Bookshelf speakers – a loved and hated niche in the audio industry. A step up from cubes or soundbars for certain. But to the purist they are a “unacceptable” compromise vs. floor standers for primary listening. Be that as it may - they still provide massive sales volumes in the industry and often benefit greatly from technology trickledown from a manufacturer’s reference level systems. Since most of our music is produced on “bookshelf” sized monitors – why shouldn’t bookshelf speakers receive just a little more respect? Well, here are two that deserve respect: Axiom M3 v3 (version 3 of the M3).

Fellow Secrets reviewer Chris Eberle recently covered a full 5.1 system from Axiom and also conducted a short interview with Axiom’s President and founder Ian Colquhoun so I won’t repeat too much of the background info, you can read the review and interview here. To summarize, Axiom is an online vendor that has been around for more than 30 years, and like many other notable Canadian manufacturers, has participated in, benefited from, and been inspired by the work performed at the National Research Council (NRC) anechoic chamber. In fact - Axiom liked the NRC chamber so much they built one of their very own.