Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions M60 midrange driver is run as full-range?

A reviewer accused Axiom of running the mids without a high-pass filter. Can that be true? He also said the mids "broke up" because of this.

Not the M60, but on the M50 and M3 it is part of the design, so no accusations are needed.

And yes, any larger cone will "break up" when tasked with playing too high a frequency. Break up is a form of non-linear distortion that is caused by flex in the cone.

If those speakers only had mid-range drivers and no tweeters the distortion may be more obvious. But with the tweeters playing, and the already diminished output of the large cone rolling off because of it's inability to play those high frequencies, very little of the distortion is audible.

The rest of Axiom's line uses band- or low-pass filters on their mids.

I'm going to quote the reviewer from Audioholics. He said of the M60v3:

The Axioms at high volume simply broke up in the midrange. Unfortunately Axiom runs their little 5-1/4" midrange full-range with no high pass filter which in my opinion is too much to ask for this driver.

Some forums get nervous when referencing another website. I wasn't sure about Axiom's forums.

Since the reviewer is wrong, perhaps someone from Axiom should correct him. Also, I suggest checking for a defective driver.

Gene usually knows what he's talking about, so I'll leave it to someone who's actually seen the guts of an M60 to refute his statement.

One thing is, in the photo of the three speakers tested, the M60 has black dust caps, and holes for the speaker grill. Those are features of the v2. The v3 has white dust caps, and magnetic speaker grill (no holes).

Other than that little statement about the break up at high volume, the M60s reviewed very well. No speaker is perfect.

Here's a link to the review: http://www.audioholics.com/reviews/speakers/floorstanding/emptek-e55ti/e55ti-listening-tests

Axiom uses the mechanical roll-off of the 6.5" in the M3 which is widely known. It wouldn't surprise me if the M80 took the same approach as well with the 2 midranges. Like any choices in speaker design there are trade-offs.

That was noted in the 1K loudspeaker blind listening test.

The M60v2 employs 4 drivers with a 1" titanium tweeter, 5.25" midrange and two 6.5" woofers. They are triple vortex ported (2 rear / 1 front) with a claimed extension down to 37 Hz (-3dB). The tweeter has a 2kHz 12dB/octave HP filter while the midrange has no crossover at all relying on the natural acoustical rolloff of the driver (12dB/octave) and small sealed enclosure to provide more bass output above the tuning frequency of the ports.

http://www.audioholics.com/reviews/speakers/floorstanding/2010-1k-faceoff/1k-faceoff-comparisons

Well, certain people will abet this hobbyhorse to death, but while they're not technically v3s, the internalsat that point should have been the same as a v3.

A high pass filter for the midrange driver wouldn't effect bass output at all. If there were a low pass filter it probably would effect it, but I would prefer a little less bass output compared to driver breakup. Do the M80's have the same crossover as the M60's, where they may be driver breakup at a high volume setting as well?

They do not have the same crossover, obviously, but they may have a similar design. But the M80s are specifically designed to handle more power and be louder than M60s, so maybe that alleged problem is resolved.

I think "alleged" is the key point here.

No one has been reporting problems in their sound.... who cares what crossover philosophy Axiom employed?

Someone correct me... but the M3s are beloved and I don't believe they have any crossover at all...just the natural roll-off of each driver.

I also wonder what "high volume" means.