Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo New proud owner of a pair of M60ti...

Hi JamieG and everyone,

It's no surprise to me that JaimeG's speakers sounded bright because of the tile floors and concrete walls of his room: the reflected high-frequency energy would be quite intense. But that's a product of the room, not the speakers!

Most speaker engineers--and that includes Ian Colquhoun, of Axiom--aim for a design that yields a balanced combination of bass, midrange and treble in a normally furnished room. The listening room at the National Research Council has a carpeted floor, bookcases and draperies along the shorter wall, with upholstered chairs and furniture. And the room at the Axiom plant is very similar. The M60ti's sound smooth and balanced in those rooms and will perform similarly in most people's furnished rooms--with no need of resistors installed on the tweeter to make the speaker less linear.

When you install resistors on the tweeter, you are changing the performance of the speaker. In effect, you are rolling off the upper octaves by a few decibels, altering the smooth response that's engineered into the speaker. It will be less articulate and detailed with the resistors installed.

So think about the room--the forgotten component--which you are using the speakers in and what you can do to it to make it more "typical" before you rush to change a speaker's carefully engineered response by tweaking it with resistors. For instance, I would not want to see resistors installed on the M22ti or the M2i. The response of both those models in a normal room is ideal, and will only be compromised by installing resistors.

A more productive approach would be to furnish the room with a normal combination of absorbent and reflective furnishings. Likewise, it isn't the duty of a speaker designer to adjust the performance of a speaker to compensate for badly engineered recordings--and there are plenty of those around. Just a few things to consider about music reproduction at home. . .

Regards,

Hi Alan

I think you have brought up a good point and although Joe is sending a set of resistors out to me , my plans are to do some work on my basement and try to get the room right. l guess for me the resistors will be a last resort type of thing.

Cheers!
Allan

And. id like to mention if you havent gotten alot of hours on the speakers yet they probbly need more break in. I got my pair of M80's on jan 2nd and lastnight i left them on with a cd on repeat at low volume and today when i popped in a cd. wow the highs and vocals were soooo smooth. unbelieveable.

I agree with you Alan, the room has lots to do with the sound. Actually, I move here to my apartment 3 years ago, when I listen to my stereo system I notice a big difference in the sound; it was exactly the same equipment, only difference was the room. With time I get used to the sound.

One 'interesting' story that happen last week : I went to a high end audio store to listen to B&W speakers...The salesman told me if I want to audition the economy line or the high end line, we try the economy one first. It was a very nice audition room, don’t remember the tower model but it cost US1,500 (economy? ha!). I found them to sound very lifeless, I was not impressed at all. Then I told him to try the higher end model, when I enter the room I saw two monstrosities, they where huge and weird looking, like that 'LostInSpace' robot, I told the salesman ,wow, those should be a 10,000 dollars pair! he said no, they are 21,000 dollars pair! To my amazement they sound very similar to my M60s only 'bigger'. I bring my cds, I listening for half an hour, and no kidding they truly sound very similar to my M60. I told the salesman that I 'LOVE' ;-> those speakers, left the store with a grin in my face...
Jaime