Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners M5HP vs M60HP

Just how big a difference is this ?
I will be running dual subs

Just curious I had the M80's and well Just cannot get the imagining off the floor or well about what seemed 18" off the floor. SO gave them to my VP160 as I rarely use it.

But, just not enough balls.


My room is 11.5 x 15.5 x 7.5 . I sit at 11ft from front. hence the M80 issue. When I was upstairs I was 15 ft away and they were great.


SO, am thinking once again M5HP or M60HP but at a 2K price point difference, why would I go M60 plus then I would have to mess around with placement again, But given that the woofers are higher off the floor than the M80 I figure the sound imagine would be better. Also, I clued in to why some people have stages up front with their rooms. It's to get the speakers up a bit higher

Troy, you've complained about this before and I have to say I don't understand how you can possibly be experiencing a low-to-the-floor image. I've suggested in the past there may be a problem with your set up.

Regarding your question, I asked Ian last night because I'm trying to decide how to or if I should upgrade my M80v2. Ian says the soundstage of the M5HP and the M60 are very similar. Note however that M60s go lower, are more sensitive, are higher impedance and can go louder. These characteristics may be important to you depending on your environment.

Bridgman, please jump in here and help us.

Mojo i too was shocked to read that troy has imaging issue's. My room is 15 x 16 x 8 ish and my M80's image well to my ears. I have ran it sans center channel with impressive results,maybe my brain is just adjusting to poor imaging? I know when my mind gets fixated on what it perceives as a problem i have a hard time letting it go.

Troy if this were something i was dealing with i would go with the M5HP and get some stands that compliment your room and sitting position ,the subs will handle the heavy lifting. I started with M2's and 2 subs and the move to the M80's wasn't as great as one would have expected.

Troy, no matter where I listen from in my room, the image is nowhere near the floor with my M80s. I can lie on the floor and the image is above me...floating eerily.

It might just be a matter of listener height... I have somewhat the same problem, where typical floorstanding speakers seem too low unless I slouch in the chair or get some beanbag chairs to go with the lava lamps.

That said, I am 6'5 and have most of the furniture in the house jacked up 4+ inches to get the seating height into "comfortable" range, so my ears are probably 9-10 inches above "normal".

I replaced my M60s with M5HP's on 31" stands and that was about right for me... maybe a bit low but close enough. My guess is that LFR1100's would be sufficiently tall as well.

I don't play very loudly (M3's would probably be sufficient from an SPL level) so arguably it makes no sense buying speakers as big as LFR1100's or M100's but I do find that I need the height.

So, what is the difference between buying a pair of M5HP and putting them on a tall stand to get them higher up. or Buying an M60, and putting them on a smaller stand to raise them up a bit? Does the manual say that floor standing speakers have to sit on the floor? I think I threw away the manual when the speakers came so I don't know. Perhaps I have been listening to my speakers wrong all this time.

John, tell us about your M5HPs again. I am considering replacing my M80v2 with M5HP. I am looking for a deeper and more focused soundstage. I am very happy with the width and height.

I asked about this a while ago... the answer (from Andrew IIRC) was basically that floorstanding speakers are designed around a certain degree of "ground bounce" (I think that was the term) and that raising them would affect the mid-bass response a bit, in addition to the loss of bass reinforcement. The recommendation was to tilt them backwards a bit rather than lifting them.

When I tried lifting my M40s about 8" I found the change in sound was noticeable and not as good, although it must be noted that the track I was using for evaluation was the start of "Echoes" where the bass line begins to play under/against the piano, so the focus was on depth and linearity of LF response. Lifting about 4" was an OK compromise - got the drivers closer to ear level but without hurting the LF response too badly.

I don't remember if I tried raising the M60v4's - I should have though, since one of the things I didn't like about them was boomy bass in my living room, although I think some of that was a function of the setup rather than the speakers. I only had enough space to pull them ~3 feet away from the wall and that never seemed to be enough in that room (although it is enough in a different room)... I did try port plugs and that didn't seem to help much.

I don't think there is anything in the manuals about not lifting floorstanding speakers, at least I don't remember seeing anything about it. When I did some simple calculations (figuring out the first cancellation & reinforcement frequencies from raising the woofers a foot) I think the numbers were something like:

on floor - cancel 137 hz reinforce 275 hz
up a foot - cancel 90 hz reinforce 180 hz

I never had enough free time & motivation together to haul the M60ti's and M60v4's to the same floor so I could A/B them properly... all I remember is that the M60ti's sounded great in the living room once I fed them enough power and got the position right... but the M60v4's never sounded right.

M3's, M5HP's, Sierra-1's and M40's also all sounded good in the same position so it might have been something off with the speakers, but they sounded pretty much the same when I fed them a mono signal and switched from left to right so wasn't something obvious like a dead midrange.

Putting the Sierra-1's against the M5HP's was interesting - it was the first time that the speaker pairs I was A/B'ing didn't sound like chalk & cheese... they still sound different in tonal balance / frequency response but without a switch box and more free time it's hard to describe the difference properly or even say which one is closer to "right".

I'm sorry guys. It's just how I seem to hear or precieve the sound. In the M80 the sound ( Voices, Singers etc )sound like it was below the tv. My tv is wall mounted and 26" off floor to the bottom. It is a 65" screen.
I have toed in toed out moved my seat back it still sounds below the tv.
The M22 I have now the top driver is 37.5" off floor and the tweeter is 43.5"
They are toed in and the sound, I don't even need the centre channel on. In stereo I have people argue that the centre channel is on, until they put there ear to it.
just the way it is.

and yes it does go 6hz lower. and no I do not need louder.
But, is the 6hz $1500 worth better ?

Just trying to justify spending an extra $1500