My real wood satin speakers seem to have no protective poly on them. Has anyone notice this? Does yours have a protective coat?

Also I think what ever change in MDF/wherever is more prone to denting (new ones seem lighter) ... think this maybe related the speakers which arrived with severely crush corners. What have you observed?

Have to treat them with white glove care otherwise they scratch or worse ... to the point that I dust the speaker and the bottom of any object place on them before putting it down. Especially carefull not to side anything.

My vinyl ones were not a problem in either respect.

I noticed last year when I bought walnut natural satin M5s for my FWB, they were considerably lighter than my M5s with black vinyl. Then when I received my 160 in walnut natural satin, it was considerably lighter than my 160 black vinyl. Both the new M5 and 160 sounded terrific though. I reported this on the boards a few times.

As for poly for satin finish, I really don't know what to look for. It certainly doesn't feel like just raw wood; there's some coating on it.

I haven't noticed any weakness where I feel I need to treat them with kid gloves. I've moved mine around a lot without any damage whatsoever. Of course more changes may have been made since I got mine.

Yeah, the vinyl for sure was hardy but you know that changed since 2007. Still hardy but nicer grain on the black oak vinyl.

I’ll ask axiom if my RMA’ed M3 has a protective coat on it and see what they say. It maybe the finish is what’s intended or maybe a step was skipped. In any case I think they need a harder finish. When working with furniture one takes the finish to a gloss and then kills the sheen using a very fine steel wool.

Noooooooooo!! No more price increases! That sounds like a lot of work.

Slim knows his wood. Maybe he'll chime in.

Hey ... I’m only repeating what the instuctor said in a finishing course I took a couple years ago.

I have a Dutch buddy who knows his stuff. I only mention he's Dutch because Dutch and "very particular" go together like Sonny and Cher. He loves the finishes. But who knows? Maybe Axiom chose to experiment with you.

As always, I’m limited to only one pair of towers here, but I was impressed and still am by the vinyl wrap of these. They’re really good. I don’t move them around a ton but occasionally to put them into “ holographic placement “ and they’ve seen no damage or scuffing even when I’ve oopsed a few times. I bet the real wood piano finish is killer awesome.

As anything though there’s bound to be some that aren’t done as good as others. Maybe you just got an off pair Rrlev.

I am late to the discussion; but it sounds like there have been some finish quality issues? I recently received an M80 custom made in size to use as a center speaker. It is made with knotty pine and natural satin finish. Other than the scrapes across the front panel due to FedEx puncturing the shipping container in three places, it looks just fine to me. The natural satin is very even, smooth and very well done. It matches my QS10HP surrounds which were made this way. I cannot comment on the weight factor as I don't have any earlier versions. I will say that they all feel very hefty to me.

My Bryston Model T's are extremely heavy as is my Bryston Model T sub. All produced by Axiom too.

Rich, maybe just enjoy your active 1100s and trade them in when the 1500s are introduced.

I’m pretty sure that this is the finish intended. I think it has at least one top coat Given the sheen. It’s just the durability and hardness I’m worried about. It’s just too thin to be protective.

Just for clarification, when you chose a "real wood finish", are you actually buying that type of wood or is it a higher grade of fiber board or some type of oak with vinyl wrap?

You can no longer choose vinyl or wood. You always get a wood finish. Ian made it so because the difference in cost between wood and vinyl was quite close. Good call I say for many reasons. Right now we don't know which refurb products have woodies but maybe Axiom will improve on that.

The box is always made from the same material which I suspect is low weight HDF. A thin veneer of a choice of wood and finish is adhered to the wood.

From the bit of research I've done, low weight HDF is more expensive than HDF. Way more expensive.

Building speakers out of wood is very expensive for many reasons besides the cost of wood. The final product is not necessarily superior to MDF or HDF unless it has been carefully acoustically characterized and resonances have been reduced to an inaudible level.

I am very satisfied with the robustness of the HDF and the level of bracing in v4. Axiom has really upped its game.

You all know I like v4, right? Axiom kept the damned v4 secret for way too long and so did its customers. It's like they wanted to keep it all to themselves.

I conducted a very scientific experiment on the walnut natural satin durability.

I prepared my cappuccino in my favourite cup gifted to me by the lovely barista I helped one day. The bottom of this cup has a Mohs hardness of 7. The bottom was 78C and was circumscribed by 0.5 mL of water moisture. I slid it across the walnut at an acceleration of 1 ft/sec^2. I left it on there for 5 mins. I then removed it and wiped the moisture. I saw no visible change in the walnut.

Photos below. All very scientific-like. I let my cap get cold in the name of science!

I declare this walnut natural satin pretty darned solid. We'll see how solid the future subs are.

