Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Axiom speakers for classical music?

Hi folks!

It looks like quite a few people here are classical music fans. I listen mostly (but certainly not exclusively) to classical music, including orchestral, chamber and vocal genres.

I would like to hear about your personal assessments on the Axiom speakers specifically for listening to classical music. All positive and negative comments are welcome, especially those comparative to other reputable brands. How do they behave either in the traditional stereo or matrix multi-channel (e.g., DPL II) setups?

Thanks!

If you're a fan of brass heavy classical, prepare to be amazed.

Sushi, my own music listening is essentially classical only. On occasion I borrow pop CDs to check reports of poor recording quality, which often turned out to be accurate. All music should benefit from speakers which have very wide frequency response, wide dispersion and low distortion; classical music doesn't have any unique requirements. If a significant part of your listening includes low organ notes, you would want main speakers and/or a sub with very extended bass response.

I use M22s in a stereo setup without a sub for much of my classical listening. As I've said before, the mid-range and treble are extraordinarily accurate and are as good as any speakers I've heard, regardless of price. In-room bass response is usable down to about 40hz, as determined from a test-tone CD, and is good enough for nearly all recordings. A sub would be required for the lowest(20-40hz)octave of bass.

This very accuracy has resulted in some complaints of "brightness" or even "harshness" about Axioms, but I've established to my satisfaction that this occurs only on poorly recorded pop items with a pumped-up mid-range and/or treble designed to be more impressive on mediocre equipment. For well-recorded performances the Axiom M2, M22, M60 and M80, depending on your needs, will give you exceptional performance at a very reasonable price.

I have to agree highly with JohnK here, especially his last paragraph.

Just yesterday i pulled out one of my wife's James Taylor Live cds. Unlike many other mainstream recordings i have, James Taylor was sounding smooth, accurate and sweet. No harshness, no brightness, just a really beautiful sound. It was probably one of the most impressive recordings i've heard yet, beyond Diana Krall and beyond Patricia Barber, but perhaps this is due to my preference for a particular type of voice over another.

In any event, the classical acoustic guitar was simply excellent. The recording style makes all the difference.

Thanks guys for your responses...

Semi On: Yes, I like very much the brass sound of the Chicago Symphony in the good ol' Solti era, as well as the Philly Symphony when they were with Eugene Ormandy -- those brasses that are simultaneously brilliant and heavy-duty. Also, in honor of the folks who are living in the north of the border, I am a big fan of Canadian Brass. I had a chance to go to their recital a couple of years ago; they are not only technically and musically superb, but so hilarious and entertaining on stage! A trait you rarely found in classical artists.

JohnK: It is very nice to know that one of the most knowledgeable, informed and eloquent participants on this board is also a classical music fan. While I entirely agree with you that there is no unique requirements for the accurate reproduction of classical music, I cannot 100% convince myself only with reviews/comments that do not mention classical music. This is simply because I realize that I myself have a much broader tolerance on sound quality when I listen to pop/rock genres. I know this also reflects my personal bias, but to me classical music tends to test the speakers in a most critical, unforgiving way, perhaps in part because its all-acoustic nature. I just feel much more assured when somebody says that the speakers sound great on classical music, too.

chesseroo: I too agree on your general points. My own assessment has been that there are definitely fewer recordings in classical music CDs (as compared with other music genres) that are "hot" or intentionally EQ'ed, as long as you select from reputable labeles. Again, this probably relates to the fact that classical music is mostly 100% acoustic, so the audience has a "golden standard" so to speak, for what they should regard as the "right" sound, which is of couse the sound you hear in live concerts where they usually use zero electronics.

Well, your posts make me even more anxious to listen to the Axioms...

Someday, some kind of speakers will be able to accurately reproduce the sound of a symphony orchestra. I've never heard it done, yet. Of course there are some $100,000 speakers out there, (I've never heard any such thing myself) but they'd have to move a lot of air to sound like an orchestra.

I agree, 2x6spds.

And the challenge comes in part from the enormous difficulty in reproducing the stunning ambience and auditory atmosphere of a carefully designed concert hall, or perhaps that of a 16th-century ball room for baroque orchestras.

Personally, I am optimistic that technologies like the DPL II will help on that aspect, and this has been one of my motivations to upgrade my stereo to a 5.1 setup. Am I erring on this thought? I know there are many people who would never listen to 2-ch materials via anything other than the straight stereo mode. Do things like DPL II and neo:6 more often degrade rather than enhance the sound quality and listening experience of 2-ch recordings?

Hi Sushi

I have one HT/music system driven by a Toshiba SD9200 DVD Audio player and another by a Philips SACD 1000. These multi channel (direct) formats are pretty dramatic and work especially well for rock, blues, celtic faery folk. I haven't found any classical orchestral multichannel recordings which work for me.

