Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions speaker weight

I'm interested in your speakers for 50/50 HT/music set up. However, I have not had the chance to listen to them. I've read comments that your speakers are comparable to the Paradigm Reference line, which is very impressive, given the price differences.

I do have a question on the weight of your speakers: they seem "light weight" compared to the Paradigm's and most other "hi-end" speakers. I would've guess that a big speaker like your M80 would need a lot of internal bracing and thick cabinet walls to help control resonance. And all the drivers must weight quite a bit! Is it a different design principal at work here?

I don’t think I would classify any of our models to be "light weight" just due to the large motor assemblies we use in all models and components. The M22s and all the floor standing models also utilize thick cabinet walls. All the floor-standing models have wrap around internal bracing, the M80s having 3 of them. All of our models are an integrated design to be void of any cabinet resonance. We do not however make any of the models heavy just for the sake of being heavy.

Anonymous

IT has been my experience that the weight of the speaker does not make the speaker. Just listen to some Axioms and you will see for yourself..

besides, carrying them home from work (where I had them delivered) was tiring on the arms! They aren't really that light. The last of your concerns when buying a speaker should be its weight. Give a listen, and you will see!

hapy listening !

Weight is a by product of proper design principles. By building speakers and cabinets to eliminate or lessen the impact of the many problems inherent with building speaker assemblies, weight is accumulated. But there becomes a limit in terms of material cost, and effectiveness. You can make speaker cabinets from concrete, which would be very heavy....but would be an utter disaster sonically - cabinet ringing and resonance.

Many people also apply this "if it is heavy, it must be good" to amplifiers as well. Be cautious here as well, as it can be an indicator that proper design principles and materials were used in the manufacturing process. Something interesting about HT amps, and their weight. Many hifi amps weigh as much for 2 channels as HT amps for 5,6 or more channels. What does this indicate?

This should not be the sole factor in your decision.

Hmm, so here's something. In Robert Harley's he says (page 409) that putting lead shot bags on speakers is a good resonance trick. I'm thinking right now of piling 10-20kg of plastic bottles full of sand or something like that on my M80s to make them heavier and dampen them out (at very loud volumes [ahem, 95+ dB], espeically deep bass these babies start to resonante and I have a quiet ear-based suspiction that mid-range starts to brighten up then but I was too lazy to pick up a dB meter yet). Whole idea came up after I was blown by african drums rendition on Revels (I think F20s) at my dealer's that I knew my Axioms could never get same way [ahem, the Revels were $20K+ a pair ;-)]. The Revels were 200 pounds or so each ;-) Any comments ?

Switzerland ! Would love to visit there some day..
You bring up an interesting question.. Does additional weight applied to the speaker enclosure (internally or externally) add or detract from the speakers performance ??
If making the enclosure walls as solid as possible (no vibration) wouldn't holding the enclosure solidly on the floor increase it's performance in a positive way ?
I have asked Alan before about adding my own veneer to the M80 cabinet, and it's effect.. If I remember, he said that this would improve the cabinets performance, as each addtional layer of cabinet construction increases the stiffness of the walls.. This translates into less sound coloration by the cabinets vibrations.. A good thing..
Now, having said that, would hanging them in the air have just the opposite effect, as the entire cabinet would be allowed to vibrate ? Or, would you gain in hanging, by the fact that you can control the distance to adjacent surfaces, (walls/floor/ceiling) eliminating their effect on the sound waves emanating from the speaker ?

Hmm. Did you ever add your own veneer? Anyone? That might be pretty cool...

Hi prz,

There's no great challenge in designing great cost-is-no-object speakers at $20,000 per pair. Kevin Voecks is a good friend of mine who designs those Revel speakers, and they are excellent. Actually, Kevin's Revels are quite superior to those overpriced monoliths from Wilson Audio Specialties, many of which I've found disappointing.

But the real challenge is designing neutral, transparent speakers at $1,100 per pair, and the Axiom M80s meet those criteria with few liabilities. Try your resonance damping but just put the bottles full of sand on one of your M80s, then put up an acoustically transparent fabric in front and get someone to switch between them to see if you hear any difference.

Robert Harley is a nice guy, but attributes some of the most dramatic improvements in sound quality to things like AC line conditioners and cables. Doesn't that tell you something?

Regards,

Well, not to a speaker.. Yet... I have worked with the stuff on bath and kitchen cabinet remodels.. The trick, if there is one, is to do a very very good job.. Nothing looks worse than a sloppy veneer job, as the whole point it to make it look like it's made of something that it isn't.. .
It's the corner work that will kill ya..
I figured I could spiff up the look by adding something exotic to the sides only.. To bring some nice wood tones to that part of the room/system.. In no way am I doing this to change or alter the M80 sound.. I have no complaints there.. I love 'em..
And to amend my earlier statement of Alan's, he only said this would not hurt the speakers.. He did not say it would impove the sound, or, that any improvements in the sound were needed.. He was just answering a question on theory that I had presented.. I checked with him to be sure this would not hurt the speaker in any way..

