S-2EX or Axiom M5HP

“Long time listener, first time caller”
I am looking for a quality north american made speaker (i get it the driver components have to come from overseas) to pair with an outlaw 2150. This is strictly a smaller floorstander/bookshelf only system that has to carry its own weight with regards to bass to keep my wife happy. I would love to find something that has the character of the old polk LSi909. I think the price on their new legend is astronomical for what you get, where axiom and ascend provide a much better value to cost ratio. What are your thoughts between Axiom M5 and Ascend Sierra family?

I recognize posting on Ascends forum may lead to a bit of bias, but its a great community of hobbyists here and I know there will be worthwhile comments here to consider. Thank you for your recommendations.

😁😎
-jeremy

I don’t have any direct experience with the M5, but do have experience with M22 that it replaced, M2, M3, and M60(which may be discontinued.

Axiom makes a good speaker, some have said they can be fatiguing. That said, I have always thought Ascends offered a better value.

I directly compared the M22 to the CBM-170, sounds wise, they were comparable, but the Axiom was priced closer to CMT-340. The CMT is/was a much better sounding speaker.

Take that as you will. Both companies have good trial policies, so take advantage of them and compare on your own.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by curtis

I don’t have any direct experience with the M5, but do have experience with M22 that it replaced, M2, M3, and M60(which may be discontinued.

Axiom makes a good speaker, some have said they can be fatiguing. That said, I have always thought Ascends offered a better value.

I directly compared the M22 to the CBM-170, sounds wise, they were comparable, but the Axiom was priced closer to CMT-340. The CMT is/was a much better sounding speaker.

Take that as you will. Both companies have good trial policies, so take advantage of them and compare on your own.

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Curtis, thanks for the info. I had not seen anything on axiom M5’s being fatiguing. I had only heard that they part of the “canadian hi-fi” which i’ve always understood to be the slightly rolled off top-end with strong presence in the 40-250hz range like PSB. Maybe my interpretation was off.

What equipment and source were you using back when you heard the M22 and the 170 side by side? My denon AVR versus Outlaw 2150 have significant differences in their presentations. The little apple airport express i feed my 2150 with is a fun little DAC and I hope it lives forever since apple discontinued the product. It helps to keep the mid high crunch of modern compressed file types to a minimum.

I believe I did the listening with a Harman/Kardon AVR and a Denon 2900 universal disc player.