The most interesting part of the Saturday sessions at Axiom was the blind listening test. We were given a ranking sheet with various categories, shown the volume control and the switcher and left to our own devices.
In a brainfart moment, I left all my reference discs at home and had to make due with material at the factory, but in the end, I don't think it made any difference.
Maybe it was because this was the first kick at the blind listening can, but I found it difficult to characterize many of the differences. I found it hard to put into words what I heard. Most of what I write below, I figured out listening to others describe the two speakers, but before any of us knew what the two were.
The one thing that was dead obvious was the difference in sound-stage. Speaker 2 had a MUCH wider sound-stage than speaker 1. I could pick that out every time no matter what track I had on.
Everything else seemed to depend on the material. OK, maybe there was one other thing. On speaker one, female vocals were noticeably more forward.
I originally ranked speaker 2 as slightly better than speaker 1, but that did not sit well with me, even right after I handed my sheet in. I wish I had another opportunity to listen, but we barely got through everyone on the Saturday as it was.
Here are some of my impressions:
Female vocals: on some material speaker one sounded markedly better, on other stuff, there was no difference. When it sounded better, it was cleaner and more transparent. Like the singer was there with you.
Treble. Sometimes speaker one seemed to have more clarity and sometimes not. Sometimes speaker two sounded a little veiled and sometimes not. There was a definite difference, but it was not always easy to characterize. At times speaker 2 sounded a little smoother. This, combined with the sound-stage and imaging made it sound quite a bit better on some passages.
Sound-stage/imaging. Speaker two always had it on sound-stage and had a slight edge on imaging. In one passage where there was both cymbals and a tambourine, I heard the delicate sounds of both instruments clearly on speaker two, but it was kind of mashed together on speaker one. How to characterize it really confused me for quite a while.
Bass. In hindsight, its quite obvious why I heard what I did, but at the time this area was also quite confusing. On some passages, speaker two just sounded smoother and more balanced. It had (or seemed to have) bass that the other speaker didn't. On other passages it sounded a little bloated or fat. On close listening to individual instruments I just could not pick out what it was that 'more' about the bass.
The sheet helpfully hinted at the kick-drums, so I looked for passages with good kick-drums and damned if I could not consistently pick out a winner. The sounded pretty much the same I guess.
In the end I chose speaker 2 as slightly better over all, but in hindsight, I think they are, as Alan put it, "similarly good". Speaker 2 gets it on imaging and sound-stage, speaker one on clarity and the presence of female vocals.
Given the two speakers, the M3 gets a HUGE win on price.
