These comments about bright, harsh, ear bleeding, etc. are a bunch of bologna, and it is a broken record that holds no factual basis.
The reason some find them to be bright is not the speakers, it is the CD's they listen to that have been recorded poorly by the engineers, or the home made compressed mp3 files at low bitrates.
There was a time where "bright" was a good thing. It meant the speakers were true to the original recording designed by the engineer. Don't you want to hear the music as it was intended, instead of some of these brands the muffle the sound. Many call these "laid back" sounding.
Axiom speakers will faithfully reproduce the music to which you are listening. So garbage in is garbage out, that is not the speakers fault. If you pop something in that is a greatly recorded, your jaw will hit the floor, or you'll start to cry on how good it will sound with Axioms.
There are a lot of great speaker brands on the market, and I've owned many of them, however, there is no reason to believe Axiom should be defined on those ways.
