I thought the M80's were internally braced really good but when i knocked on the sides it sounded really hollow. Are they not braced at all?

It sounds from your posts that you have been well taken in by the audio garbage folks. The knock test, overly expensive cable, graphic equalizers... none are quite what they're cracked up to be.

The M80s are quite well braced internally. However, if they weren't, and you didn't know it, would they sound worse to you? Do they sound worse now that you've performed the knock test? It really comes down to sound. Do you like it, or not?

couldnt tell you how they sound yet because im still waiting for UPS to deliver my receiver and amp. I hope they sound good
couldnt sleep well these few days.

Cleank,

The wedge-shaped asymmetrical enclosure effectively controls internal and cabinet-wall resonances (it prevents internal standing waves from forming), but there is additional bracing as well.

Besides, that cabinet-knock test tells you about as much about a loudspeaker as kicking the tires on a car!

Over the years, I've heard numerous lousy speakers that were extremely well contructed and braced, including a famous American high-end brand that had a sloping front baffle made of stone. If memory serves, each speaker weighed 300 lbs, and the treble resonances were enought to fry your ears!

If you have reasonable control of cabinet-wall resonances (and the M80ti's have that), what matters is the careful adjustment of drivers and crossover (as well as driver design and selection) to get smooth, linear frequency response over broad lateral angles (vertical dispersion is important too, but not as important as lateral).

The aforementioned is vastly more important than cabinet-wall resonances, which pale into insignificance by comparison to achieving ultra-smooth response through the midrange free of glitches, spikes and suck-outs. . .

Regards,

Fair 'nough.

to be specific, there are two internal braces in the M80. one i believe is between the two woofers and one between the mids and tweets (i think) the two mids each have their own sealed boxes.

Ya ever notice how Axiom has solved common problems in loudspeakers by coming up with new ideas instead of just doing it the way everyone else does. such as their unique ports, which by the way pass the port noise test with flying colors (believe me. i know!)

and cabinet resonances with the ASW cabinets. instead of some companies who just throw a bunch of junk in the speaker to make it even heavier and call it good.

Among the speakers I recently demo-ed for my gameroom (Wharfedale, Monitor Audio, JBL) the Axioms had the heaviest, most sturdy construction. The Monitors and Wharfdales feel like they're made of plywood in comparison.
Not that it matters, I reckon, as there is more than one way to skin a cat.

yeah, funny you mention JBL.

If memory serves me right, which it does! i remember gluing peices of scrap MDF into my old JBL speakers corners to prevent them from seperating. One of the side panels had aready started to seperate from the front baffle. Hmm. how lovely. well they arent going anywhere now because they got about an extra pound of glue in there and some wood blocks.

These arent old speakers either. at the moment theyre about 3 years old i think, theyre the ND310's. still got em but they dont see much use.

I've got my M2i's in the game room. Love them!

Alas, I sent back the M3s - but only after much deliberation. I'm possibly having regrets now, too, as the somewhat chesty mids of the little Monitor Audios that I kept are sometimes annoying.

Well Bigwill, if the sound continues to displease you, there is this great little place called Audiogon....