I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here at all, nor am I taking any sides between Dr. House and Tom. I have no quarrels with anyone here. Everyone has disagreements, there's nothing wrong with that. But I would like to point out something that I saw in this particular arguement just as a 3rd party observation.
Take it out of the context in which it was presented here on the Axiom forum and put it in say, oh the Paradigm forum for example. So a loyal Paradigm owners has a sister looking to get herself a system on a strict budget. Knowing that she probably won't be able to afford a Paradigm set-up the brother asks if anyone has any experience with Axiom speakers. So another loyal Paradigm owner chimes in and says, "oh yes you should look at the 3rd party tests of the M80's the graph shows it's even more neutral than the Studio 100's, and for the price they are a very good speaker". Then someone else responds by saying, "well what does a graph show anyway, that's no way to judge a speaker".
That's a fair statement, a graph can not tell you how smooth a speaker may sound, if it's highs are fatiging, or if they sound spacious and open or not. Certainly speaker manufacturers who are dedicated to developing a neutral speaker will undoubtedly study graphs of the speakers performance to try to tweak whatever they need to to improve its performance. But a graph is not a tell-all when it comes to the way a speaker performs. Still, the response sounds a bit... defensive. And if I were reading the thread from the standpoint of being an Axiom owner like I am, I could (and I stress the word
COULD) see where someone might feel the response was sort of on the 'fanboyish' side of things. I'm not calling Tom a fanboy, not in the least. I do understand patriotism, and as Grunt pointed out, it's so easy to read a persons post and get the wrong impression of the way it was supposed to sound. I have no doubts House didn't mean to sound as if he was saying the Ascends were a superior speaker to the M22's any more than Tom meant to sound as if he was annoyed that he would recommend anything but Axiom speakers. And personally I didn't get those messages out of either of those two posts... but it was from those two posts that the fireworks began, so somewhere down the line the message got misunderstood.
I don't see much fanboyism around these parts, most people here are open minded to most advice and recommendations towards alternatives to Axiom products. Still, we all have some varying degree of fondness towards Axiom, so it's understandable that any recommendation that doesn't fall in the 'Axiom' column can look/feel like a jab. And in some cases that may well be what they are, I just didn't feel as if this was one of those cases. But that, just as the rest of my post, is just my own personal opinion, and should not be cut an pasted on Wikipedia under 'What Dr. House REALLY meant'.
But I missed any and all of the posts in question regarding Dr. House and his feelings towards the V3 designation thingy. So perhaps I'm just not looking for anything that might be taken negatively out of the good doctor towards Axiom as a whole? On the other side of that coin, those who are in the know concerning that situation are perhaps coloring anything he says now with the attitude he may have expressed at that time, and getting the impression that anything he says as of late, is slanted. I really have no business to say if it is or isn't since...
A. I'm not Dr. House.
B. I have no access to his train of thought.
and
C. The book I had on him titled 'Dr. House, His Real Agenda and His Plans On Destroying Axiom' burned up in my fire before I got a chance to read it.
Ok, ok... I'm playing this rather tongue-in-cheek I admit, but that's only because... well because this is the internet folks! This forum in particular IS tongue-in-cheek!!! We're never serious about anything in here... EVER!!! Which isn't to say that we're not seriously diggin our Axiom speakers! But come on, in the two years I've been hanging around we've only really hated on two people... Skiing Ninja and Solid State. And that's because those two OBVIOUSLY had an agenda! To a lesser extent a lot of people around here got fed up with Bob. But that was more due to his lack of willingness to seriously follow the advice of those members who were earnestly trying to help him rectify his situation... as well as his very negative attitude after recieveing his speakers, than anything else. I didn't sense any sort of agenda coming out of Bob, just a penchant to bitch about his situation with little to no willingness to even consider anyone's advice on how to improve any aspect of performance with his set-up.
Anyway, like I said I'm not putting any blame on anyone at all here. It's all good as far as I'm concerned. I just wanted to express that I truely don't see any agenda behind Dr. Houses recommendation. Nor would I ever catagorize Tom as an Axiom fanboy. But then again, I always thought we'd find those WMD's laying around somewhere in Iraq one day. Sooo..............
