Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Hearing Things LFR-1100's and assorted tests to be done

Audible differences in amps may also be due to design philosophy. These may be shaped by the experiences of the manufacturer or the designer. My Denon has a noticeably softer sound than my Onk likely because Denon traded off higher slew rate (and maybe even bandwidth) for greater stability. Maybe Denon had historical problems with stability (which can be caused by "esoteric" cables), created a reference design to ensure such a problem is never repeated and the design is now forever etched in all Denon products.

I'd like to hear a comparison between the Axiom M100s and the Tannoy Revolution XT 8F.

Power amps, integrated amps, comparisons between power amps with various preamps, it'll get pretty crowded.

I'm looking forward to an Odyssey Candela tube preamp to go with the Khartago extreme power amp. I'll then be able to compare the Candela to a B&K Reference solid state preamp with the Khartago.

Permutations of amp/pre/ speaker A v. Speaker n will get pretty crowded and expensive.

As has probably been brought up ore often than not, the one speaker company Axiom's would be most cross-shopped with would likely be Paradigm. That would make for some good comparative testing due to their similar design goals (although it's just as interesting to compare inherently different designs).

Why stop at Paradigms. Get a pair of every speaker out there.

"What are we doing tonight Pinky? The same thing we do every night. Try to listen to every speaker in the world!"

Gents - One of the tests I wanted to do this fall/winter is one of affordable subwoofers with a fairly small footprint.

Pricing is to be under $1000 USD delivered.

Size is to be under 2.5 square feet of floor space, as larger than this, and the subwoofer starts to "stand out" in most decors.

All the rage lately is massive subwoofer systems, and while this makes for great bragging rights in the forum world, I think all this "126 dB at 20 Hz from eight 18 inch sealed subwoofers and 12,000 watts of power for only $12,000 plus the labor to build it" has left a big void.

SO ... I put together a list of 5 subwoofers to try and test. Here are the subs, and the results in getting them so far:

1. SVS PC-2000 @ $800 delivered. A 12 inch ported subwoofer which takes up 1.6 square feet.

I contacted Ed Mullen, and the subwoofer is ordered. He is quite confident about its performance, and was as much a professional as one could ask.

2. Powersound Audio S-1500 @ $1000 delivered. A 15 inch sealed wubwoofer which takes up 2.125 square of floor space.

I ordered the subwoofer, and the order was cancelled by Powersound. When I asked why it was cancelled, I was told that they were not interested in being involved in my review process.

3. Hsu Research ULS-15 Mark II @ $848 delivered. A 15 inch, sealed subwoofer which takes up 2.25 square feet.

I emailed Hsu about purchasing a sub for review twice, and received no response.

4. Reaction Audio Gamma 15 @ $900 delivered. A 15 inch sealed subwoofer which takes up 2.5 square feet of floor space.

I have talked to the owner, and he has expressed an interest. I am waiting a reply on three emails that we are now ordering review samples.

5. Axiom EP350 @ $840 delivered. A 12 inch ported subwoofer which takes up 1.75 square feet.

I talked to Debbie today, and it's ordered.

The review process will be along the line of what normal people do with a subwoofer. Each will be placed in the same location in a pretty large room.

Each will have XT-32 from Audyssey applied, with response curves taken from several listening positions, and listening tests done.

The response curves from each will be posted.

This is gonna be awesome!!

I forgot the cubic volume of your room. Pretty huge from what I remember.

I think the EP-350 should not be included in the big room test. Not even close in output. It should be judged on its own merits. The ep-800 is a better comparison. Nudge.

A 350w/12" driver vs. 900w/15"........ Yikes.

Its a shame Powersound, Reaction and HSU are playing coy. Powersound shouldnt have cancelled. Lame. The fella there is real popular here! Hold out for the others, maybe they are busy with all the CEDIA junk right now and production runs for the fall buying season.

Kudos to Axiom and SVS for being cool with letting a single individual compare their products head to head.

The EP800 is a $2480 subwoofer in the outlet - far out of the pricing allowed at $1000 USD delivered.

Keep in mind, the three 15 inch subs are all sealed, which require a lot of power, especially in a compact cabinet, to deliver deep bass.

The SVS and Axiom both have 12 inch woofers. The power differences, as rated, are about 2 dB different in peak output terms. The Axiom is tuned a bit higher. It should be an interesting comparison in a large room.

One aspect of performance I will be looking for is whether a subwoofer can be overdriven to "make a bad noise".

This is an area no one ever seems to discuss with subwoofers.

This is going to be fun!

This all looks fantastic and i had the druthers i would bring my own farting EP350 south for the listening fun.

My big question is, what the hell are you going to do with all these speakers once you're done?
Open a used speaker store?
Cuz there's no way you'll use all those enough in a lifetime to really enjoy it all, unless you built 12 or 13 different audio centers around the home.

Chess - We have a big, rambling farmhouse with 6 listening rooms. There's always a home for speakers.

One thing I should mention - the two people who redesigned the EP350 into the V.4 are confident that it will be quite the performer. By raising the tuning to the 26-28 Hz area, they have made a tradeoff for higher output in the 30-40 Hz "slam" area over extension. The PC2000, on paper, trades output in the 30-40 Hz range for that additional extension.

It will be interesting to test both, especially to discover if either can be made to make a "bad noise" when driven hard. That's one aspect (of many) that a standard test as performed at Data-Bass cannot tell you.

Driver bottoming, Port Noise, amp clipping under duress, are all performance issues which need to be explored when testing a sub.

Back to the EP350 in its current form - the folks at Axiom think it's a totally different animal then previous generations: Triple Vortex Ports, better driver, better amp, and Andrew is confident that the amp-driver-enclosure-port interface is "fool proof", as in it's "impossible" to make a bad noise.

We will find out soon enough.

Well i stand corrected.
You DO have enough rooms for all those lovely creatures of sound. Now you have to find the time to use all 6.


If you have an earlier version of the EP350 to compared, that would be interesting to 'hear' the design changes.
If i recall, the next EP350 after mine had a wide mouth port along the bottom before moving to a triple port design.

You can make the first version EP350 chuff fairly easy IMO. I've long contemplated getting something else but it isn't a priority over other things, like finding a new int-amp for my office b/c my vintage Kenwood is slowly failing. Although i like the blue lights and all, i want to move to something more modern and equally aesthetically interesting.
Maybe something Rotel or Music Fidelity.