[ric]

After reading the excellent M3 Sapphire review I was struck by the 6 degree rake and did a little research and found this:
Tilting the cabinets back will put some speakers in a better position as far as the time alignment of the drivers, but it only works if the tweeter is shallower than the woofer. For the horns, with the sound source farther back, you might need to tilt forward. It's all about the acoustic center of each individual driver and the distance to your ears.

Shallow tweeter+deep woofer=Tilt Back.
Deep tweeter+less deep woofer=Tilt Forward.

This ignores the directional characteristics of the drivers, of course. You might find with a shallow woofer and a very deep horn that so much tilt is required to align the acoustic centers that you are outside of the horn's vertical pattern. Spraying the carpet or ceiling, not the listening position in effect. A separate cabinet (or none) for the horn is often used to allow for positioning the horn further forward without aiming it too far down. Flying them works pretty good though...

So, I tilted my M3TS back 6 degrees, uh, not so great. Then I put them back and put a couple of 3/4" blocks under the back legs to tilt them forward (about 3 degrees, so far).
I had heard about sound "snapping into place", and apparently this is what happened. The good news is that this tweak is free and easy to do and undo. What I heard was only for one listening session so far, so if anyone is interested, report back, good, bad or otherwise.

[Audiosaurusrex]

After reading the excellent M3 Sapphire review I was struck by the 6 degree rake and did a little research and found this:
Tilting the cabinets back will put some speakers in a better position as far as the time alignment of the drivers, but it only works if the tweeter is shallower than the woofer. For the horns, with the sound source farther back, you might need to tilt forward. It's all about the acoustic center of each individual driver and the distance to your ears.

Shallow tweeter+deep woofer=Tilt Back.
Deep tweeter+less deep woofer=Tilt Forward.

This ignores the directional characteristics of the drivers, of course. You might find with a shallow woofer and a very deep horn that so much tilt is required to align the acoustic centers that you are outside of the horn's vertical pattern. Spraying the carpet or ceiling, not the listening position in effect. A separate cabinet (or none) for the horn is often used to allow for positioning the horn further forward without aiming it too far down. Flying them works pretty good though...

So, I tilted my M3TS back 6 degrees, uh, not so great. Then I put them back and put a couple of 3/4" blocks under the back legs to tilt them forward (about 3 degrees, so far).
I had heard about sound "snapping into place", and apparently this is what happened. The good news is that this tweak is free and easy to do and undo. What I heard was only for one listening session so far, so if anyone is interested, report back, good, bad or otherwise.

Hi Ric,
I wondered about this as well. I have the 1st gen M3 Sapphire which does not have the crossover box and is completely perpendicular to the floor. When I saw the angle of the new ones I wondered what changed? It would be great if Clayton would answer if he's not too busy but I will experiment as well. I installed the IsoAcoustic Gaia's on mine so it should be fairly easy to do. I appreciate you bringing this up and maybe others might have some input.

[SnowPuppy77]

Agree it would be good to hear what Clayton has to say about tilt and phase or timing alignment.

I also have a gen 1 M3S. There are a couple of reasons why I do not think the differences would be sonically noticeable.  One reason is the tweeter on gen 2 is not as high up as gen 1.  And it is a little closer to the woofer.  So the tilt back may be making the distance of the tweeter from listener more the same.  Also phase or timing alignment is often just handled by the crossover.  Another thing to consider is that the tweeter goes down to 576hz which probably makes it much less of issue anyway.

Other thoughts.  Keep in mind the M5S Gen 1 is tilted back probably due to shorter height.  I am thinking the Gen 2 M3S with the outboard crossover needs to be tilted back for stability.

[ULTRABright]

I have the M4TS (via RolandButcher) and am curious if these are considered a deep tweeter (Clayton corrected me and says they are really a compression driver and not a "tweeter") or shallow?  Seems like they are deep.  I'll try the Pepsi challenge on this and let you know what I think.