Casey1,
You bring up some excellent points that are major Axiom differentiators: the constant drive for better overall performance and the ability to customize your products to your own liking. Overwhelmingly people see these differentiators as positives, though there is the odd one who twists it into a negative, generally on the presumption that other companies don’t do this so it must be negative.
Our quest for continuous improvements covers all kinds of performance and production details. But by far the most concentration is on the family of curves. The down side to the family of curves is its lack of sex appeal; the upside is this is where the largest improvements to sound quality can be made.
Adjustments to the family of curves rarely have any sort of visual product change associated with them, like a new fancy cone material or outer cabinet change. Besides driving marketing people crazy, this lack of visual changes can lead one to surmise that the individual models are not changing much in performance over the years. But this is not the case. Hearing is believing.
The family of curves is a rarely-discussed aspect of loudspeaker design, even though it is where the largest performance gains can be made. In a simple small bookshelf speaker there are around 60 different curves to consider in the design process. For large multi-driver towers there can be over 180. By far the vast majority of our double blind listen testing is related to determining improvements that can be made with small changes to the family of curves.
The other problem with the family of curves is it is a difficult - and for most impossible - mishmash of data to make sense of. Meaning it lacks any easy-to-point-to visual talking points. To add insult to injury on this visual front it is the hard-to-see-in-the-curves low Q stuff, not the easy to see high Q stuff, which matters the most. The LFR1100 with its independent control of the front and rear radiation patterns gives us even more control over the family of curves; this is what allowed us to create that really large and seductive soundstage that makes the LFR1100 so addictive to listen to.
As for individual customization it really involves two key factors; that you manufacture the product yourself and that you do it here. Customization is really out of the question if you are OEMing your products, especially if the manufacturing is done offshore. We also had to reconfigure our factory to accommodate both regular production and unique built-to-order production. Another factor is the distribution method. On-line direct is conducive to customization. Since that is how we do our distribution then we should apply all the advantages we can to increasing our customer experience. Customization is fun too, it allows you to make your product absolutely unique if you want and adds the flexibility to only purchase what matters to you. These are some pretty big positives.
