Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Weaiting. And waiting. FedEx sucks!

Great honest feedback. Run them both in for a while before you decide.

The more Axioms I meet the more it is readily apparent they need a little time to do their best.

Either way you should have an outstanding house full of sound on your hands!

Very unexpected and interesting. I wonder why. The extra mid-woofer maybe?

You know, I kind of forgot about burn-in. I've never been a proponent, but I'm also not convinced one way or the other. How long would you say is necessary?
I've had the M80s going for about 12-14 hours' the LFRs about 8.

It's not speaker burn in, it's your reference sound burned in your brain that sets the bar for what you think/know as good sound. When you hear something different, the brain balks and asks itself "is this better? Could it even be?".
The first time anyone gets a new speaker you have a bias even though you may consciously know about it, but ultimately your reference sound starts with what you have known for a long time, the M80 sound. Take your time flipping between the two sets for a couple of weeks and try out different music as well.

Obviously one observation you have is in the apple to orange comparsion (660 vs 80). Yes the LFR880 would have been the best most equivalent unit to compare. The different driver configuration and tower size between the 60 and 80s makes a difference and so does the LFR aspect. You have TWO major variables to adjust for rather than just one.

I observed the same thing you mentioned re: the soundstage. With the LFR i noticed that the sound was more dispersed and less directional or at least less noticeably directional. The effect was more subtle than i expected and i also came to the same thought as you did; does this matter to me? or is this too subtle for me to think it makes enough of a strong positive change to make it worthwhile?
Given its price, i backed away, but if i had the LFR for an extended period to hear in comparison, it's possible i may come to a different conclusion (my listening experience happened at the Axiom factory so over a very short period of less than 1 hour).

I expected the 660 to triumph. Assuming the algorithm for deriving the listening window and sound power is the same for 80 and 660, I can't see how the 80 can sound better given the more linear behavior of the 660. I will say that positioning matters a lot. Maybe the algo is not the same and that means we can't directly compare the curves of the two.

My active LFRs blow the M100v4 away in absolutely every category. But I had to fiddle with positioning for months to achieve Nirvana. I know Alan admonishes me when I say "blows away" but it really doesn't take an audiophile to hear the difference between the two.

This kind of "reference burn-in" makes perfect sense, and in fact it occurred to me when I was listening. Worse for a comparison, it's a significant improvement on the kind of response I've been listening to for 50 years so really want that improvement.


This also makes a lot of sense. Truth is, when I started less than 40% of the samples sounded better on the LFRs. So over the roughly 12 hours time the LDRs gained ground. But, it's the "smile score" that will probably keep me from continuing the comparison for very much longer. That and the fact that because I know I'm returning one set I've been treating them with kid gloves and I'd like to stop doing that and set them up permanently.


Looking at he published curves, I wouldn't say that the LFRs are more linear (by the usual audio use of the word, and in the listening window), I'd say they have better room resonance response.

I didn't play with positioning much, and I feel bad about that, but like I said above, after all this time I'd really like to move into the enjoying phase! (Also, I used up the 30 days review time on the M80 already because I asked for them to be shipped early when there was a chip delay. I suppose I could ask Axiom for more time; but again, I'm getting impatient.)

As far as the single positioning though, the LFRs had the primo spot being positioned precisely 12 inches from the back wall and away from the side wall. The M80s were then placed next to the the LFRs; one M80 had no rear wall; or rather, it had an additional 6 feet, into the hallway.

I'm definitely not pretending I'm making an audiophile choice; this is pure and simply which one I like more.

I've linked below the listening window and sound power for the 660 and 80. There are a few interesting things going on when comparing the two.

First, notice the swings in response of the 80 below 150Hz. Certainly the 80 is not as linear within its posted frequency response range as the 660. I really think Axiom had trouble with the 80 in this range.

Note how the 660 response smoothly drops below 65Hz. This is completely intentional. The intent is for the room to take over and boost the gain below 65Hz.

Then look at how the listening window and sound power response of the 660 smoothly declines with rising frequency. This is again intentional and prevents the 660 from sounding harsh in a room.

The Family of Curves theory says that the 660 ought to sound better than the 80. Certainly that's what I hear in my rooms when I compared the various passives and the active LFR1100.

Of course I agree that since the 80s sound better, that is what Cork should hang on to.

I neglected to mention the closeness of the listening window and sound power curves on the 660 relative to the 80. This closeness leads to improved imaging in a room. Those two curves are on top of each other for the active LFR1100.

The reason I said the M80 looked flatter is the high-end portion of the curve, where the M80 stays at ~87 db and the LFR660 drops to ~82 db. Also, what I don't think I mentioned in this thread is that I got the HP woofers on the M80 (not available for the LFR660) which Axiom says flattens out the lower end. Axiom doesn't have curves for the HP versions, so I made some assumptions there. The LW/SP curves are what I meant by "room resonance", and there the LFRs clearly have the edge.
Don't get me wrong, I like the LFR600; but to my graph-eyes, with some hand waving to fill in the blanks, the M80HP is flatter.

The more I think about it the more I think it was unreasonable to compare across the base lines. I'm thinking the performance of the larger speaker is washing out the improvement of the LFRs. (And the lower-end LFRs don't have quite the same advantage as the upper-end LFRs on the LW/SP curves anyway.) I should have sucked it up and got the LFR880s. (Which is now on my radar as soon as my wife gets over the actual size of the M80s in the living room.)

Ahhhhhh yes. The HP woofers. That makes sense; particularly at higher volumes and dynamics.

The M80 is indeed flatter over-all above the bass region. All the passive Axioms are designed with a flat listening window. In some rooms - like yours - flat sounds great. This flatness is a generally accepted standard in the industry. I'm seeing a trend in the industry though towards the declining response even for passive speakers.

It's interesting to note that while LFRs have a declining response, the active Bryston Model Ts have a flat response. I suppose this is one way of differentiating the Bryston active line from Axiom's.

Is the 880 available in an HP version?