I have been considering buying some m80 towers and have been talking to some people about axiom and their metal drivers and they all tell me that metal drivers need alot of power to drive them properly.is this true with axiom's drivers or any metal driver?

murphyman

I'm not sure at all if metal drivers will make it harder, or easier, to drive them. I can, however, tell you that Axiom speakers are the easiest speakers to drive that I have ever used. The M80's can give clean sound pressures that would be ear damaging even on a modest amp. I believe it was Alan who said he had to leave the room and wear earplugs to see how loud they could go while using a very weak amp.

I have a 70wpc amp, and I use M22, M3, and VP150. when listening to music, I have the amp at about 15% and my entire place can hear the music clearly, even with the doors closed.

Hello murphyman,

Ravi exaggerates--but only a little. To get to your point, the advantage of aluminum cones (and titanium domes) is that they're very lightweight and rigid, ideal qualities of a cone or dome material. Before the days of successful metal-dome tweeters and metal-cone woofers, cones were made of doped paper (doped or plastic-coated to increase its stiffness), which made the cone more rigid (good) but also heavier, with greater mass (bad). Plain paper cones were lightweight but not nearly as rigid as aluminum. Then polypropylene came along--nice and rigid but heavy. Dome tweeters used to be made of silk, cloth, and plastic. Silk was pretty good, plastic began to melt at high sound levels because it couldn't dissipate heat from the voice coil and so forth.

Finally, titanium: really light, strong, and rigid--and it served as a heat sink to dissipate heat at high volume, so the speaker will play cleanly at higher levels without overheating or voice coil damage. Likewise, aluminum--it's ideal as long as you get rid of any resonances, but that's true of any cone material.

No, they're not hard to drive in terms of watts. What Ravi referred to was my test of the M80ti's in a normal living room without a sub. I seldom peaked the M80s more than 40 watts per channel, which created peak sound pressure levels of 90 to 95 dB SPL at a 10-ft distance. That's very loud, and 95% of the time I don't want it louder.

The M22ti's aren't as efficient as the M80ti's and need more power from an amplifier--those smaller driver have to work harder, so more watts are required. I measured peaks of almost 60 watts per channel to replicate the same listening levels. That was at the back of a 17-ft living room and I would seldom if ever listen at such loud levels.

Regards,