Hello Alan,
I just bought the EP500 and I am waiting for a pair of QS8s’ from the outlet store. Naturally, my mind is now focusing on my front mains. Presently, I am using 15-year-old JBL 4410 studio monitors. They have a titanium tweeter with crossover adjusts on the tweeter and midrange. On two-channel listening, the tweeters can be a little harsh unless they are adjusted down. With that said, I think they make pretty good HT speakers, because the high and midrange are covered well with the 4410s and now the low end sounds great with the EP500. My taste is towards listening to music (two channel), but my ultimate goal is to buy a DVD-audio player so I can purchase more uncompressed music. The rest of my family uses the HT on the receiver more than I listen to music. My question -What advantage would tower speakers give me over my JBL’s, if any? My wife would like to get rid of the bar stools (ok, they are tacky), but for the most part, I am happy with the sound. So Cosmetics aside, must I go out and buy a new set of towers? Thanks for any forthcoming information.
Sincerely,
Warren
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Hello Warren,

I'm delighted you got the EP500, which is a wonderful subwoofer. Ah, yes, the JBL 4410. I remember it quite well because we reviewed it way back when I was editing Sound&Vision magazine in Canada. It was pretty good back then. JBL and others had trouble controlling resonances with those early titanium-dome tweeters, so it's no surprise you find them harsh. Speaking generally, I've found significant audible improvements in speaker design take place about every five years or so, at least from the best designers, which include Axiom, Revel, Paradigm, Energy, PSB, Snell and a few others. You can go on using your 4410's, of course; you're used to them, warts and all. We all accommodate the colorations and liabilities of our speakers over time, unless they're really awful (do you recall the Heil AMT-1's with the Heil Air Motion Transformer midrange/tweeter?). I was thrilled when I bought mine in the early '70s because they had very revealing mids and highs. But I sold them three weeks later because there were so many resonances in the mids and highs, they became unlistenable.

Your room is about 3200 cu. ft., larger than average, so I think you'd find the Axiom M60 or M80 towers much more neutral, detailed and uncolored than your 4410s. Go to our Axiom message boards (Hearing Things) and find an Axiom owner near you who will let you listen to his, or order a pair and try them out for 30 days. I doubt you'll want to return them--virtually no-one ever does. For DVD-Audio, by the way, think about getting the Oppo 970 Universal DVD player--a bargain and it plays back DVD-Audio, SACD, and upsamples DVDs to 720p. I think you'll be thrilled by multichannel DVD-A or SACD playback; it's way more realistic than 2-channel stereo (depending on the type of music). You could use the 4410s as the rears in a 7.1 system but add the QS8 surrounds at the sides as the main surrounds, which is where they should be located. It's up to you, Warren. Speaker fidelity really has improved a lot since the time of the JBL 4410's and the Axiom M80 towers will let you hear those improvements. The M80s are 4 ohms, so only a few brands of HT receiver will drive them (Sherwood Newcastle, which we sell; Denon, H/K, B&K, and Rotel). Alternatively, the 8-ohm M60 towers are easy to drive with any amp or receiver. They are virtually identical to the M80s with a little less bass and they won't play quite as loud with huge amplifiers (250 watts per channel and up) as the M80s.
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