Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Review of M2 v3

One of the video card sites that I frequent recently reviewed the Axiom M2 v3's. They loved them! Review is here:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/axiom-m2-v3-bookshelf-speaker-review/

The response curve on page 6 of the review suggests that the bass extension might be a bit better than earlier versions of the M2 (using the soundstagereview chart as a reference). General shape of the curve and breakpoint frequencies are very similar, but the response seems to drop off a bit slower at first and the new curve might be ~5 hz to the left of the old one.

The old M2s were "so close" to having enough bass extension that even a tiny change could make a big difference.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/axiom-m2-v3-bookshelf-speaker-review/6

http://www.soundstagemagazine.com/measurements/axiom_m2i/

This could all be my imagination as well

It looks to be the same graph, but it's tough to compare them exactly because of the scaling. The Guru graph uses a 80 dB scale and soundstage uses a 50dB scale.

John, note that specs and graph in the "Guru" review are taken from the Axiom site, and are those which have appeared for several years. The response below about 80Hz in the anechoic chambers isn't accurate because of the size of the wedges, and small differences in the curve there are meaningless(one of the reasons for measuring up on the tower). There's no indication that any significant change in the M2 mid-woofer or the enclosure bass tuning was made.

Understand and agree, but the Soundstage measurements were made at NRC and the Axiom chamber attempted to duplicate the NRC chamber characteristics IIRC so rightly or wrongly I guess I expected the two chambers to be "more comparable than most".

If you compare the M2 measurements from NRC with, say, the M40 measurements it's clear that bass extension does get measured. I agree that the measurements can't be regarded as accurate (presumably the issue is that behaviour below 80 Hz is more like typical in-room than anechoic ?)

http://www.soundstagemagazine.com/measurements/axiom_m40ti/

All that said, the apparent difference is very small and I agree that no such change has been announced or leaked, so I guess I'll take two placebos and call you in the morning

Actually now that I look at the graphs again it is labelled as NRC Reference. So it looks like both graphs were taken at the NRC chamber but use different scaling like I noted above.

And JohnK is correct. Anechoic chambers don't measure accurately below 100hz including the NRC's. That's not to say it won't show bass extension like when comparing a bookshelf to tower in this case. It's not going to be completely accurate though.

This is why when you measure subwoofers you do it outside and not in a anechoic chamber