Hi cb919 and all,
Thanks for your follow-up, and yes, the Axioms are indeed very revealing speakers.
If we assume for the moment that the distortion is inherent to that track on the Blu-ray disc, there could be a number of reasons why it was included. Since it's a live recording, that may have been the only "take" available, and the producers and artist figured that most people wouldn't detect it.
It could be that the control-room monitors during the mix didn't reveal it, or that the mastering guys didn't hear it. For example, I have some CDs that have audible rumble from the air-exchange system in the concert hall, only audible when you play the disc on a system with a really excellent subwoofer. Most control room loudspeakers do not use subwoofers so the recording engineer would have been quite unaware that there was low-frequency garbage on the master. I have another that has audible foot sounds from a pianist using the pedals. The mike used for the piano wasn't isolated enough and the floor in the studio conducted the vibrations up the mike stand into the microphone--again, it's only audible when played on a system with a good sub. There are other examples of mike input clipping that I own. In one case, even though the recording engineer heard the distortion on the vocal mike, the artist (the blues singer, Joe Williams) refused to do another take, so the Cd was issued as is. The late John Eargle, a highly respected recording engineer who wrote one of the seminal texts on studio recording, told me that anecdote about that Cd of Joe Williams when I inquired about the audible distortion on a vocal peak.
Regards,
Alan
