Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners The Mother of All Posts, Part I

From your review:

As mentioned, I have found that there are good and bad recordings, and the Axioms make you very aware of that. [snip] Still, it's unfortunate that the discs I have aren't more uniform. Just a moment ago, as I'm writing this, I popped in U2s' "War", expecting thunderous beats from Larry Mullen, Jr. and I didn't get them. There really wasn't much punch to them at all. Again, I don't blame the Axioms (recent U2 releases sound much improved) my old speakers just never allowed me to hear how mediocre this CD sounded!

In my own time as a recording artist, we almost always mixed with an ear for the low end gear (i.e. radios and boomboxes). Indeed, we'd do a rough mix, make a CD, play it on three or four CD players, from high end to low end, and base all retweaking on how the low end sounded. As a general matter, we found that it sounded "least bad" across the spectrum of gear if we mixed to the lowest common denominator. If you mix for the high-end gear, it's hard to keep the mix from sounding muddy (esp. vocals) on the things that people listen to the most - boomboxes and, these days, little computer speakers. That was the justification, anyway, for having almost all of the EQing on the tracks push the mid-highs and highs, and to a lesser extent trim the lows.

Do I regret that decision now! All of our recordings sound seeringly bright (EDIT: on my axioms, I mean), with sibelance to break the band. Everything is clear, but the vocals are just piercing. Fortunately, I own the tapes and tracks, and I think I'm going to remix/remaster the material. I think had we had a better engineer in the first place (ours was good, but not great), we could have found a way to balance good sound for the boombox set and good clear sound sans sharp high end.

I'm not attempting to hijack your massive, impressive thread. I just thought I'd mention this - it happens, it's real. Mixing for the masses can lead to the kind of experience to which you refer, Mark. Indeed, I am not surprised to hear that your hi res experience with Aerosmith was "bright." They're a classic example of a band that does "mix for the masses."