Been looking around.
For some reason, full-size on-wall speakers seem to have gone out of style with most manufacturers. There are plenty of in-wall options, but most of the on-walls seem to be very skinny "flat panel" "lifestyle" speakers with poor frequency response and a "looks over performance" sort of design. I guess that's what the market wants
One good option in your price range remains, and that's
Axiom Audio . Now, Axiom's come under a lot of fire in the past year. Personally, I think it's unwarranted. When they first started becoming popular, Axiom's speakers got hyped to the moon. Largely in part to positively
glowing professional reviews - including several from Audioholics - where Axiom's speakers were routinely compared favorably to much more expensive speakers. Everyone was all hyped about them. Then reality set in a little bit.
Turns out, not
every Axiom speaker was a total masterpiece
They made use of some unusual designs - we're talking about the use of two, stacked tweeters in their "flagship" tower speakers and center speaker. These speakers did not measure very well because, as you might expect, the interference created by the dual drivers showed up as some pretty awful looking frequency response charts
on those particular models .
Then Axiom did a stupid thing and basically claimed that their speakers were as good as a speaker could possibly ever be. They said that the best any other speaker could be was "similarly good" to their speakers. That pretty much started up a fire storm on the message boards
Then we got into the whole "double blind testing" debate. Axiom has always trumpeted "scientific research" and "blind testing" as a part of their design process. They participated in the famous NRC research into speaker design up in Canada and they built their own anechoic chamber. However, they drew some slightly different conclusions to other NRC-based speaker companies. Namely, they dismissed pretty much all of the concerns about "comb-filtering". Comb-filtering is a measurement that only shows up when you use a single microphone. Pretty much all measurements are made that way, and it looks ugly as hell, so it's generally thought of as a bad thing. And, indeed, you can easily hear a speaker that produces comb-filtering by simply moving your head side-to-side laterally while you are listening. But if you hold your head still, our brain does a marvelous job of using our
two ears to eliminate comb-filtering from our perception. Axiom took this and ran with it and basically ignored comb-filtering as a problem. But it makes such an ugly graph! Cue the forum hate
Then things really got ugly when Axiom refused to participate in Audioholics' subwoofer shootout. Axiom's subs are not great. I suspect they know that. And I suspect they didn't want their subs exposed. So they declined to participate. But they said it was because Audioholics' testing wasn't good enough and that the ONLY way to properly test a sub is
their way, which is a 90 foot suspension in open air to essentially create an anechoic setting, not a ground plane measurement, which is industry accepted for testing subs.
Things got so heated that Axiom pulled their advertising from Audioholics. And then, all of a sudden, Axiom's speakers were miraculously "overpriced", "cheaply built", "cutting corners" and "poorly engineered". Yes, the very same speakers that were so highly praised just a couple of years before were now suddenly the devil. I guess everyone's hearing really "matured" in that short amount of time
The same speakers that were vaunted for being a terrific value for providing sound that was right up there with more expensive speakers suddenly came under fire for not having changed enough, for Axiom being "lazy" in reusing the same basic design for years (like any other speaker company was any better in that regard), and that they were "cutting corners" by using less expensive parts to make their *gasp* less expensive speakers! I mean...the nerve!
So this is where I throw out ALL of the nonsense and go back to the only thing that I REALLY trust, which is my own listening experiences! In my experience, most of Axiom's speakers sound good. Their M50 and M60 towers sound excellent. So do the oddly designed M80s if you're in the right sort of setting, which is rather far away and in a large room with a ton of power feeding them.
All of their bookshelf speakers sound good. Their QS surrounds are amazing! Their centers and subwoofers? I've never been a fan. Their EP500 sub is easily their best and sounds great so long as you keep the output to 95dB or below. But it's expensive, so it's an underachiever against the competition.
The bottom line is that most of the "Axiom hate" is coming from people who have never heard their speakers and are simply looking at the "ugly" graphs produced by one or two specific models. But you know the internet - if one thing you make is bad, then EVERYTHING you make is bad, right?
So my point is,
I still recommend Axiom. And their on-wall M2, M3 and M22 speakers sound good and are a nice design for a situation like yours. The center speakers are a bit harder to recommend. Frankly, you could just run your system with a "phantom center" and allow the Front L/R M22 speakers to handle everything up front. They image very well and absolutely create the illusion of a physical center speaker. I'm a fan of using a "phantom" center when a physical center speaker doesn't create a PERFECT sonic match.
It sucks to have to "defend" Axiom. Axiom is stupid for saying no one can make a better speaker. All the haters are stupid for piling on a bandwagon that's claiming that speakers that sounded and measured well just a couple of years ago are suddenly "crap". I mean, I've seen Axiom routinely compared to Bose, which is just utterly ridiculous.
Anywho,
Axiom's on-wall, in-wall, and in/on-wall hybrid speakers remain a very good option in my book! I'll try to come up with some other good options though
