Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Series 1 vs. series II

I think that would be due to so many people not knowing that the louder speaker will almost always be picked as the 'better' speaker. I know that the latest test of subs with Mojo, he had his EP600 calibrated higher than he thought and we never checked to see if it had changed, so the SVS was always sounding softer and lacked dynamic power, I was ready to send it back right away.

I think a lot of people, both "esoteric" speaker vendors and those who worship them, aren't big on quantifying the quality and performance of their wares, as that would invite easy comparisons, and someone out there selling $10,000 towers that don't sound as good as M80's is counting on intangibles to move product. Alternately, think of it as the same reason Bose phears any specs on their stuff being available.

Hi Fred,

Thanks. In the large body of research conducted by Dr Floyd Toole when he was the resident scientist (psycho-acoustician) at the National Research Council in Ottawa for 25 years (Axiom participated in this research starting back in the early 1980s), Floyd concluded after many years that the deviations that really mattered in terms of listeners making judgments between good and bad speakers all occurred in a fairly narrow band through the upper bass and midrange.

In the hundreds of speakers measured over the years (as an editor of AV magazines that did their measurements and double-blind tests at the NRC, I was part of the listening panels for many years), the speakers that were highly rated and whose measurements correlated with the high ratings, all had very smooth midrange frequency response within about 1.5 dB from the upper bass frequencies to about 4,000 Hz (this nicely supports the statement that "it's all in the midrange" in terms of speaker quality). Larger deviations at higher frequencies --8 kHz to 20 kHz--are not easily detectable or even readily audible with music programming. Of course, we can measure them with pink noise and test signals in anechoic chambers, but we do NOT express our preferences for "good" and "bad" speakers based on these upper octave anomalies when we listen to music.

It's also a function of the fact that human hearing is really peaked in the midrange for evolutionary reasons-- for speech intelligibility, of course, and to detect cracks of twigs etc in the forests and jungles to warn of attacks by predators and enemies. Moreover, contrary to what many audiophiles believe, the bulk of instrumental fundamental tones and important harmonics also occur largely in the midrange. Of course, bass response matters, but the deviations in bass may be more irregular and we won't downgrade the speaker until really gross peaks become audible (fat, boomy peaks). And the nuances of upper treble also contribute, but do not significantly alter our overall listening impressions of a speaker.

To sum up, if a speaker has really smooth, linear response through the midrange--and this only applies to speakers carefully measured in anechoic chambers, not casual or erratic measurements done in rooms--then it's very likely to be heard as an accurate and pleasing music reproducer in average rooms by most listeners with normal hearing.

There is much I've left out, but these conclusions, reached after 25 years of research, are what made Dr. Toole elected to president of the Audio Engineering Society world-wide. It is Canada's unique contribution to the advancement of speaker design and measurement, and how the resulting products correlate with listener perceptions in double-blind tests.

Regards,

Alan

Interesting, the way the vocals, brass, reeds, and strings sound are what I have noticed that I absolutely love best about the M80s v2--that's where the wow factor kicks in the most for me--and why I decided to order the rest of the epic 80 system.

Well, I'm really pleased you like that aspect of the M80 v2's tonal balance because it's exactly that range that I wasn't thrilled with in the older M80ti when I first joined Axiom in 2002. That's why we tried to improve it--and did.

Regards,
Alan

And that was the extra detail I found to be lacking on the M60s, which drove me to the M80s after the A/B/C testing at Mojo's.

Yes it's funny because although Jason always refers to the fact that the demo fell flat because the sub stopped working after the first five minutes it actually was a success and he gets the credit, because he suggested I bring a few discs I was familiar with to make the demo more meaningful. I specifically chose Spiderman (3?) because it has this brooding orchestral score and I had just watched it with the fam and the Polk speakers and the emotional impact was just so lacking, I could tell we were more or less missing everything, yet after only a few minutes listening to some of the same passages on the M80s it was quite evident that I had found what I was looking for, the detail spoke to me and was as smooth as silk.

I really like that, nicely stated.