Axiom M50 Speakers, $1400 Per Pair

{35.5h, 9.25w, 13d, 39 lbs, 94 dB SPL, 8 ohms, 10-200 w/ch}

Two 6.5” Pure Aluminum Woofers, One 1” Titanium Tweeter

Bryston contracted Axiom, a friendly Canadian company down the road a piece, to make its speakers under contract over a decade ago. The project was a home run and the companies merged. The resulting company is called Bryston. Bryston has retained the Axiom brand name for speakers that are very high quality, but not quite up to Bryston POWER capabilities. Brystons have a 20 year warranty.

Axiom M50 is made in Canada with a five year warranty. Almost all other speakers in this price range are made in China by vendors we can’t even pronounce. They ship dozens of brands out the same door with a plethora of names on their boxes. Just wire them money and eventually your container will arrive with any name you desire on the cartons.

Bryston manufactures with TLC in Canada. Every driver it makes has to pass a battery of 8 tests. Every finished speaker has to survive Bryston’s torture chamber before it is pronounced good to go.

Mass production in the far east has laborers taking drive elements off the production line and screwing them into boxes. Nobody else is running every single driver through a gauntlet of eight QC tests as Bryston does. You can end up with drivers of wide variance from Chinese suppliers.

In British hi-fi news (10-24 issue, p59) they reveal Chinese built Monitor Audios have a tweeter variance, left to right speaker, of just under 3dB. This level of discrepancy is audible. Further, you have to wonder how far off their mids and woofers are. Instead of the finished speaker “looking” like a crystal clear photograph, its sonic image will be blurry with mismatched drivers.

Bryston’s QC is so tight that the most its drivers could vary is under 1dB. That level of variance isn’t perceivable.

Axiom is built to the same standards as the Bryston drivers, though the Brystons have bigger magnets and longer voice coils to deliver more POWER.

M50 is a solid, smooth sounding tower. Literally every other tower for $1400 is a flimsy box that will give your ears a sunburn. Chinese speakers typically sound like a TV looks with the vivid control cranked up. They’re trying to grab your attention for a quick sale.

M50 is a two way. Its bigger brother M60 is a 3-way and goes deeper. The beauty of M50 is that if you don’t have M60 sitting right next to it for comparison, you’ll be very impressed with its power. The top end is equally smooth.

Over the past couple of decades we’ve had no N American or Euro towers to sell in this price range. We had to offer Wharfedale and GoldenEar, which were best of breed among the Chinese. The Wharfedale was stereotypical of the Chinese reputation. The GE’s were smoother on top but atrophied down low.

With Axiom M50, it’s just no contest. They go much deeper and maintain a timbre that we piano and cello fanatics appreciate. They sound smooth, not glassy.

There’s more good news. M50 is so good that it will achieve a higher echelon with a solid integrated amp like Atoll, vs a Chinese amp with switching power supplies. The Atoll integrateds wield a heavy hammer. The Chinese amps with Bluetooth and streaming sound like pipsqueaks.

Yep, even Atoll’s entry level IN50 for $1200 will make a $2k Chinese integrated sound lean and thin. That’s because all Atolls use huge transformers, caps and match output transistors for smooth sound. The Chinese amps cut every corner possible and your music pays the price.