Well... it is true that there are lots of folks who prefer a laid-back, sweet, relaxed, polite and mellow speaker sound, who genuinely feel that such speakers are the ones that sound accurate, correct, neutral and natural. For many Axiom fans, however, these speakers sound dull, distant and unclear. Certainly in my personal opinion, these former folks don't really know how live music sounds.
To my ears, Axiom speakers sound neutral and accurate, but for those people, they are "too bright." So, who is right??? In fact, it is often darn difficult to objectively describe which speakers are more "accurate," and that is what makes the whole thing very interesting. Ian and Alan will immediately tell you that a flat on-axis frequency response is only a small part of the whole story -- in the actual listening room, you hear a lot of reflected as well as direct speaker sound, so the ensemble of off-axis frequency responses are almost equally important among many other things. And the vast majority of loudspeakers available today (including the Axioms) are VERY rolled-off in off-axis treble response.
So, there is still much room for the speaker designer to "voice" his speaker so that it sounds "correct" for him. What constitutes an "accurate" or "correct" sound may well differ from designer to designer. On top of this, quite a few brands, for whatever reasons, intentionally voice their speakers so that they deviate significantly from what the designer thinks is the "accurate" sound.
This is indeed an interesting topic...
