Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Skiing Ninja offering M22v2 upgrade

I've never seen advertising for the Ninja. Only reviews of his upgrades.

I neglected to call you out on this particularly threadbare barb earlier. Looking specifically at my posts in this thread, please identify how I have contributed any alleged hostility of this forum. You, archnemesis of doubt, are operating with old data.

Gone to the dark side, he has. Sad, it is, Darth Archnemisii.

Or was that "Arrr, that be sad"?

I have a pair of Michaura M55s, a beautiful speaker which used 2 Axiom 5.25" drivers and the Merak/old M0/M1 3/4" titanium tweeters. Joe V used to say about the 3/4" tweeter that it was "bullet proof" and they could have stayed with it instead of the 1" Ti tweeter which Axiom now uses. The cabinet is a hex shaped, internally braced thing of beauty, somewhat smaller than the M22 despite the similarity of their driver kits. The x-over was a simple affair, consisting of a circuit board, fuse, ceramic resistor, and a low end cap.

I swapped back and forth between a pair of M3Tis and these M55s. Both speakers integrated beautifully with a Velodyne 10" sub. The mids were a bit 'richer' with the M3s, but the mid-highs and up were so beautifully extended and pure that I ended up using the M55s with my 5 watt per channel single end triode distortion generating integrated amplifier. The soundstage extended far beyond the speaker location for both the M3s and M55s.

Both speakers suffered from a little (but noticeable) graininess. I removed the fuse, isolated and damped the circuit board, replaced the ceramic resistors with some Mills in one pair and Caddocks in another, and the caps with Jensen foil/oil units. I used silver internal speaker wire, and added additional damping to the cabinet.

The sound quality improved. The graininess disappeared. the Sound Stage, large as it was, became huge - wider, higher and deeper. I finally experienced from my system what some refer to as the "wall of sound."

I don't know whether the Ninja folk have improved on the M22s or not. But, if I improved the sound of a pair of M22 analogs by simply upgrading x-over components while retaining the Axiom design and, of course, x-over component values, it certainly would not shock me if the Ninja redesigned x-over using upgraded parts improved the sound quality of the M22s.

I also have a pair of M22s but prefer the modified M55s to these excellent speakers. I don't know how the Ninja folks "voiced" their x-over, whether they used their ears, frequency plots or both. But, if I had to bet, I'd say the Ninja modified M22s are an improvement.

I 'stole' my M55s from U-bid back when you could get ridiculous deals on audio equipment. I spent more on the replacement capacitors than I did for the speakers themselves. I don't know if the cost of the modifications justify the results, for most folks, but I'm good with them.

Just a heads up.

_______________

BTW, I used an Ah! Njoe Tjoeb tube output CDP with upgrades, Mapleshade Clearview Double Golden Helix Plus speaker wires and high end snake oil Maple Audio interconnects for all A-B comparisons.

Ahhh, now that wasn't so hard, was it?

Actually, I emailed Axiom to inform Ian of the thread. Here is a snip from the email.

Hi Brent. I would like to purchase the single speaker as noted below. Please find my payment and shipping information attached.

Also, can you please let Ian or Amie know about this thread on your forum:

http://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=220404#Post220404

If they would rather I not participate in discussions on your forum, please let me know and I will cease. I just love great sound and extracting the most out of things from speakers to cars to computers

Please ask any questions you may have.

Thank you,

The Ninja

http://www.SkiingNinja.com
sean@skiingninja.com

Jamie - check out the retail price of everything that goes into our networks. Don't forget the 7 meters of wiring and all the other little stuff needed to build a crossover. The only up charge over those prices is the labor ($65) to build it plus shipping. You can skip the $65 and DIY - the option is available on the site.

You can take it even further and simply purchase the design for a small royalty ($20 - and I don't keep that money - it goes to my partners for their work) and you can build a network for ~$5.00 using electrolytic caps, iron core inductors and sand cast resistors. Same exact parts quality as stock and it will cost you very little to try it out...

How's that for BS?

Thanks,

Ninja

I was the admin for the AV123 forum for 5 years and saw that a lot. I think it is just human nature - at least for those humans that are always looking at the negative potentials. The rest of us look at the positive and negative potentials and act based on the info at hand. Obviously no one is going to die because we had some fun with a speaker...

WOW! Painting with a pretty broad brush, aren't you? IMHO, one or two have reacted to the Ninja's offering a little over-zealously. However, none of the members you've named are among them and the vast majority of the members, skeptical or not, have behaved reasonably.

I think the majority of the forum members support your right to express your beliefs. They just disagree with them. As I've stated before, I agree that you have suffered what is, at times, unnecessary abuse for expressing your beliefs. At other times, you've invited the abuse with posts like the one above. We could argue for days over who abused who first. At this point it just doesn't matter. It would seem the brittle, nasty, hostility flows in both directions.

I don't know what's up with this thread. Where'd the love go? I was eager to hear about the testing results but the thread disintegrated into name-calling. Very uncharacteristic for around here...

I don't understand why there's so much venom over a supposed upgrade to the M22's. If Ninja wants to sell a $250 'upgrade' to the M22's, so what? No one is forcing anyone to buy it, and its existence doesn't harm anyone. Same thing with tube amps, 'better' cables, magic speaker pixie dust, etc. If you don't like it, trust it, believe in it, or can't afford it, then don't buy it. The fact that Ninja is trying to reach out to Axiom to get some testing done is proof that he at least believes that he has a viable and worthwhile product. Why not let the test results speak for itself?

I think it's good for Axiom. At the very least it shows that interest in our much loved speakers is growing. An 'aftermarket' is a sure sign of that.

And at the risk of being labeled as one of those people, I will fully admit that I own and greatly enjoy my tubed headphone amp.

Peace.