Thanks, spiffnme, for posting your review. It is very nice to have a comment on the "neutrality" of the Axioms (and Ascends) from a recording engineer, who I guess knows something about neutral/accurate sounds!
I dare not post this on the AVSforum
, but I do have to agree that the Rocket sound is way too laid-back to my taste. Perhaps they do well on some of those "hot" rock/pop recordings. But when I listened (only briefly) to the Rockets with some of my favorate classical music CDs, I got the "back-seat-at-the-fifth-floor-of-a-large-concert-hall-looking-down-the-far-away-orchestra" type of sound, which I simply do not like even for casual listenings.
Talking about classical music recordings, thank God very few of today's classical CDs are tuned "hot" or anything -- most of them are neutral. I do remember, though, that toward the end of the analog recording era, quite a few classical records were heavily colored and "hot." I cannot stand them now.
