Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo M22 first impressions

If you don't care that much about this room in relation to your basement, I'd love to hear you critique that system!



It's always fun to get new toys.

I think it's just Palladia HD the channel. It's quiet in the center, but other things all seem fine.

Ben, I guess I shouldn't say that. By design the downstairs room is supposed to be the main theater. In real life, though, we spend most of our time up here. And now that I have the Axioms up here, at least for now this is the better system.

That said, I do have a very cool combination fish tank/projector screen down there that will tempt me to spend way more time there once I finish it up and get a new lens for the projector. I guess I'd better start saving for an Epic 80 setup. I figured eventually I'd have something a lot more expensive (I was always a big fan of Revels just because of my exposure to them) but I'm really thinking that it'd just be a waste of money.

BTW, widening out the speakers by about a foot in total has made a huge difference. Even my wife can tell a major difference in some Dire Straits and Diana Krall.

(On the down side, apparently when I loaded a new disc to the AppleTV I hit sync or did something different, because it uploaded that... and deleted 250 gigs of other music! I own 7 Apple devices and I still don't understand the logic behind their stupid syncing. If I want something on a device, I'll put it there. And if I want it deleted, I'll delete it! Stop trying to control what files I keep in what place!)

Amen on syncing. Drives me nuts.

I've been playing around quite a bit today. Most photos I see here have the speakers pointed straight ahead, so I tried that. Immediately the stage widened way out (well duh...) and things changed quite a bit.

Thing is, I can't decide if that actually made it sound better. Maybe I'm trying too hard.

I'm also not satisfied with the bass quality on some stuff, but that's also because I haven't moved the couch to do the crawl test just yet. At times it seems to linger a bit too long. I wonder, if the sub is up next to a wall, 15" away from the corner, would a bass trap in that corner, so it's next to the sub rather than behind it, be useful? Cause if I choose that location (it's what looks best) one of those fake plant bass traps would fit nicely there...

Is there any documentation or common knowledge about the M22s being placed straight on or toed? I noticed that in that new M3 review he prefers them straight on.

What ever placement you like and/or sounds best is what should be done, nothing more, nothing less.

Well yeah. But I'm an overthinker. I need help.

What I really need is just a person to help me with some blind testing, moving the speakers back and forth.

Dave, I suppose what could be termed "common knowledge" is that the best sound from a speaker is generally that on-axis. So, the speakers should be toed-in slightly so that the tweeters point to your ears. Listening off-axis slightly reduces the treble.

I've often thought of this too. It's hard to compare the sound from different placements after you get up and move the speakers and sit back down again and think, "Does it sound different now?"

Two weeks in and I've been logging a lot of hours of music play on these. I'm still messing around a lot with placement. It always seems like they sound better the farther I lean forward, which puts me closer to a perfect equilateral triangle, so I've moved them as wide as I possibly can in the room. My 22" speaker stands don't ship for another few days, so I won't have them til next week, but I'm sure they'll help.

I've definitely learned that HDNet and Palladia just plain sound like crap on their concerts. It's not the center channel speaker. Which, I should note, sounds WAY better this week than last week. It's an on-wall (which I still haven't figured out how I'm going to mount it - the fireplace's molding prevents me from just sliding it on the normal way so I have to invent my own bracket) and at first I was convinced that the on walls just plain weren't going to sound as good. But it has really perked up a lot. I really noticed it today watching the VCU-Kansas game and then some House episodes. Before it was a little distant and now it is starting to really jump. To the point where I might even have to ease it back a bit (it's overdriven a bit from the amp right now).

I think it might just be certain channels. I was all excited to crank up Terminator: Salvation the other night too and it was all muted, as if the cable company was trying to spare my neighbors. Sounded like crap, like I was listening through a closed door.

I made a pretty big mistake, though, in that I moved my fish tank over to the side of the downstairs room so I could watch the projector again (the end goal is a piece of furniture that holds the tank and the screen slides over top of that- it's not built yet so I project onto the wall), so it's temporarily right next to the couch. I should've set up the M22s down there and done some listening before I did that, because now it'll probably be 2-3 months before things are back in the proper spots.

I was expecting them to sound really great down there, to the point where it'd influence me to order another pair immediately so I could really go listen to loud music at any hour. But now that plan is on hold. I suppose that's good for the wallet. But really, they're such a great value that buying another pair is nothing!

Seriously, I've just been blown away by the price of these speakers compared to their performance. This is an untreated far from optimal shaped room with glass doors and an open end and mediocre wires, they cost $488 (minus 5%), and I'm thoroughly enjoying them. I've heard better, but that was all very expensive stuff in very well-appointed rooms. And it wasn't all that much better. I can only imagine what these or the M80s sound like in a perfectly set up room.

Do you use nitrox so you can get a full movie out of a tank?