Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners m60ti vs. m80ti - the $500 question

how much would i be giving up in terms of sound quality, bass, imaging and soundstage if i went with the m60ti's instead of the m80's?

basically i want to know if the 80's are $500 (cdn) better than the 60's?

power and ohms dont matter as my amp will handle either speaker well

I'm going to be quick, because I have auditioned neither, but also because this question has been asked and answered several times before.

I saw it answered by Ian once, and his response was that the difference was simply that the m80's play louder than the m60's. So I say, unless you have a very big room or happen to be Pete Townshend, the m60's are a good choice.

f0rge, here is a post from Ian:

Sonically these two models are very similar. The M80s have a dynamic quality that the M60s do not quite attain and they do go down a bit lower. The M60s would certainly be lots of speaker for your room. It depends whether you want that little extra overkill.

Ian Colquhoun
President & Chief Engineer

Hi,

Based on my last listening comparisons at the factory, I would agree entirely with Ian's comments. Without a sub, the M80s have a slightly "bigger" more expansive sound than the M60s, partly because of the M80s greater bass extension and output. I like sitting well back from them (12 to 20 feet). But the tonal balance of the two models is very similar and similarly neutral.

Regards,

so, I never heard the m60s and have the m80s only for a month or so now. Almost perfectly happy with them (with one or two minor gripes but still working on it, I'll post in another thread once gear broken in). It's clearly a steal for the price in terms of quality. The thing that was already said and I can confirm is that you need quite a lot of space for them. I started sitting about 6 feet from them, now I'm at 12 and may move even further back. They're about 6 feet apart. Otherwise I found the speaker overpowers the sound and does not sound very musical but rather analytic. As well, they are ok with a decent 50W amp but they really, really like to have lots of solid-state power behind them. I run them off two 180W monoblocks and they really open up nicely, espeically bass. BTW, if you listen to noisy, older recordings I realized as well that the tweeters are very, very transparent and sensitive so you may consider something a little more dull than axioms. So, space and power are probably the factors you want to figure out.