The cases are made from sheet fiber board. It has wood veneer on one side. They use a CNC router table type machine that cuts groves into the back side of the sheets. They are then folded, using glue to make the joints solid. This technique allows for a continuous wood "wrap" around the corners. It looks better than cutting veneer and joining at the edges. I've tried to re-cover older Axiom speakers with wood veneer, they turned out OK, but not as good as the Axiom wood speakers.

A speaker case made from any type of solid hardwood, would be inferior to a case built with fiber board. At least from a density / rigidity perspective.

Try that with a glass of ice water ...

I started this thread because of what I was observing moving the speakers around. In one instance the bottom of an M3 lightly bumped into the side my EP600 as I was moving it and left a very shallow indent. Normally this would not be a problem but the finish and veneer is so thin and/or the material below it compresses easier then I'd expect. Just struck me that I needed to be more careful than I usually would with typical finished wood stuff. The next observation came when I must have picked up a grain of dirt on the bottom of an M3 and placed it on top of another M3. When I moved it off I slid it and it left a nice scratch down to the wood or even the base material. Think it would disappear with a bit of teak oil but one has to wonder if the finish was harder if it would have scratched at all.

I'll try the glass of ice water stunt on the new subs that are coming.

I don't understand though why you are lightly bumping an M3 against a 600. And why would you pick up a grain of dirt with the bottom of an M3, place the whole sordid assembly on top of another M3 and then slide it to materialize a scratch? And if the scratch was nice, why are you complaining?

Well, I guess I’m just a clumsy oaf
It just seemed to me that these speaker are a bit more fragile then I expected.
But now that I know I’m taking more care.
I’m not stacking speaker on each other anymore without some sort of protection between them.

(also there is more grime around since the HT is not finished ... which doesn’t help)

Hope to see lots of pics of your HT room when your finished Rlev, whats your timeline for completion?

like to be done by the end of winter but there is no real time line

When I looked back through the gallery I was super pumped to order high gloss piano finished speakers. Either the finisher they had before has moved on or they use a new product. Definitely not what I was expecting and wouldn’t pay the premium again.

That said, I have now sold 2 sets of M5s to others and expect many more. Very very nice performing speakers and a joy to demo. A bargain.

Trevor, agreed the M5s are very nice. I am curious how, or if, you are taming the bass. I've had no luck with bass taming for M3s, M5s or M100s in anyone's room. My buddy has his M100 ports plugged in his living room. He loves them BTW.

M2 bookshelf and OW, M50 and actives are no problem. Ditto with 160 and QS10.

The vinyl is incredible. It looks like wood and it's textured like wood. If I didn't know, I have to take a hard look to even ask the "is it wood?" question.

Maybe, vinyl should be a special order option for those who need a more bullet proof finish.
The big problem with that is only people who have seen and touched it would consider it. Even then there is something about having the real thing that's appealing.

My big dilemma is I want quality but do not want to pay for it. Then again, I've always been very happy when I've paid and received something of really nice quality and disappointed when I skimped and it didn't last. More times then not I forget the pain of spending more if the purchase brings me continuous joy.

I'd be very interested to know the percentage of speakers Axiom needs to replace due to FedEx mis-handling.

Wouldn't that be something? "Our standard finish is wood but we can provide vinyl for those who like to bang their speakers together or scrape small stones across them".


The dilemma with every product is how well manufacturers define and measure quality.

Also think that Axiom needs to make some packing changes. I'd try two things:

1) tape the straps down so the FedEx guys don't use them as handles. Think they get stretched and fall off in transit. Especially for the bigger speakers.

2) Cut out the foam to relieve the pressure on the edges at the top and bottom of the speaker. Think the FedEx guys toss the smaller boxes and slide and drop the bigger ones off of trucks. When they land on an edge or corner the speakers edge/corner gets most of the impact even in the foam. If the edge didn't touch anything the impact would be spread over the surface to the speaker.

To state that in another way, the manufactures dilemma is what trade-offs they should make in quality while maintaining a desirable price point to keep sales up.

Part of my interest all these years in Axiom was that I like their philosophy of speaker design but also a huge factor was value for the money. As the prices have gone up, the value comes in when they have hugh sales. Some of those have been as high as 25-30% but those are not often (and dependent sometimes if your needs match what's on sale or in creativity in ordering)

Let's see how the price of an Axiom speaker today compares to 2005. I am going to use the M80 for comparison because that was the Axiom flagship back in 2005.

In 2005, the price of an M80v2 was $US1240/pair according to Doug Schneider at the end of the second paragraph right here: http://www.soundstagenetwork.com/revequip/axiom_m80_v2_followup.htm

According to the link below, $US1240 in 2005, is worth $1650.27 today. That's an increase of 33.09% given the average inflation rate of 1.92% per year.

https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2005?amount=1240

Today, an M80v4 costs $US2189. That's an increase of (2189-1240)/1240 = 77% or 3.86% or double the rate of inflation.

