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

I put my M2OW on top of my M5s which were on stands and 3 feet away from the front wall. The M2OW sounded like garbage. I called Deb to tell her to take that crap back. She happened to be in Ian's office when she took the call and I ended up chatting with Ian for 2 hours. LOL!

At the end of the call, which by the way included 3 minutes of M2OW discussion, I decided to try them on the wall on either side of my bow window in my living room. After doing that, I really felt bad for telling Deb and Ian they sounded like garbage. They are like magic on the wall like that.

Well that's the problem with evaluating speakers ... so much depends on factors like setup, room, system, and source material. It's easy to get something wrong ... I've scratched my head more then once by starting an evaluation of a speaker without reseting the receivers audacity settings.

Audacity setting to the maximum!

I embrace veracity and abhor mendacity and therefore in the interest of eliminating opacity I declare audacity without sagacity rarely leads to perspicacity and often to pugnacity.

Very impressive tenacity!

The M80ow's I received were not ported and did not sound well no matter where you placed them. As an Axiom alum I was so pumped to receive these speakers. I realize I have the worst listening space, fire place, sliding glass door etc. but when comparing to the old M50s, in the same space... the 50s are significantly better. No match, my 6 year old can hear the difference. You think those M80s should of been ported? If it wasn't for the EP600 I would be returning everything.

I dont think the speakers are the issue.

On wall speakers need proper placement and are dependant upon loading them against a boundary as Mojo has mentioned.

Your room doesnt appear to allow proper setup as your picture shows. I would highly recommend drawing out your room on a piece of paper and google ITU Multichannel setup.

Think about turning your room to best fit the template.

If your room is not capable of a standard setup in terms of placement it is likely best to choose another room.

https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-r/opb/rep/R-REP-BS.2159-8-2019-PDF-E.pdf

People trend towards on walls or in walls assuming they can make a tricky layout more flexible. That is not the case.

Trevor, that is such a great reference. You know what I'll be reading today...LOL! Thanks for posting the link. Love the 22.2 architecture but I think it needs 20 more subs for a more balanced 22.22 sound. I also think they ought to repeat all psychoacoustic experiments with active LFRs. They may be able to cut speaker quantities in half.

Rebulx, can you confirm there are no ports on the top or bottom sides? My M2OW have two ports on the bottom.

Can you explain what you mean by the M50s are significantly better?

I just noticed the M80OW are sealed. No ports. Sorry about misleading you. The M60s are sealed as well.

The smaller models consisting of the M5, M3, M2 are all ported.

Strangely, the M0 were also sealed.

Sealed is cool. Less distorted bass.

You might be right, but I need speakers for my room, not buying a new room for my speakers.
There is a 3/8" gap between the wall and the speakers, I've hung the M5ow's on another wall in another room, and they sound the same, nothing like any bookshelf or floor standing axiom speaker i've ever heard. The major difference is they sound very linear... shooting the sound at you, they do not fill the room with sound, the sound does not wrap around you like the other axioms. The larger drivers gets very little play, little woofer movement at higher listening levels, I would imagine that the crossover is designed that way due to the smaller cabinet. I didn't expect below 80hz, but I did expect clear imaging. I'm thinking I should of gotten the QS-10s instead of M5ows. Perhaps they have a better bass response and imaging, that would perform better in my listening environment.