jefft,
Since you do not detect the particular distortion with the classical music, I doubt that your tweeters are defective. Most likely, the modern/rock/alternative CDs you listened to are recorded "hot," with intentionally boosted mid-highs and highs. The M22's are highly accurate speakers, which means that they depict a bad or tweaked recording as such.
In reply to:
Could this just be the speakers still needing breaking in? or do I have defective/blown tweeters? I guess another possibility is that I'm not used to the distorted guitar sound that are present in those rock CDs?
The loudspeakers (or any other audio components) do not need a break-in -- their response does not detectably change over time. What could change or be "broken-in" is, if any, the psycho-auditory processing in our own brain, as you have eluded. Equipment break-in is a wide-spread myth among those "audiophile" folks, period.
In reply to:
I guess one of the questions is- how do you tell when the tweeters are blown?
In this case, I would first check, using a good pair of headphones, the CDs with which you felt distortion. If the recordings sound the same (still "distorted") on headphones, then you can acquit the Axioms.
Cheers!