So the M80v4 costs 1650.27/2189=25% more than the M80v2 would today. The question now remains, is the M80v4 valued at 25% more than the M80v2?

We know today's M80v4 is not like the M80v2. The M80v4 has:

- improved Family of Curves resulting in a wider, deeper and more believable soundstage and improved imaging resolution on that soundstage
- improved fidelity across the entire operating range as a result of improvements in the standard woofer, mid-woofer and tweeter. The baskets are now cast and not stamped. The tweeter flange is now cast metal.
- improved cabinet bracing
- improved cross-over components and layout and of course an improved circuit to take advantage of the learnings in the Family of curves
- real wood
- stuffing (I remember my M80v2 had none)
- magnetic grille
- no charge bi-wiring option, custom grille colors, carpet spikes

Since 2005, Axiom introduced the refurb store and the customer loyalty program.

Isn't all the above worth a 25% premium over the M80v2?

Yeah ... some of it may also be manufacturing in Canada ... not sure when they brought it back from overseas. I seem to remember it was to maintain control over quality.

I'm not really keeping up with the competition as I've gotten stuck on this brand for a bunch of reasons. Personally I just have too many things going on (and too many interests) to get out there and listen anymore ... The Axiom line up has been keeping me happy. The A-LFRs are impressive ... probably the best I've ever heard. The M22/EP500 and M2/EP500 are fantastic combos which I think would best anything close in price and I'd bet could hold it's own with stuff costing a lot more.

They have made some decent quality/value trade offs (especially, like I said above, you get in on the sales). They aim high on the quality scale ... just look at how heavy their spiked feet are ... but that does not mean that they don't fall short here and there. I can say Ian and co are always out to improve what they offer and make the customer experience the best possible. Guess that sums it up ... they care about you the customer and the quality and performance of their products.

Yeah...I forgot about Made in Canada. Good one.

I have no idea how Ian manages it but I know just based on the bit of research that I've done, he knows exactly where he's positioned relative to his competition. If there's one thing that eats at Ian, it's knowing that his competition is ahead. He doesn't sit still for that.

One other thing. I just realized with the sales Ian puts on, the M80v4 costs less than the 15 year-inflated M80v2 when the maximum discount is factored in!

it's all related to the value/performance equation or perhaps more important "perceived value/performance"
So what does ahead mean ...

By ahead I mean value/performance.

wow, well, that was a very interesting discussion. I have to agree, Axiom packaging does need improving but that is what insurance is for and there is no doubt Axiom is making out on that end. I don't think that will last forever though, but you have to ride that train as long as you can.

As far as finishes go, I got the piano as well, on my white EP600 and one entire side was accidentally left sand paper rough. Mentioned when received and sent pics last week, hope to receive an email soon with an appropriate response. Still love the EP600, finish doesn't change the sound. One thing I love about Axiom more than anything is there willingness to take care of their customers. They really do go over the top when they make mistakes like that.

Not sure I ever mentioned this but my actives and their subs are a matched pair. The walnut grain patterns on my subs match. On the actives, they are symmetrical. The actives are marked left and right and if I switch them, they don't look as good.

I struggled with wood and finish. Ian convinced me walnut natural satin was going to be timeless. He was right. I mean, just look at them. Freakin'gorgeous!

BTW, the sides, backs and tops are matched too.

Bass is great. No bloom. Tight and crisp.

I set up speakers using my routine. Work with the room. Remember the few posts that made me seem nuts?

Perfecto.

https://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/ubbthreads.php/topics/436576/re-speaker-setup#Post436576

That is a very, very good post. I think next time you visit your brother, you just need to bring some of your holy water.

Can do!

Those look great. My 600s are also natural walnut but the grain selection is so so ... just can not compare

Rich, I am truly very sorry to hear that. I don't know how to help you other than to post some more photos showing sides and top of one of my subs. Please feel free to live vicariously via these images.

Thanks Mojo ...

LOL, I'm a big help, eh? Maybe you can print out the images and paste them on your speakers.

Ok, that was pretty funny.

I just did the cold water cup test on both of my EP125s in charming cherry chestnut. Nary a scratch.

Hot damn, I love that cherry chestnut. I want Axiom to crank out cherry chestnut EVERYTHING for the whole world to enjoy!

Mojo, your turning into the late night Axiom comedy club... I love it!

I'm getting a cherry chestnut one of these.

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/5a/ef/43/5aef43ed61e567d09d39093ef246e0b7.jpg

yes please!

One of mine is getting cherry chestnuted.

Don't forget to tip your server!