Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Bright, harsh, laid back, warm...very confusing

I haven't heard the Rockets myself but from owners comments it sounds as if the difference between the Rocket 1000 and the Axiom 80s is less than, say, between the Rocket 750s and either the 1000s or the M80s.

What makes it all so hard is that you are facing a wide range of good speaker suppliers, each of which "sounds perfect" to the lead designer, or at least as close to perfect as budget will permit. As a result, they do all sound a bit different.

Most of the differences seem to be related to the 3-6 Khz area. Many British speakers tone this frequency range down a bit (the so-called "BBC dip"), while most other speakers tend to be much flatter in this range.

For Home Theater use, there seems to be much less debate. Flat is good, and Axioms are pretty darned flat. For music there are far more debates, and far more passionate arguments in favour of one response curve over another.

The big complicating factor is that a lot of music is mixed for "typical consumer sound systems" ranging from car radios and boom boxes up to cheap stereos, and those recordings won't sound as good on a really flat speaker system. I think this is where most of the "bright" claims come from.

Really good recordings pretty much sound good on everything, and the Axioms will tend to show a bit more "detail" than most on a good recording (a Good Thing).

The main thing to keep in mind when reading reviews and listening to speakers is that this whole "bright" thing is an upper midrange issue, not treble. You can read reviews of speakers with "excellent treble" and they can still be dull in the midrange.

Some of the Paradigm Monitor line used to be like that -- really nice speakers with very good tweeters but kind of lifeless in the upper midrange, although I think this has been improved recently.

The room is a factor in the sense that a "too live" room will also emphasize the upper midrange, but keep in mind that if your room is too live your imaging is going to tend to suck and you're going to want to fix that anyways -- it doesn't take all that much to make a difference -- and once you fix the "too live" nature then the impact on speaker selection goes away.

It's good that you are thinking about the room up front, though. I am still convinced that the room characteristics make as much difference as the speakers when you are auditioning. It does get confusing... but keep in mind that you can't go *very* wrong no matter which speakers you get.