Hey, can anyone on this Forum tell me about this Website? I stumbled across it yesterday. It seems to be a Company that modifies speakers. But, the article/review of the Axiom M80v3 that I read was not very positive.
They described the M80 speakers as not being worth investing the time/money to modify.
Wow, I didn't know my hearing was so bad that I couildn't hear the poor quality for myself.


My bad, it's called Skiing Ninja
thanks
Jeff

Oh lord, I thought we'd buried that stinking corpse of a dead horse.

Do a search on the forums if you want more info.

the guy was frustrated that Axiom tested his x-over and they found it was not as good as the built-in one. so Axiom refused to use that "custom" x-over.

I think he is called Sean Parque. He used to work AV123. Last time I heard, he was trying to make a living "upgrading" various types of speakers with "better" crossovers, damping, etc.

He has a $329 power cable for sale on his website.

He's an Axiom hater, for sure.

For my own part, I met him at an Audioholics GTG in Oregon a couple years ago and tried to personally apologize for past transgressions. He totally blew me off.

I think Skiing Ninja is (another) audio snake oil boutique.

This guy seems to be a 'Legend in his own Mind'.

Unfortunately this kind of crap remains on the net forever & keeps being dredged up over & over. Sad actually, as it can be very damaging to individuals & companies alike - one of the negative aspects of the net...

TAM

Sounds like you guys have summed it up very well for those of us not in the know.

Tom, there's nothing like a personal meeting to confirm our online impressions, eh?

So THAT'S why Tom won't meet with me again!

"No beer for you!" said the Beer Nazi.

Interesting side-story, Tom. Too bad he didn't show the same class you extended to him.

The dumb ass ninja has no clue what he is talking about, or the design of a crossover for that matter. If you read reviews from reputable Audio Review websites or magezines you will find countless positive reviews of Axiom products going back to the beginning, 30yrs, long before skiing jumbotron was born.

I remember reading a while back that he took one of his expensive, cables - power cable or speaker wire, I can't remember - over to a friend's system. With his magic cable, the owner was absolutely 'floored' by the improvement in sound, akin to having a 'new amplifier' in the system or some BS like that.

It was the worst case of 'placebo effect' that I've heard of...

TAM

This thread reminded me of the esoteric wiring I received.I was given a 3 metre set of expensive rca phono cables. They came with some literature that outlined the break in and went on and on about how they would sound good initially then after X hours they would sound worse and then better and so on until after 300 hrs or some such horse hockey.<< how the hell would I remember what the hell things sounded like from the time of purchase and the 300 hr mark , seriously. I've used some pretty crappy wire over the years and even when I replaced the small so called inferior wire (which was often 2 or 3 pieces twisted together) I heard no difference. Seriously at what point in the chain does the wire become insignificant. If I put high grade wire from receiver to speakers but don't upgrade the wire inside the speaker then how have I made an improvement. These guys are just selling snake oil, and preying on the gullible imho. You could probably blind fold me and change my speakers and I would be hard pressed to tell

This is the never ending debate about cables and the money spent on them, most often quite needlessly. I have a friend who has managed a mid-high end A/V store for over 16 years and he always makes a point of reminding me that the expensive cables they sell compared to any other products in the store provide them by a country mile, with their largest profit margins.

By the way, I can't believe that this Skiing Ninja clown is still in business. The last time I checked out his website which was quite awhile ago, none of the speaker companies that he does these so-called "upgrades" to endorse his product and more often than not, his changes void the warranty. I believe back a few years ago Axiom was on the list and I guess they told him to remove the name, hence, him being ticked off.

An update, I took the liberty of checking the website, strangely enough, the Axiom logo still appears, however, when you click on it it states "products no longer available.

He probably does something else for income, and uses the one mod he does each year as extra income and a way to make others think he's "in business" and an expert.

Jeff, ditto the above comments. This is one of the outfits polluting the audio industry which seeks to sell stuff like magic cables and to appeal to those who lust to tweak the untweakable.

Most of the Ninja's work was done on av123's speakers and those that followed him from there loved his changes from what I remember.

I did the one and only (as far as I know) Ninja upgrade to my M22's and they did indeed change the sound(no surprise), but I didn't think it was better, it was simply different, not my cup of tea as they say. According to Sean the new crossover point was moved farther up the FR to reduce ringing on the 5 1/4 drivers and so on, he was all about the measurements. Once I was done with the XO's I pulled them out and sent them to Ian for his impressions, measurements etc. I am sure my original postings about this experiment are still kicking around here. I still have the crossovers out in my garage storage bins. I want to make some speakers one day to use them in.

Personally I thought the ninja was just having some fun playing around with the crossovers and making some already good sounding designs sound/measure better to himself and his help, all the while hoping to make a business out of it. I saw nothing wrong with his desire to make these changes but also felt he had some questionable/unprofessional dealing/tactics/episodes online.

As with other companies that claim upgrades make an audible improvement in sound, I have looked on these sites such as "Ninja's" and with these alleged better crossovers and costs to do them often exceeding $500, I can't help but keep asking the same question over and over again, if one wants better performance, why not just apply this money toward better speakers?

Then Ninja will try to convince you that your "better" speakers are also not that good, but for a small fee...

That is kind of the idea, you are making your speakers better by installing brand X crossover (or whatever upgrade)and hopefully achieving the perfect, or at least better sound for less than the next actual "better" speaker ie. I can't afford Paradigm S8's but I could afford $1000 upgrade to my M80s if they gave me nearly the same sound. Kind of like adding performance parts to a car, yes they make a difference, but is it actually better? If it measured better on the dyno then it must be better (ok, not quite the same but hopefully you get the idea). Those crossovers I tried measured better on the graphs but to MY ears they were not better, just different.

Going back to the performance parts, why put them on, why not just buy a better performing car? People like to play and tweak. People like/need to make money, other people marry these things together and produce various products for others to spend money on so they can tweak, not all products out there actually improve performance, as they say..... buyer beware.

I never had a problem with the philosophy of what he was doing; it was the WAY he did it. Somehow, everything was trash until his genius improved it.

A legend in his own mind, and everyone who didn't agree was an idiot.

I have zero idea how good his tweaking ideas were, his people skills absolutely suck.

Jason's point above is interesting:

I find that it's possible as this dovetails with Ian's philosophy of A/B testing for the sound that people prefer. Maybe Ninja really COULD produce a crossover that measures better. But Ian's exhaustive A/B testing shows that his designs are preferred in controlled listening tests.... and that people have a tendency to choose accuracy in such tests.

Just getting philosophical before my coffee, In the end, I love my Axioms and wouldn't pay a quarter to let someone try to "improve" them!

I am going to nominate this for the best phrase of the year.... Classic!

Mike, I appreciate your nomination. What irritated me during the long hours I spent composing it was the insistence of Google Spell Check that "untweakable" wasn't a word! Although it's been said that only God knows more than Google(and that Google is planning to fix that), clearly there are gaps in its omniscience.