Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Speaker advice needed for very "bright" rooms

I'll be ordering Axioms for two rooms, both of which are quite "bright," with hardwood floors, low ceilings, no rugs, no drapes, very little upholstered furniture.

I've read here that some find the more accurate Axioms, e.g. M22 and M60, to be on the "bright" side, while others don't experience this problem. I also know that resistors are available to moderate any perceived brightness.

Would I better off in these very hard-surfaced rooms to stick to M3's or M40's or something of that nature? Would the resistors likely solve any brightness problem if I went with M22's or M60's? Two-channel music at moderate listening levels is the main concern.

Thanks for any advice.

To be honest, I'd probably look at different speakers if I were in your position.

Any reason you can't add a rug and some drapes to the room?

Although I do not (yet) own an Axiom, but personally, I would imagin that very few high-quality speakers behave well in a room that "bright." I do not think trying to compensate for room acoustics by choosing an intentionally "laid-back" speaker is such a good idea, either. I agree that one should try to do something to the room first to reduce the level of acoustic reflections.

In fact, this reminded me a related question... I understand that, during the design process, Axiom speakers are intensively tested in a standardized listening room(s), which is furnished to represent "average" living rooms in modern North American homes. Could Alan or somebody give us a bit more detailed description for the testing room? (or is it a trade secret?) Things that I am curious to know include the size of the room(s); the surface materials used for the floor/wall/ceiling; approximate percentage of the floor/wall areas that are covered by fabric; furnitures in the room and thier upholstering etc...

Thanks!

That's a good idea Sushi.
Maybe Alan, Ian or Amie could post a picture of the Axiom 'standard' living room.
My guess is that it will look NOTHING like my own (papers all over the floor, dog hair, crazy wall paint, etc. etc. )

I'd be pretty interested to hear about it too.

Here's a couple of sites to take a look at..
www.foambymail.com
www.tubetrap.com
Both offer all sorts of sound absorbing products.. Both for high end and low end freq's, as well as everything in between..

It seems I inadvertently gave the wrong impression! This is not a booming racquetball court. There are many plants, books, dog and cat beds, etc. In fact, when these rooms were recently emptied for hardwood floor refinishing, I was struck by all the echoes and the great increase in loudness. These are simply rooms that, due to lack of carpeting and drapes, are relatively bright.

Rugs are not an option: companion animal illnesses lead to frequent accidents. Drapes are a possibility, but not my preference.

I have an old Mirage OM-1 speaker in one of the rooms which sounds quite nice (unfortunately the woofer surround on the other one rotted away), so it's possible to have good sound in here. I'm just wondering if "bright" spaces like this would get along with "bright" speakers.

More generally, I'd love to hear Alan's or Ian's thoughts on how room characteristics might reasonably affect speaker choice. The room—the "forgotten component"—clearly affects the perceived sound significantly. And many rooms simply don't conform to the "average" room used in loudspeaker tests. So it seems useful to ask how, if at all, one might want to adjust speaker choices to one's real-world environment.

On the other hand, Ian's posts seem to suggest that the differences between Axiom's "bright" and not so "bright" speakers are fairly subtle. So perhaps none of this matters much except to confirmed audiophiles.

Thanks again for any thoughts.

I certainly think you would be able to hear the character brightness of the Axioms over another type of more laid back speaker in your newly refurnished room ('audiophile' or not) and i definitely believe that the room you are portraying may not be very flattering for the Axiom speaker.

A friend of mine recently brought by a pair of Kefs which we put up against the M60s for comparison. I liked the Kefs (for sound, not looks) and the upper frequencies were definitely not as bright as the M60s. However i know that my present basement is not the permanent location for our system and that a larger, more filled out, better sonically designed room will eventually be the final resting place once we move.
Now i do consider my M60s bright and the room in which i have my system is not nearly as reflective as your own (judging by your description).
We have a thin carpet with concrete underneath (no subfloor). The walls are studded, drywall again with concrete behind. There are no curtains, but there is a drop ceiling making the ceiling height about 7 foot) and is covered by the insulated paneling.
In comparison with your room, i would say you will have alot more reflections.

Maybe this weekend, i will bring my system upstairs for trials in our living room. Only one couch, hardwood laminate flooring, no curtains, more wide open room, taller ceiling, regular stucco. Then perhaps i can try to estimate just how much different a room with more reflections would affect how i hear sound from the M60s. I'm curious to see if i find the Axiom speaker more bright than before or if its sonic character reflecting off the walls in that room would have made me choose a different speaker for our system had our tv been upstairs instead of the basement.

Hmm, now you've started me down another path of furniture moving and equipment lugging. My wife will be thrilled.


Alan did mention in a post not too long ago that the reference living room setup they use at Axiom seems to make the speaker sound smooth and balanced (or to me i interpret that as ' less bright than most people have reported'). This of course only goes to show, as you pointed out, how the mere furnishings, or any interior aspect of a room can actually make or break your decision on a speaker brand. Hopefully Alan will toss in some more comments or perhaps Amie can post a picture of this room so we can all take a look.

