Nor have I said in the post you are quoting that I heard it with music. Please reread.
I'd love to see those anechoic measurements at 0 15 30 and 45, though.
Re why Axiom would develop a flawed center: for marketing reasons. It's tough to develop a 3-way center and have it fit under or above a TV. 2-way centers were developed for marketing and not best sonic performance reasons. If you go out a little more (outside of this forum) and read some of the center channel tests done by SGHT among others you'll actually see what I'm talking about. Two way designs with HUGE suckouts off axis.
Re the suckout, it has to do with wavelengths and driver interference. I posted the question about pink noise and driver interference on the Lexicon forum (describing my measurement results) and here are some of their comments:
"I just checked that website.... the driver layout of that speaker is going to cause all sorts of interference problems in the area the tweeters operate in. Wether or not it also does this in the woofers will depend on where they cross over. Since this is a two way speaker I'm sure the woofers are be driven very far into the region where they are comb filtering between them. They would need to be crossed over probably around 300-400hz or lower to avoid most problems. They are instead probably being run into the 2-3kHz range."
and
"The NHT Evolution series are really smartly designed, and takes into consideration these dispersion issues. I'm not surprised that you liked them. I was very shocked to see the configuration of the Axoim center channel. I don't even know what the designer was thinking. It's possible that the dispersion of the tweeters are very narrow so they don't interact very much, but this would then imply other serious problems elsewhere. The designer may have access to NRC's facilities, but a tool is only as good as its user, and for something as complicated as speaker design, many tools often lay out booby traps for their users."
Now maybe Ian is on to something, but it certainly is not a driver layout that is supported by generally accepted loudspeaker design theory.
You seem to think I have an agenda. What do you think it is? I certainly think you have an agenda: to justify your purchase and defend it against any criticism. More power to you. I am happy you like the VP150. Again, I wish I could have. I ordered the VP150 because I was thinking about moving to an Axiom system. As I stated way back when: I like to change every year or so. Variety is the spice of life, I feel. (Not in women, I've been happily married for 25 years). And I was very, very impressed with the M2i. If I could have loved the VP150, I'd be grooving to a complete Axiom setup this very instant. Unfortunately, the anomalies I heard (and measured) made it a non-starter for me. Again, if this is such a great driver layout, how come no other manufacturer has picked up on it? I think it has to do with loudspeaker design theory. What do you think?
