Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler axiom and other forums

I like to thank Ian for the kind replies and the invite, would love to see axioms home. I've been up in sundridge for vacation the last 20 years but did not make it there last year. Might just see you this year though. Thanks to everyone else for the kind replies also.

Welcome, John, and thank you for a well thought out post offering a different view--it is appreciated. It's easy to get caught up in the which speaker, or component is "better" argument, after all, most of us want our stuff to be as good as can be. Maybe a more constructive way to look at it is to think of speaker A being "different" from speaker B, rather than better. Like you said, the "better than" argument may tend to step on others' toes, sometimes without meaning to.

Having listened to a handful of different speakers myself, although not in a double blind test, the one thing I've gathered from it all is the similarly good descriptive that Ian spoke about. At the end of the day, all the different components end up doing the same thing--letting us listen to music for our enjoyment. Some just do it with a different flavor. And there ain't nothin' wrong with that!

John, I hope you continue to stick around a post in the forum.

John, welcome. We appreciated reading your thoughtful post. I'll comment on your observation that sometimes people get tired of the term "similarly good". Ian briefly touched on this in his reply to you, and the reality in my view is as he stated: differences among audio components where audible differences do it fact exist(i.e., speakers)are far less than sometimes stated. Terms which have no reasonable application in this connection, e.g. "huge", "night-and-day", "blows away", etc., are sometimes casually thrown about. Hopefully thoughtful listeners wouldn't get tired of a term that in many cases is simply a statement of reality.

Johnk. As always I'm blown away by your sensible approach to things.

This is why i abhor the use of the term "upgrade" most especially when it is applied to the more expensive or latest speaker design vs. less expensive or previous models.


I share Ian's idea for tanking the terms "similarly good".
Just let people figure it out on their own.