Hi all,

The listening room at the National Research Council in Ottawa isn't a trade secret. In fact, it's a standard IEC (International Electro-Technical Commission) listening room--and it's really boring to look at.

I'll get back to you on the exact dimensions (I have to go into my archives to find the dimensions) but it's rectangular, about 20 x 13 x 8 feet, and has a carpeted floor, draperies on tracks that can be moved around the shorter wall to simulate a set of window draperies (the room doesn't have windows). There are individual upholstered chairs for the listening panel, and bookcases along one section of a side wall and along the rear wall behind the listening area.

There are also large, ugly bass absorber baffles on a couple of the walls, which make the room less susceptible to standing waves and tend to even out bass response so that changing listening chairs doesn't result in "holes" in the bass that would unfairly bias listeners during speaker evaluations. (The panel members change listening chairs for each round of listening tests to average out room effects for the different chair locations.)

Regards,

Chesseroo, thanks for the input. I'd be very curious to hear how you like your M60's in your living room, which seems similar to my own and brighter than your basement room. Just tell your wife it's for me and she'll understand :-).

Alan didn't weigh in on my question, but judging from the earlier post of his that you referenced I gather he's an advocate of adjusting the room rather than the speaker. I see his point. But I do object to the notion that we should all somehow create "average" listening rooms if we want nice sound. I, for one, have no desire to live like an average American, with wall-to-wall carpeting, upholstered furniture, etc. Others will make different choices. But wouldn't it be nice if loudspeakers could somehow adjust to us instead of requiring us to adjust our living spaces to their design assumptions? Not an easy task, to be sure, but I would still like to know more about how room characteristics might reasonably affect speaker choices—e.g. M3 vs. M22 or M40 vs. M60.

Thanks again.

I think the intent on making an 'average' room is to test their product in a setting outside of the physical measuring rooms like the NRC anechoic chamber. Certainly many people in a home will have a window or perhaps light carpeting in their living space so i don't think the choice of those items is far fetched.
Of course there is no real definition of what is in an average joe's living room, so as Alan had mentioned in his post, they used some industry standard as a template for how they built it.
Of course they could build maybe one or two other similar rooms with slightly different furnishings such as hard floors and walls with less coverings to possibly similate a more extreme, or more bare listening area that may occur in some houses, such as yours and mine.
However, i think the company can only go so far before the number of listening rooms they could potentially build would be out of control. That being said, it still comes down to this, if the Axiom speaker is too bright for your living room (or perhaps any highly reflective room) after you give it an audition, then yes, perhaps the Axiom speaker choice should be re-evaluated against some other brands.
It would be much easier to choose another speaker brand than to have to refurnish your room around your speakers.

If i have time i will try my M60s upstairs this weekend.

You may also want to check out these reviews in which some ppl have auditioned several Axiom models:

randymans post

fhw posts

Hello chesseroo and wschwartz,

Actually, the room at the NRC served as the prototype for the eventual room adopted as the standardized listening room by the IEC, so acoustical researchers around the world could perform measurements in a listening room that had standardized reverberation times and consistent dimensions.

The IEC room at the NRC measures 22 x 13.5 x 9.2 feet (6.7 x 4.1 x 2.8 m) and has a hard ceiling. The reverberation time is 0.34 seconds +/-0.08 s, from 250 Hz to 4 kHz, rising to 0.8 s at 40 Hz and falling to 0.2 s at 10 kHz. The point of the decor was to create a room "in which the disposition of sound scattering and absorbing furnishings" was "typically domestic."

Obviously, a loudspeaker intended for the domestic market should be auditioned in a "typical" living room. Of course there will be variations in decor in individual rooms that will have acoustic flaws that will strongly characterize their sound, even to the point where the room's flaws will dominate the sound of the speaker. And that's very likely to occur in the room you've been discussing.

It's absurd to suggest that a speaker designer try to provide different models that cater to the whims of interior design at the outside of the bell curve. If you want to live in a spartan room with highly reflective surfaces and little absorption, then you will have to accept the compromises in sound reproduction that result. Indeed, live instruments played in such a room can sound harsh and strident. It's why such attention is paid to the reflective and absorbent surfaces in various concert halls.

Regards,

Here is the web page for NRC's IEC-standard room, with a nice photo depicting a blind listening session.

http://ims-ism.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/asp/list_room_e.html

Thanks for the info, Alan!

Dear Alan,

I did not mean to suggest that speaker designers should create different models for the infinite "whims" of home furnishing and decor. My main concern was whether or not it makes sense to choose a less bright speaker for a relatively bright room—e.g., choosing the M40 over the M60. I'm still curious if you think that makes any sense.

I did pose the question of whether speaker designers could help match their creations to the real-world homes in which they will perform their duties—homes which will not always match the "typically domestic" specifications of a reference listening room. I submit that perhaps you are doing that already, at a very simple level, by offering resistors to change your speakers' characteristics to better match their owners' living spaces and preferences. I wonder if there will be more sophisticated ways to approach this problem in the future.