For kicking back and enjoying music, my favorite is a 5 watt per channel tube amp driving a pair of M50 like speakers and an 8" Velodyne sub (just received my partsexpress.com Vance Dickason 10" Titanic Subwoofer kit which I will swap for the Velodyne this week end). This system is sourced by an Ah! Njoe Tjoeb tube output CD player. Enormous soundstage, high and wide, beautiful, beautiful music. Getz/Jobim's CD sounds like someone is singing in my living room. Jazz? Sounds pretty darn realistic. But orchestral/symphonic music? Nice to listen to but no mistaking it for the real thing.

Maybe someday!

Sushi, although the majority of the time I listen to CDs on my stereo setup, I think that the better surround processing modes(CSII, DPLII, Logic7)make for interesting listening on occasion. I don't know if that's enough reason in itself to go multi-channel if you're not much into movies, but you could take a CD or two to a local shop to sample the ambience effects.

Sushi, do you live in Southern California? If you do, I'd be glad to audition these systems for you.

As far as I can see on amazon.com and other places, DVD-Audio and SACD are far from coming to age when it comes to classical music. Yes there are some titles released, but many seem almost like an "experimental" recording with relatively obscure artists. Even those few titles with reputable artists tend not to be one of the artist's best performances. Selection seems so restricted that you have to buy them for the sake of experiencing a native surround-sound recording, rather than to enjoy your favorite artists' musical interpretation and performance. I am not one of those "audiophile" people who are more interested in improving the sound quality of one's equipment than the contents of the music itself. Rather, I am one of those wacky folks who opens and follows the orchestral full score while listening to symphonies. LOL

John, I just recently did that in one of my local hi-fi/HT stores. The 5.1 system seemed to be well calibrated. Unfortunately, however, I did not like the speakers (Infinities) they happened to demo in that room at all. But still I did very much enjoy one of my favorite recordings of Mahler's #8 "Symphony for one thousand" (a Denon recording with Eliafu Inbal conducting Frankfurt Radio Symphony). That experience certainly reinforced my motivation to go for a 5.1 system.

That said, of course my (our ) major reason for 5.1 is movies! Also, I have a rather large collection of classical music video DVDs and LDs, some of which are truly outstanding. I plan to buy a front projector as well in the near future. (now talk about WAF and KAF... )

2x6,

Sorry, as I posted in another thread, I live in Dallas, TX.

I'm with JohnK on sticking with stereo for CD's. I find DPLII puts too much of the sound into the center channel. Stereo recordings were meant to be listened to in stereo. 5 Channel Stereo, however, is great for parties. VERY loud!

I actually saw a program on discovery channel not too long ago about a person who was experimenting with sound.
One of the things they tried was to record the individual instruments from an orchestra and then setup a stage with platforms conforming to the location of each musical instrument. On each platform they placed a single speaker and then tried to replay the symphony essentially using a seperate source for each speaker which replayed the music.
It was an attempt at reproducing true live sound using home speaker equipment. I can't remember the rest of the details. I started falling asleep.

Sushi,
Once again i reply to your postings.

I typically use the DPL2 for music.
Although there are hardcore stereophiles out there, i find the DPL2:music (not DPL2:theatre) keeps the stereo sound up front but kicks in the surrounds just a bit in the rear to add the surround effect without being overbearing or collapsing the sound in any one direction. The surround sounds from certain recordings truly makes the sound image far more realistic to me.
I never use DPL2:theatre because i find it collapses the sound into the centre channel way too much.

I always considered myself a "stereophile"; I abhorred any sort of DSP for 2 channel music. All the salesmen kept telling me about DPLII and I just didn't care. But after I got my receiver, I listened to it, and I think it sounds great. I not a big classical listener, but I'd imagine that it would create a fantastic full sound for that live setting.

My M60s produce a pretty accurate center image in stereo mode anyhow, so switching to DPLII doesn't collapse things to the center as much as fill out the center even more.

Good to hear various opinions on DPL II... I took note of the importance of setting it correctly to the Music mode.

I am clearly inexperienced in surround sound systems, but what really impressed me at the store demo the other day was the reproduction of the hall ambience. I knew that the CD I brought for the demo contained a lot of indirect sounds (most classical concert halls are acoustically VERY live with a long decay time; I understand that unless you seat right in front of the stage, over 80% of what you hear in a typical symphonic concert is indirect sound!). I was amazed that all those reverbration sounds actually surrounded me rather than coming from the front. Moreover, the off-stage brass ensemble, which Mahler often uses in his symphonies, indeed sounded "remote" and indirect, clearly separate from the rest of the orchestra and chorus -- something I had never heard from this recording before.

This recording is certainly an extremely good one, but still it is a traditional 2-channel CD. I was stunned by the amount and quality of spacial ques that can be exracted from traditional 2-ch sourses by the latest incarnation of matrix decoding technologies.

Cheers!