Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler IOnline shopping: who are you really buy from

Yeah, I'm guessing it was around 2006ish.

Definitely. It got to the point were I didn't want to listen to it anymore. I was focusing on the negative aspects of the speaker instead of enjoying the sound. The new crossover alleviated those issues.

This all brings up another thing that always bothered me about AV123’s business model which was the shear number of different offerings, and redesigns. Nice to have variety but it got hard to keep track of all of them. Seemed to work for them but I was always baffled.

But then I get pissed when shoe companies have to redesign their running shoes every year and I have to go through the real pain of figuring out which ones suck this time around when my previous years stock runs out. I think this year I’m just going to bite the bullet and order about 5 pair of this years Air Pegasus 10 Brooks Cascadia 5s (they are heavenly) right now. Might last me 2 years if I’m careful.

The new crossover became available for sale around Jan/Feb 2007. I bought and installed it soon after.

I agree with you there. So many different designs, some only lasted a few months before being taken off the market.

Then there were a lot of designs that were shown to us in sketches but never materialized. Subwoofers like the BMF and X-Plosive? Center speakers like Ref200 and RSC500(bigfoot's oversized brother)?

I hate to admit but I think it was just a ploy to keep us hanging around so we didn't spend our money elsewhere with other companies. It was fun knowing what was in the works but when nothing came to fruition it caused a lot anger, disappointment, and frustration. It would have been better not knowing of any new products until they were in the warehouse in Colorado.

Really? After that 750 review I never saw any other AV123 measurements published. The Strata Mini's, which were supposed to be a cut above the Rockets, were the only other measurments I could find. I suspected that was deliberate.
Soundstage measurements of the Strata-Mini
I expect the midrange hump from 150 Hz to 2Khz was deliberate and designed to give the speakers a richer sound. The overwhelming majority of AV123 supporters described this as a neutral sound.

Look at the off axis response of the tweeter. It does not compare well to most of the better regarded speakers out there and would negatively impact the soundstage/imaging.

There is also a sharp dip at around 5KHz that may be crossover related. I don't know enough to know if that would be audible though.

Lastly, the distortion measurements are higher than many other speakers measured and would have an audible impact on clarity: another touted feature of the Strata-Mini.

All in all, the hype on these speakers did not match the measurements. I doubt it does for the Rockets.

On sale, the Rockets were probably a good value. Decent sound, great looks. Given the cost of veneer and the effort involved in the process, I bet AV123 did not make any money at the sale price though.

Bernard Madoff is a great case study of this sort of thing. If you ever can see a special on him, watch it. Lots to learn about human psychology. Different industry but similar in some instances.

Here you go

Yeah, I don't really want to become familiar with the back of your hand.

True...

Very few have lived to tell about it.