The nature of the "average" listening environment varies across cultures and history. I predict that the more "spartan" choices of mine and Chessaroo's will become more prevalent as awareness increases of indoor air quality problems associated with carpeting, heavy dust-collecting drapes, and the like. I don't think I am at an extreme of the bell curve in preferring hardwood floors and blinds. I would expect that as interior design choices evolve, so will loudspeaker design, and much else as well.

I do appreciate your point that taken to an extreme, hard-surfaced living environments may be virtually incompatible with enjoyable music—whether recorded or live. As I mentioned above, I was struck by the harsh, reverberant sound qualities of my own home when I emptied it for the floor refinishers; no speaker could sound pleasing in there!

I don't think my living space—filled with plants, books, soft furniture and animal beds, etc.—is incompatible with nice sound. If it is, I'm certainly not above hanging some curtains (though I doubt I'll ever match the absorbent qualities of your carpeted, drape-equipped reference room). At the moment, I'm just trying to figure out which Axiom speakers to buy.

Thanks for any thoughts.

Hi wschwartz,

I may have been a bit dismissive in my response; my apologies. Actually, the M22ti and M80ti are perhaps the most linear Axiom models--smooth and flat--in anechoic chamber measurements, through the upper bass, midrange, and upper octaves. As such, the reflective/absorptive character of a given room will "shape" their tonal character more than some other Axiom models.

It's a tough call as to what to recommend. My instinct is to always suggest the speaker with the smoothest and most linear frequency response, leaving the customer to make adjustments to his or her room. Equalization or even simple bass and treble controls are not a sonic cure-all for overly bright rooms. As a compromise, you might consider the M50ti's which have more midrange detail than the M40s, but they are not as linear as the 60s, 80s, or M22's.

Some years ago there were attempts by a consortium of several Canadian speaker companies (it was called the Athena Project) along with the NRC, to make the ultimate so-called "smart speaker"; active speakers with elaborate automatic digital EQ measurement and adjustment circuitry. The results were less than ideal, in part because the resulting equalization only worked for one precise listening location. As soon as you shifted position, the digital EQ no longer applied. (this is an oversimplification). You had to go through the whole procedure again. It was not commercially feasible, plus there has always been an historical reluctance on the part of consumers to buy active loudspeakers (except for subs), so these projects were abandoned, perhaps prematurely.

But, in your situation, the M50ti may be a reasonable compromise. I just finished a day of comparative A/B listening tests at the Axiom plant, using the M22ti, M60ti and M80ti as anchors for all the comparisons. During the M50 comparisons, I recall thinking, "the M50 would be ideal for someone worried about an overly bright room, but who still wants some midrange clarity. . ."

Regards,

So where's all the blind people?
You mean they are not actually blind-folded?

Dear Alan,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I love the idea of the active "smart" speaker that adjusts to the user rather than requiring the user adjust to it. But I can see that this is no easy task. Maybe one day someone will figure out how to make and market something along these lines that truly integrates the "forgotten component."

In the meantime, you will be happy to hear that I am taking to heart your suggestion to seek a better balance of soft and hard surfaces in the listening and living spaces. I've got too many animal companions with unpredictable bodily functions to go for rugs. But I have initiated inquiries about curtains with my quite shocked significant other. I'm not sure what else might help. Any suggestions are welcome. The forgotten component may turn out to be the most expensive one!

I've never much liked the current speakers in my living room, an old pair of Cambridge SoundWorks Ensemble II three-piece sub-sats, despite the rave reviews they received from Julian Hirsch and others when they appeared. I believe that whatever Axioms I choose will be much better, but I now wonder if some of my complaints (e.g., a sense of nerve-grating, tinny harshness), may indeed reflect the room more than the speakers.

I am planning to order a set of M3ti's, which will work well I think in my very small home office. I'll see how these sound in the larger room and based on the experience gained hopefully get a sense of whether more linear, and potentially brighter, Axioms would be feasible. The M50's are an intriguing suggestion.

The M3's, when permanently installed in the office, will have to be wall-mounted. Can you give us any sense of when the Axiom "Full Metal Bracket" might become available?

Thanks again.

wschwartz: How about some decorative rugs hung on the wall? I do not know much about your taste, but I believe there are a huge variety of designs available from classical Persian to art-deco to post-modern to abstract.

Alan: I do not know the details of the Athena Project, so I may be off the point. But I think the most logical stage to do room-equalization, if any, would be within the digital domain of the electronics, simply because that way you do not have to introduce additional A/D and D/A conversions. In that sense, I do understand the consumers' reluctance for "active" or "digital" loudspeakers. I can also readily imagine the enormous difficulty in obtaining a reasonable "compromise" among the significantly different EQ settings each optimized at different listening positions within the same room. But I would bet somebody will sooner or later come up with products incorporating this line of ideas, given the low cost and huge flexibility of processing signals in today's digital audio circuits...

Cheers!