Ken, your point is still valid. If that's the backlash for making a cosmetic change that minor, how much more freaked out are people going to be with an entirely new appearance? As for me, I think I would like a new look, as long as prices remained comparable and performance improved along with it. I'm sure Axiom will make the change when they can accomplish that.

I'm with solarrdadd. I bought Axiom's because of the great reviews they got from owners for the way they sound, not for their looks, which IMHO is better than a 4.

Yeah, pushing Ken's point a bit more...

There WOULD be a certain level of backlash against a redesigned enclosure. Imagine the people that are building their system piecemeal and find that their future speaker cabinets aren't even the same design as their older ones... that would likely be MUCH more of an issue than a dustcover color change.

Axiom might feel a need to have two lines available for a period of time, substantially increasing tooling costs.

And really, if the cabinet design is functional as it currently is, it might be better to lose an occasional customer who wants a cabinet with more pizazz than have to deal with all of the above...

Looks are very subjective. If they are reviewing speakers, I think it would be more appropriate for them to comment on the quality of construction, speaker binding posts, cabinet rigidity, and features (spikes, puckered gorilla rectum porting). If the reviewer was able to articulate short comings, or compare the Axes to some other similarly priced speakers then we'd have an opinion which is more valuable than a naked and unilluminating conclusion.

I was thinking much along those lines too, Mark.

I agree, 2x6. I know a lot of speakers out there now have nifty plastic flanges and accents, but I can't imagine those really add to anything but cost.

Really. Does anyone actually think that B $ W's look good? (They should ditch the ampersand and use a cash sign instead.)

That karaoke microphone tucked into a shellaced gourd never tugged at my emo strings.

There are speakers in the $15-20k range that look like sea shells, totems, plain ol' sq. boxes, obelisks, picture frames, curliques, ...

And for even $4-5k, some mfgrs. will still give you either vinyl or black only.

Not one of my architect, desinger, or artist friends has had anything but compliments for their visual presentation (in wood, ya cheap basterds, in wood).

Besides, I listen to them with my eyes closed anyway. And, at any price, shape, or finish, that's when their amazing disappearing act takes hold of me.

A '4', indeed! I wanna see his visual arts resume/experience, please.

Maybe it was 4 out of 4!?

None of us except the OP has even read the review. Except seen the scorecard. Its really hard to base an opinion of the review with only a snippet of the article. Design could mean many things including cosmetics like the cabinet and finish. Design could also relate to design philosophy and overall build quality - bracing, type of drivers, grilles, driver complement, crossover design, typology and quality of components used. Without reading the article and its context it is hard to form an opinion on what the rating 4 really stands for.

I subscribe to S&V but missed this review. Can you point me to which issue it was in, or a URL?