Chapter 3: Saturday WAS truly gay (Oxford dictionary definition: carefree, bright and showy).The end.Ya right.
If Saturday ended that quickly, there wouldn’t have been 148 emails in my inbox on Monday morning all with the title…”Axiom 30th Anniversary…”. Quite ironically, so many people from the forums were at the event talking instead of posting, that the forum posting rate dropped by 97%!! (with the remaining 3% taken up by Ken apparently).
I’m kidding though.
That’s a number I just pulled out of the air, kind of like the number
10% [wink wink to all those who attended the first morning session and recall what in St. Murph’s name I’m talking about].
My morning started off with a breakfast at the table of no other than Mr. Doug Schneider (
www.soundstage.com) and the ever so reckless Murph (
www.crazymurph.ca). Breakfast was hearty and apparently free (thanks Ian and co.!) but not without its abundance of flies. I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with Murph’s hair gel.
No really,
Murph doesn’t wear hair gel.
The conversation with Doug was interesting, although I’ve heard something similar before. My brother in law has argued something similar in the past, and he too is a computer guru. You know, the kind of guy that designs and builds his own printed circuit boards custom ordered from Japan, builds a custom van from a used ambulance and outfits it with the cutting edge computer equipment, onboard server, wifi accessibility and satellite system, aside from a part engine rebuild and complete formulation of new epoxy molded interior all because dropping out of university was the best thing for a person who was simply bored with the mundane content?
That kind of guy.
You tend to listen to THOSE kinds of guys.
But I don’t know Doug; you have an interesting point, yet from a science method perspective (proof must be proven with significant numbers), I’m not sure I’m convinced with your take on ‘digital is different’ (show me more proof).
I will agree that comparing different digital formats is difficult as each format may involve something different in the mixing that is unique to each sound engineer.
Why is it that engineer’s have to get in the way all the time?
Can’t we remove them as a variable?
Ian, let’s get to work on applying the scientific method for removing the engineer as a variable!
Dammit, these speakers should just build themselves!
But I digress.
Breakfast ended on a fun note. As I busily swatted about with the flies, I caught wind of a verbal content in the air that Alan and BBIBH were trying to figure out my name (real or otherwise). I think one of them (likely Alan), came up with the idea of a double blind
‘calling’ (the reverse of a double blind
listening) which produced results, and they had their answer.
I had to chuckle.
Barely twenty four hours in, they had no alcohol related blackouts to my knowledge, and already they didn’t remember my name.
Hilarious (or I’m just that unimportant I guess).
From the Blue Spruce restaurant, the flock of seagulls meandered down to the factory and eventually we all conglomerated in the Axiom parking lot. The last time I was in the lot was in spring of 2004 and it was mud coated. This time, nothing but sun and dry weather, but I was greeted by a disturbing
human blood clot of blue.
Sonic and CJ, having decided to be double fashionably late and showing up the fashionably late Axiom owner the night prior (see Chapter 2), opted for a ridiculously early morning and brought along Sonic’s
idea of the weekend: blue, Axiom engraved (hmm, perhaps that should read embroidered) polo shirts. These shirts were perfect for writing all over, just like a kid with a marker and that funny looking drawing paper pulled from daddy’s wallet.
The shirts were a brilliant idea, to keep all us school kids together in Ian’s easy sightlines. If you weren’t in a blue shirt, you must’ve been working for Axiom!
Just like Hay…who came to the party in a nice WHITE Axiom polo shirt.
For about the first 5 hours, everyone thought this young strapping fellow was either the bouncer for the day or Ian’s private secret service. It was only when people started asking him really technical questions like “When’s lunch?” or “Where’s the cool bathroom with the gravity fed pull flush unit?” that Hay revealed his true self.
Hay wasn’t the only one in off the wall garb that morning. It apparently was too chilly for most folk (at 19C!), to be wearing shorts….except for Onn (and myself).
Way to go Onn! Winter doesn’t arrive in this area of Ontario until
at least December.
Come on people, it was 19 Celsius and sunny!!! (well later in the afternoon anyway).
Moving on from the people blueberry festival, the parade went indoors.
This is where things get blurry.
No, I haven’t had a drink yet and I imagine the old boys’ cataracts produced the same effect (that would be Ray3 and Ajax), but still, I was giddy as the proverbial school girl and frankly, I admit I did giggle like one at least once!
Perhaps it was Peter’s endless antics that had me rolling in the aisles or the fact that he did almost electrocute his upper lip, I can’t say.
Twice now I’ve been to the factory and twice I’ve become so excited at all the things I want to ask and see that my mind becomes a blank. There were so many people to speak with, so many topics to cover, that I started my babbling at the Cora’s breakfast the day before but abruptly ended a lot of it after entering the factory.
I think at one point I had a verbal diarrhea with Sonic and CJ about how Axiom was applying scientific method but that’s really all I recall about intellectual conversation most of the afternoon.
I just did a lot of listening.I really don’t recall the first person I met at the factory that morning, but I do know my first drink of the day was apple juice followed by a lovely iced tea (thanks to “The Other Amie”; she tried to serve me coffee, of all the nerve eh?).
She served me other liquids later.
What a nice girl.
A few things that were by far highlights:
- The double blind test (DBT)
- Conversation with Alan about the DBT
- The Debbie Tour
- Anechoic chamber (more on this)
- Conversation with Alan about the M60s
- Ian’s go at explaining distortion with four distorted lines and a very small piece of chalk, to a room full of blue people.
- Chris and his little boy pushing BBIBH’s vintage Axiom speakers down to the QA centre (the little boy part in this picture is being played by BBIBH).
- Chat with Ian about my first factory tour and my friend coming up later that day and his ‘wedding gift’ M40s
- Conversation with Alan about the choice of listening music being selected all morning (I will never listen to the Eagles – Hotel California EVER, AGAIN…Tom had it right; a Big Lebowski moment!), and,
- The people
Ok so now you’ve got me sobbing.
My thoughts on the DBT, pretty much the same as I read in the other thread posted on the subject; however, I will say a few things:
The listening room needs work. 
Axiom knows this and they are presently addressing it by building a new room.
The left and right shifting of the sound during A/B switching was in itself a “difference” and I think this should be removed from the testing. Single speakers in mono, sitting at a distance of 15 feet or more will remove this issue. The concept of mono usage vs. stereo was suggested to me from Alan years back when I first started switching in house during equipment comparisons.
I’ve tested that setup and it works very well.
The A/C unit in the room made whooshing noises which made it hard to listen to quite passages and of course the general background noise of the factory is an issue as well.
Lastly, I actually don’t like the switcher. I found it slow to react and not instantaneous enough to flip back and forth. An actual switch instead of a button and IR system I think would be quicker (and again, I’ve tested this and instantaneous is the word to use).
There are more discussions on the DBT that are endless. Incidentally, I was one of the minority that chose the B&W Nautilus 805s over the M3s. I didn’t like the M3 bass hump and found the vocals more recessed. The M3 sounded edgy at higher SPL.
Both marked similarly close overall which is the key message to take home in the end.
Continued...
