Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater The world's newest Axiomite it born...

It is only natural to be biased towards the brand you have invested all your money in. Before you make an investment like this one usually spends a fair amount of time before hand researching their purchase. After weighing the price verses the performance of whatever system you decide to buy you generally should feel happy with what you've gotten.

So when you show up to a GTG with your speakers, the most common thing to do would be to pick apart everyone elses speakers flaws (after all no speaker is perfect) and concentrate on all of the positve aspects of your own. It's human nature. So when taking his M80's to perform against the SongTowers you would expect nothing less than for them to find something wrong with them (in Bobs thread they all felt they were too bright... including Bob. However he did admit they sounded a whole lot better in the treated room verses his own room), while reconfirming to themselves all the strengths of the ST's.

I didn't expect them to say, "wow those speakers sound wonderful, and soooo much better that these Salks that I spent 50% more money on... Boy do I ever feel dumb now". Even if they did feel that way it would never be said. If someone were to bring a pair of $500 dollar Pioneer towers that they'd picked up down at Sears and they sounded anywhere close to as good as my M80's I would probably be too embarrassed to admit it. I would have to scramble and find a song that the Axioms played better just to sooth my wounded pride.

And to be fair people do have different tastes. So I really don't doubt that they genuinly did prefer the sound of their speakers over the Axioms anyway. Still it was interesting to see the comments about how much bass they produced. Some even mentioned they sounded 'boomy'... That is rediculous, they reproduce bass extremely accurately. Tight, fast, smooth bass. But compared to the SongTowers which apparently don't give off as much bass, I could see how they might consider the M80's 'boomy'.

That's where blind tests really come in handy. When you can't be biased because you don't know what you are listening to, it makes it a lot harder to be critical. For all you know you might be listening to the speakers you love and are proud to own. So your natural reaction would be to find the positive aspects of whatever is playing at the time.

A blind test of 3 - 5 speakers would be super cool actually. I would love to see what I really think of my own speakers next to someone elses, let alone what I think of someone elses next to mine. When is the next midwest GTG???