Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners HP Drivers vs Regular

What did you do exactly?

Did you put the HP drivers in the old M50 cabinet?

Yes and a new tweeter. Old cabinet, new drivers.

You can't do that. The HP driver does not have the frequency range the standard 6.5" driver has. I explained that above.

Also the cross-over for the new tweeter is likely different than the cross-over in your M50.

What new speakers did you receive?

The drivers were from the M5HPOWs. I've read you're explanations and I'm very happy to hear that there are good reasons as to why that experiment didn't go so well. It didn't make sense as the new drivers seemed much better, heavier stronger castings, they were bolted on (no self tapping screws), way more woofer excursion while playing, all aluminum woofer, and much beefier larger magnetics. Comparing the old driver to the new one is pretty neat, the new ones look incredibly better, like a comparing a rock to a polished stone. So I was surprised when my little experiment did't work out as I thought it would.

When you're spending well over 10K on speakers you need to know what you're buying! I get it, I know just enough to be dangerous, but the performance of the OW series on my particular walls caused concern. The EP600 & M50Ti's kept me listening.

What is the problem with the M5OW? Not enough bass? Not loud enough?

I was able to listen to the M80ow initially, as it was the first speaker to arrive. It's not a ported speaker and I was able to set it next to the M50 and compare. The M50 had significantly more imaging and of course better bass, which was expected. I was expecting the M80ow to have better imaging. That is what lead me to swapping drivers. The M5ows sound similar to the M80ows.

You absolutely cannot listen to an on-wall unless it is on the wall. The on-walls are designed to take advantage of the wall for acoustics. I nearly threw my M2OW away when I first got them because I fell into the same trap. Then I put them on the wall and the rest is history.

As for imaging, on-walls can soundstage and image better than bookshelves and floor-standers but they need to be positioned correctly with respect to your listening position. My M2OW are a shining example of that. Their imaging and soundstage is better than any speaker I've had in my living room.

The M80OW are indeed ported. The port is on the bottom. Just like every other on-wall.

That's interesting since you can't toe them in ... unless you mount them on a bracket which takes it away from the wall. Which hopefully is not too far away to reduce effect the mid/low response too much.

I was indeed very surprised as well. I never expected on-walls to be audiophile-friendly. They can be provided the fixed layout for them is favorable...like mine is.

When I did a quick test of the M3ow I sat them against the wall on top of another speaker with the ports up. Sounded great considering they had a hard surface directly below them. Didn't evaluate the imaging as my use case is to put these on FMBs and use as tops. I figured that I would be able to get the images as they were amiable ... I should try them on FMBs to see if they still sound the same ... perhaps tonight ... I also need to check out the ADA1000 it's been just sitting there waiting for me to unwrap it.

More stuff to do ... currently running new ethernet cables for all the video/audio stuff ... the electricians messed most of it up by running some wires to where the audio/video router was going to be and some to one of my control hubs (i.e. the wrong place) ... good thing I put in conduit everywhere ... it's actually not too bad as I redesign my ethernet/video/audio distribution to use a managed switch at the control hub location which is going to work out better and be more secure.