Axiom Audio is a manufacturer of audiophile speakers in Canada. They manufacture and directly sell speakers via their website. Axiom has an excellent support infrastructure and an excellent product. The speakers are designed by top notch engineers and tested thoroughly before shipment. When comparing costs, it is amazing how well priced they are for the quality one gets.

Excellence by Design

For more than two decades, Axiom Audio has made its reputation by achieving unprecedented performance quality.

At inception, Axiom Audio's founder Ian Colquhoun sparked a new period of progress in the annals of loudspeaker design with his work at the National Research Council lab in Ottawa, Canada, under the direction of Dr. Floyd Toole. There he spent innumerable hours perfecting innovation after innovation.

The revolutionary theories and methodology resulting from this work were recognized and published in industry journals around the world. Canadian audio engineering gained particularly high status, which Ian Colquhoun and his company have helped maintain ever since.

Axiom's reputation grew dramatically among audio aficionados throughout North America. With the emergence of Internet mass communications, Axiom became an extremely popular "secret" among A/V enthusiasts.

By emphasizing the practical application of our ongoing research, Axiom continues to extend people's expectations of performance and value.

Today's Axiom line offers a wide range of choices that move the benchmarks farther than ever. Axiom now produces eight-sided seamless cabinets with the ground-breaking Anti Standing Wave (ASW) wedge-shaped design, esoteric driver design, internal crossover network innovations too numerous to mention, and distortion-free vortex porting.

Axiom Facility in Dwight Ontario CanadaWith offices and manufacturing facilities situated in the unspoiled Muskoka district of Ontario, Axiom is today counted as one of the cornerstones of the Canadian loudspeaker business. Using the world's most advanced computerized equipment, the company has become one of the world's premier manufacturers of quality loudspeakers.

Any apprehension I may have had about buying speakers off the Internet faded a few years back when I scored some great-sounding bookshelf speakers from a Web-only audio company. Those remain in use today, and I'd be game to match them up performance-wise against any current model in their price range. Of course, outfits that sell gear exclusively online have since multiplied, and Axiom, the Canadian firm whose Epic 80/500 home theater speaker system is the subject of this review, is among them. Buying a pair of inexpensive bookshelf speakers online is one thing, but a whole $3,000-plus tower-based system? What, if any, are the advantages to doing that?

The first and most obvious is cost: By eliminating middlemen and selling direct, a company like Axiom can offer speakers at more affordable prices. Another advantage is the home audition: Axiom and many other Web-based companies offer a 30-day trial period. (The initial shipping cost is free, although Axiom makes you pay the return freight if you choose to pass.)

In this case, you can also take comfort in Axiom's longtime involvement with the speaker-measurement and psychoacoustical research programs at the National Research Council of Canada. This government-sponsored program is partly responsible for the many excellent speaker brands that have emerged from Canada, including Energy, Mirage, Paradigm, and PSB (see this issue's review of PSB's Synchrony speakers). If you require some kind of objective seal of approval for speakers, association with the NRC is about as good as it gets.

I was pleasantly surprised by this system's sleek and stately looks. The angled front corners and tapered cabinets of the Millennia M80 v2 towers and the VP150 v2 center speaker provide a slimming effect that's visually appealing, and the look is echoed by the QS8 v2 surrounds' angled front baffles. Build quality is excellent: Cabinets are solidly constructed and furnished with gold-plated binding posts. The towers come with both spikes and rubber feet for carpets or bare floors. My system had an attractive Mansfield Beech finish with black grilles, although other options are available.

The M80 tower — a 40-inch-tall, three-way design — has a pair each of 6.5-inch aluminum-cone woofers, 5.25-inch midrange drivers, and, unusually, dual 1-inch titanium tweeters, with the second tweeter present to beef up the M80's power-handling and dynamic capabilities. There's also a pair of bass ports located on the back.

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/speakers/2527/axiom-epic-80500-home-theate