Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Considering M22's

For home theater, I'd look for more sub than the EP125, tehghost.

Do you think that the 350 would be a better choice? Remember, im just talking about a small bedroom for the moment. There is always room to improve upon in the future when im going for the HT setup.

The EP350 has some great output. I would look at the dimensions to make sure you have the room, maybe use it as end table.

You might not EVER need to "upgrade" your mains from the M22's to M80's if you have a decent sub. They are wonderful speakers.

Are you located in US or Canada? It seems to matter quite a lot relative to cost and availability of both receivers and subwoofers.

The EP125 is an entry-level sub, and you might be able to get a big more performance for the same money depending upon your location and how heavily you weight appearance. Outlaw is selling what looks like a solid little 8" sub for $159. If it had a built-in crossover, I'd buy one for my office. Since you'll be using a HT receiver, you won't care about a crossover in the sub. Other budget sub options include the Sealed 10" A3S-250 from Elemental Designs for $350 shipped and the sealed Ultra sub 10 from Emotiva for $289 shipped.

I've been recommending the refurb Onkyo receivers all week - you can get the TX-SR508 for $179 plus shipping.

It's a good plan to spend money to get quality main speakers like the M22's. That will make more of a difference than anything else.

Have fun!

If it were me, I'd buy the best I can afford piece by piece if necessary. I wouldn't buy a small sub knowing that I'll replace it in a couple(?) yrs down the road with a more powerfull one...to me that's kind of wasting money, just my opinion of course. The EP350 is in a different league than the 125 and there are also a lot of other co's out there that make excellent subs too.

If you have room for a bigger sub, and you can afford it...I'd go for it since you want to set up an HT down the road anyway. Why not try out the M22's by themselves first? though they do benefit from a sub, maybe they'll be enough to get your feet wet initially.

Ghost, welcome. I'll try your questions: 1) Yes, the M22s would be ideal for your room; 2)for your uses a more powerful sub would be helpful, and I'd suggest using about $350 for the Hsu STF-2; 3)get the Onkyo 508 which Tom has linked in his reply; 4)depending on how much distance from your listening position you could give them in that setup(hopefully at least 6-7' so they have some room to disperse the surround sound), the M22s would do reasonably well as side surrounds, but the QSs inherently have the wide dispersion which is so important for surrounds.

Also, if you're willing to consider the extra expense of the EP350 ($768) + M22s ($488) = $1256 but are sure that you'll upgrade to the M80s later on anyways, you could get the M80s directly for the same price from the auction site. You could even get them cheaper if you don't care about the all-aluminum driver and the magnetic grill as Axiom still sells some V2s (but with V3 components I suppose) on the auction site.
If you are sure that you want the M80s, that's what I would do. They have great bass. I have them for almost a year now, still no sub, and I feel that I am not missing anything for music. Of course, for movies, that's a different story, I can't get the LFE provided by a sub but at loud volumes, the M80s can still make my room rumble. I knew that I wanted the M80s so that's the route I took and I'm very happy with my decision.

Bruno, you probably didn't mean that you can't get LFE at all, but just to note that the mains do play(although with not quite the wallop of a good sub) any LFE present in movies when the sub is set "none".

Yes John, what I meant is that I don't get the WOW factor of the LFE played by a good sub. Thanks for correcting me.

Most receivers do not send the LFE channel to any other speakers when the sub is set to none. It was the practice in the very beginning of digital 5.1, but upon recommendation of Dolby it has been stopped. The problem is the LFE channel has 10 dB more dynamic range than the other channels (old receivers also got this wrong, even on the sub pre-out) and can't be directly mixed. Today's receivers when the sub is set to "none", the low frequency effects are dropped.