to take a slight step away from the listener and extended the sound a bit off to the side. Tonally, the two speakers were very similar. Some recordings were very hard to tell apart in the timbre. Both speakers did a good job of delivery the entire musical spectrum, but just offered a different take. I found the bass to be really close. Both were sharp and well-defined and went equally low. We put on some organ music by Bach and both speakers excelled at conveying the deep bass. On this particular CD, I noticed the sound of the upper registers of the organ were angled higher up on the Loreleis than on the M80s. Here, the extra drivers of the M80s helped fill in a grander sense of scale from bottom to top--in terms of the sound physically coming at us.

Again, going with Bach, we put on Cello Suites Nos. 1, 5, & 6 played by Yo-Yo Ma and I was hard-pressed to tell a difference between the two speakers. We thought the use of just the cello alone was a nice way to really gauge the tonality of the speakers. Less going on musically and more sustained tones played at length.

Well, I'll let Dean chime in with his impressions.

All in all, I really liked both speakers. I cannot call a winner or loser--and really, that wasn't the point of our listening session. It was more of a way to enjoy different speakers and broaden our listening horizons. There are things I liked about the M80s and there are things I liked about the Loreleis. Both are very capable speakers, while doing some things quite alike, while also doing some things differently.

I'd like to thank Dean for letting me come over and invade his space for an entire day--a day that was both educational and fun!

That's a good idea. We didn't try that.

I guess one of the drawbacks was that the wires connecting to the switch box were not really long enough for good freedom of movement--at least to lean back on the couch. We started with one of us sitting in the center while the other was slightly forward and off to the side to do the switching. After a while, the switcher (whoever it was) sat on the floor right in front of the couch.

Yeah, the AB-AB positioning is often suggested so as to minimize the positional effects.

By the way Dean, have you got another Carmina Burana besides the Thielemann that you were saying last year had some moments of harshness?

wish I had been there!

Sean did graciously provide me the chance to hear his Loreleis one fine day, and it was a transformational experience. It is worth noting that they are a 2-driver, 2-way speaker that - to my ears - was "full range". Amazing bass for one, 7" driver.

SO cool that you guys got to share a listen.

I even let Tom listen to one of my tubes go bad!

(although we weren't sure what the problem was at the time)


Thanks for the kind words, my friend!

Here is the one picture I took. It didn’t look blurry on the camera.



Part of this is easy as I can say I concur with everything Sean said but will expand on a few things.

First I was shocked at how much of a difference repositioning the M80s made in their soundstage when compared to the Loreleis. I’ve experienced that the M80s are somewhat finicky with placement. I’ve also read a couple professional reviews supporting that opinion. However, I’ve never placed them as close together in this room as our first test nor had another brand of speakers in this room to reference them against. Where the Loreleis were throwing sound out about a foot outside each speaker the M80s sound was coming from them. So that when we repositioned the speakers with the M80s on the outside both speakers sound stages seemed about the same width. We did not play with toe-in or anything else to see how things changed. If there is a lesson to be learned by potential and current owners play around with your speaker positioning.

As Sean said in the second position (M80s outboard) there were tracks where it was hard to tell them apart w/o listening carefully. These were what I would best call the less busy passages like acoustical guitar and the Cello. OTOH, in the busy tracks like some Boston, Jethro Tull, Sonic Bloom, and Vivaldi the wall of sound the M80 presented seemed much more forceful and room filling. This was this characteristic of the M80s that lead me to choose them as an “all-around” speaker over some Focals and B&Ws I also liked.

Another big difference I noticed was the vertical positioning of the soundstage between the speakers. Despite being as Sean said a little “darker,” when sitting at tweeter level the the Loreleis seemed to project more ambiance into the room. Not that the M80s weren’t putting out ambiance but the array of drivers running down almost to the floor cause their overall soundstage to be pulled down distracting from the ambience. Hence the reason I’ve for years now elevated my M80s off the ground so that the tweeters are above ear level.

Both these are capable speakers that as Sean said often sounded similar, but also often gave very different presentations of the same material. Main lesson to be learned here is try (in your room) before you buy (w/o option to return). Pay little attention to what speakers others think that you will like unless you have experience listening to speakers with that person or at least have both heard the same speakers and both described them sounding the same way so you have a common frame of reference from which to describe other speakers.

That's an excellent point that Dean brings up about speaker positioning. I've heard his M80s up on his "stands" (read: milk crates) :D, and the advantage of getting them up higher, at least for his room, is that the drivers have a better opportunity to throw the sound out into the room rather than into the couch. While sitting on the floor running the switch box this force of the drivers coming right at me was readily apparent.

It was the same SACD only this time I wasn’t hearing any harshness. AFAIR I was only hearing the harshness back then during the louder passages. That stopped when I switched from the Denon 2807 to the Onkyo 3007. Same thing with the louder passages in movies like the battles in “Master and Commander.” Scenes that made me cringe with the 2807 smoothed right out with the 3007. In this case we were using Sean’s amp but same thing no harshness.

Maybe it was just more headroom?

And, for the record, the tube amps are rated at 120 watts. I've never had a problem running any speaker with them.

I agree that the Loreleis had great sounding bass for just the one driver. I had wanted to A/B compare some Goa Trance with a very rapid punching bass beat but just prior to Sean’s arrival I discovered that the outlet I plugged the vacuum cleaner into in the living room is on the same circuit as my media room. So when the portable A/C in their kicked on it wasn’t for long. Net result was I couldn’t burn anything to a CD before Sean got here because my NAS gets bitchy about coming back up when not shut down gracefully.

Dean, seeing as how you still have the Loreleis at your place, feel free to hook them up and test them out with anything you want. See if the Onkyo has an A/B function that would be suitable to the task?


And, kids, let this be a lesson to you. NEVER clean your room. See what it can do to your home theater?

Thanks Sean. Even if the Onkyo doesn’t I have an A/B switch similar to yours it impedance matches but not level.

You guys had this great get together with a listening sessions and you both take the time to write up your impressions and post photos........ and you know what I take away from it?



snicker-snicker.

**note to self--work on better phrasing!

That's OK. Ken was talking about big Tool(s) in the 90s music thread.

When I first got my M60's, I A/B'd 'em with my Snells (also a 2-way w/ a 7" driver). So much of what you guys describe sonically compares very closely with what I experienced.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to turn your fun day into thoughtful words that you could share. Nice to read that stuff from real people and not reviewers.

Agreed. Reviewers are not real people.

Well I jest but honestly, so often their review is a cut and paste of the manufacturers press release that you do have to wonder if there is a real person back there.

Sean, don't worry about your phrasing. You want to see an unwise choice of terminology, check out this guy on a shooter's forum trying to describe the handling of his new custom Model 1911 pistol like this .

Thanks, JohnK! That was quite entertaining!

And, I'll also make sure to wear safety glasses next time I'm working my gun lest anything hits me in the face.

Really, if anything like that happens, I must be doing something wrong.

Most things are ultimately judged by the success or failure of their inherent intent.