Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners M50 to M5HP upgrade expectations

Thanks to all the great advice and input here I’ve placed the order for the M5OW’s! Very excited! I started out 2 weeks ago sending photos of my pool table to JC. He took them to the finishing dept and they sent me four samples to try to match the table. The samples Axiom sent me were very impressive. I was expecting just little blocks of wood, maybe a couple of inches square, but Axiom sends these 8x10 inch blocks of wood with corners cut, magnetic grills and Axiom logos on them. They look like the front panels of M2’s.
And did I mention they are trading in my M50’s? They’re giving me back almost 50% of what I paid for them over 10 years ago! Unbelievable!
This week I have to work on wire. This will be an in wall installation with crawlspace crawling so I’ll need a good permanent wire installation. I’m really not a believer in “super wires”, I’m looking at Blue Jeans Cable and Monoprice, 12 ga I guess. The distance from the furthest speaker to the amp is less than 20 feet. Any input on that would be appreciated.

Mike, that's some great news! What finish did you get?

Trevor, was it the Blue Jeans cable that didn't sound very good on your M5s and my M50s? Mike, Trevor and I recently did some cable listening.

Mojo, Cherry with Boston Cherry finish. There was a lot of great colors/woods that I wanted but ultimately I needed to try to get close to the pool table color which this does. There is a big difference between this and the Boston Cherry vinyl on my M50's. Looking forward to hearing your cable recommendations since you just recently went through this.

This is all you need to know about speaker wire.
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#wiretable

If you need something in-wall, it must be Class 2 rated but prices usually aren't much different from typical copper wire cost, usually $1/ft or a bit less.
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=2817

In your case given the short runs, 14 AWG would be fine even down to a 2ohm speaker load.

I would think the first dividing line between speaker families would have to be the design.
2 way vs 2.5 vs 3 way
By far the two largest differences i've noticed in listening to bookshelves (2 way or 2.5) vs. floorstanding (2.5 way or 3 way) has been the volume of sound (easily attributed to cabinet size) and clarity, detail (likely attributed to the dedicated midrange in a 3 way system).
The 2.5 way designs always sounded more laid back as Mojo described, the 3-way designs always sounded more detailed (this includes some home A/B blind tests just FYI). If you consider today's Atmos systems, how many more dedicated location speakers does it take to reproduce a more realistic effect?
It seems that the bottom line is the more drivers you have, the more realistic the sound could be. Kind of makes sense. In the real world, we hear sounds off of every echo, every surface. To reproduce that effect, you would need tiny drivers covering every square inch of a room to reproduce reality, or close to it.
https://news.softpedia.com/news/Tra...st-Expensive-Speaker-System-118692.shtml

Mike, nice finish! You will really enjoy listening and looking at them.

I don't really have any cable recommendations. There was a particular Blue Jeans cable that Trevor and I both tried which didn't sound right to us compared to others. It was very obvious BTW.

This is what I've been using with all my systems. I use 10 AWG with my active LFR1100 woofers, 12 AWG with the mids and 14 AWG with the tweeters. I use 12 AWG with the M5OW and bookshelves, M50, M3, and M2. I used 10 AWG with the M100s before they were stolen.

https://www.amazon.ca/KnuKonceptz-Kable-Gauge-Copper-Speaker/dp/B0076SFE9Q/ref=sr_1_2?crid=27OT166MGKHJS&dchild=1&keywords=knukonceptz+10+gauge+speaker+wire&qid=1614704516&sprefix=knuconce%2Caps%2C206&sr=8-2

Chess, it is very true that more drivers leads to more realistic vocals and instruments. However, I've found more drivers makes for more difficult acoustic disappearance. The active LFR1100s are the exception with proper spacing and listening distance. Maybe the passive LFRs too but I really don't know.

While my buddy loved the surreal soundstage of the M5s, he was totally seduced by the M100 realism of vocals and instruments. He was willing to trade off acoustic disappearance for better instrument fidelity. If I had no choice, I'd sacrifice some instrument fidelity for acoustic disappearance. Fortunately, with the active LFR1100s, I don't have to sacrifice anything. Not only do I get acoustic disappearance, I get higher instrument and vocal fidelity than the M100 or any other speaker I've heard.

Having said all that, the M100s are certainly no slouch. Canes made them disappear in his room so I suppose it is possible.

Mojo, does he need in-wall cable? ... if so it should be rated for that ...

It's a fire hazard thing which IMO really doesn't matter too much if the run is short and stays in-room but there could be problems if it was discovered.

Current plan in the HT is to run any possible on-wall bed surround (M5ow) with a short run to a connector just below it in the floors wiring channel. That way I can run the rest of the run using regular 12AWG. You can do the same thing just above the floor.

BTW haven't look yet but if 12AWG Class 2 is hard to find you can get smaller gauge and double it up... I have 4 wire Class 2 speaker wire which would work fine for this.

Mojo, I’ll check that out. I think what I’m using now is monoprice.

Mike, Rich is right. I forgot you are planning to put it in the wall. The cable I suggested uses PVC insulation which isn't great in fires. My cables are out in the open.