Not something I'm willing to tackle just yet. I was just curious; it might improve the WAF factor.

"What? They're not real wood?" "No, they're, um... something else.... But they look real purdy!"

Hey, Alan, thanks for answer.

Funny you know the Revel-designer guy. Seems spekaer design companies are like my job, couple companies doing basically engineer recycling from a small pool of experienced guys ;-) I think after Axioms I'll try to sneak by my wife something like Revels and use the M80s for my home-theatre setup. Interesting you find them pretty good, I heard couple others ~20K and Revels stroke me as pretty outstanding bar some electrostats. Will be a hard choice between the two ;-)

As well, nothing against M80s, anything up to $8-10K I heard had a hard time to sound better and I'm _very_ happy with the purchase and glad I didn't go for high-end Alphas. I recommend the Axioms highly to anybody who can cope with a black, ugly cube. Actually, to be frank, I think you're missing in your line-up some smallish cubes to compete with someone like Bose. Most times I help people with sound with end up with the minicubes, size overrides sound quality often unless it's a dedicated hi-fi room.

As to your suggestion, yes, I'll take some fun out of the whole thing and do some blind testing to see whether there is a difference ;-) Right now my impression is there's a tradef-off, my soundstage is wider and more 'solid' but instrument placement smears a tad with aroiund 12kg on each M80.

Yes, Robert is surely a tad too-high-strung-refined for my abilities, budget and taste but I failed to find a more solid and accessible book than his. I think he's still a voice of reason and authority in this corner of the world and best source to explain the current (maybe incomplete sometimes) scientific thinking of what's going on in high-end sound. He surely reads his 'stereophile' as well ;-)

-- tony

WHAT black, ugly cubes? AFAIK, Axiom doesn't make any black, ugly cubes... And the M2s are already pretty darn small. If someone wants crap, let them buy Cambridge Soundworks or Bose. Preferably Cambreidge Soundworks...

Tony, perhaps Alan's comment on Bob Harley was a bit too subtle. His book is certainly "accessible", but "solid" or "scientific"? Hardly, and it's viewed with derision by audio engineers. Dr. Ken Pohlmann's book on digital audio certainly isn't as accessible, but also isn't a collection of audio voodoo.

Hey John, ok, thanks for the pointer, next thing to look up. I ment Harvey being 'solid' compared to much other stuff that I read in the sense that he takes time to explain terminology and his appendices are quite informative, solid introduction to the effects in audio. Gave me a good starting point. Of course I don't believe after fiddling around that power cables they make a difference, but guess what, my puresilver digital coax sounds better than groenberg I got originally, and I hear it in a blind test I discovered. So I don't disparage lots of Harvey's stuff easily, only after playing around with gear and seeing for myself whether I can hear a difference.

So let's see what Dr. Pohlmann has to say ;-)

So, got to test seriously the bottles-with-sand vs. none approach and guess what, no, I can't tell the difference, especially after I moved speakers much closer to back-wall to get more bass out of them (the bass was thin far of the wall, probably also my first generation TacT preamp).

The bottles went, now based on a hunch from someone who was very successfull with that, got thin cork plates, then 2" granite slabs (ouch, my back, I don't even want to think how to do blind testing with 30lbs under each speaker ;-), then M80s with rubber feet on top. Idea is not to try to weight the speaker to stop cabinet resonance but to perfectly decouple from floor. First impression is good, will do more testing and report.

Recently fell in love with some B&W 802s, what I heard with just ho-hum electronics (Marantz) behind them was very, very sweet compared to my setup, especially in mids. Bass is way better with my setup but I have tuned setup and they played it in a crappy room against walls.

So, that one went quick. Detectable improvement after blind testing, not absolutely dramatic but very pleasant. The soundstage went from a tad 2-D to much more depth, especially things like organs, jazz ensembles have much better depth placement of instruments. The other very noticable thing is that the decay of things like piano is much 'truer', tremollo and drastic stops are much more noticable. Only slightly noticable is that some edginess went out from Sses and Tes on female vocal, much less radical change than going to silver interconnects though. Almost no downside, maybe the instruments are not as clearly defined as before and some low bass is less pronounced (albeit I don't know whether I just had a room mode before that even TacT didn't get).

Anybody using spikes on carpet and wanting to drag heavy stone plates around should try this I would say but as usual, your mileage may vary. My setup was:
a) thin cork plates (about 10x10 inch)
b) about 1- 1 1/2 inch thick granite plates
c) Axiom rubber feet