Wheelz, I determined to my own satisfaction years ago that the "bright", "metallic", or whatever other similar characterization was applied lacked a solid factual basis. Although I listen to almost no pop CDs, I borrowed several from the library that a poster had described as "well-recorded" but sounding unacceptably harsh on M60s. On my M22s I heard some of what he'd described, but it appeared to me to be the result of the recording being somewhat over-prominent in the upper midrange/lower treble, possibly in order to sound more impressive on mediocre equipment. Tending to confirm this was the fact that when I applied a 4-5 DB cut centered at 4KHz on one of my receivers which had tone controls with variable turnover frequencies, the reproduction was significantly smoother. No such problem existed with any of my classical CDs which were in fact "well-recorded".
Although no speakers have the essentially perfect flatness in frequency response which is almost universal in players and receivers these days, the Axioms are certainly among the best in this regard and very accurately deliver what's given to them, good or bad.
