Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Axiom buying PS Audio?

What happened at the NRC was amazing, a lot of the right things coming together at the right time with the right people. I will go through the highlights here and can answer any specific questions.

The psychoacoustical research at NRC turned into a multi-decade project that likely even Floyd himself could not have predicted in the beginning. The research itself was Floyd’s brainchild and it continued in earnest right up until he left the NRC when it promptly faded away. The combination was magical, we had the brilliance of Floyd, a great laboratory, and industry support. Alan Lofft was one of the first to discover what Floyd was doing at the NRC and he was so impressed he started renting the facility to do speaker testing for what was then Sound Canada magazine. In fact, it was Alan who introduced me to Floyd when I went to speak to him about doing an Axiom review. That meeting with Floyd changed everything for me. Floyd is not only brilliant, he is genuine to the core, one of those people you feel blessed to have met in life and been able to hang out with as friends.

Paul Barton (PSB) is likely the first industry person to get involved followed a few years later by Martin Stec (Paradigm), Ian Paisley (API), Kevin Voeks (Mirage), and myself. We were a small crowd of upstarts but we kept the laboratory rented full time. I sense the amount we paid was under-market but we did not set the price. The fact that industry dollars were going into Floyd’s research meant the research survived and flourished at NRC. The other big thing we brought to the table was the empirical testing ability. We could build samples, based on Floyd’s theoretical research, that allowed for real-world double-blind listen testing. I still remember when Martin created a speaker called the Paradigm Model 7. This nailed every aspect of what Floyd wanted to test, it became the anchor for the blind testing for quite a few years. As much as we were all technically competitors, we all loved the comradery of the NRC; and we all knew we had bigger fish to fry than each other. Some of the best times of my life were the crossover (pun not intended) days between one of us to the other at the laboratory as we would all end up at Floyd and Noreen’s place for dinner and drinks that evening. It was a wonderful 11 years and a wonderful learning experience. When it all came to a close with Floyd’s departure, we all continued the research on our own. Paradigm, API, and myself went on to build our own laboratories modeled after the NRC but even better. Floyd recruited Kevin and they built an amazing laboratory at Harman. Paul continued to rent the NRC laboratory and may be the sole reason it is still there. Now that SoundStage is renting it as well hopefully it stays intact for many years to come.

Waaahahahaha! That is just nuts. Stec, a philosopher by education, built reference speakers used for science.

Ian, a philosopher and economist by education, built active linear frequency radiators.

Mojo, an engineer by education, writes poems and, according to some, hyperbole.

It's a pretty messed up world.

The original Model 7.

https://reverb.com/item/7125147-ste...-7-v-1-floorstanding-tower-speakers-pair

So, you worked with NRC, by testing Axiom loud speakers using Floyd's methodology and NRC received some income and free research & labor to improve its methodology ... sounds like a win-win.

It's interesting that a bunch of like minded people enjoyed each other so much while competing for the same market. Was there a cross pollination of ideas and everyone was happy to share or was there some contention. Kind of got the feeling that only nice guys build speakers ...

Some big name companies grew out of the NRC. I remember listening to Paradigm & Mirage speakers in particular. Axiom seems like a late bloomer from my vantage point. Perhaps they are more known in Canada.

Around 2003/4, I think (might have been later), I was checking out Outlaw Audio, a direct to consumer outfit, which made me curious on if there were speaker manufacturers which sold direct. Found Axiom. Axiom was a no-name to me, but I was enamored with its design philosophy. So kept checking in. Joined the boards in 2009 and in 2016 (only 20 years later) I jump'ed in with both feet and bought some speakers. As you can guess, I'm glad I did as I'm still here.

The NRC chamber is $Can 1500/day and $185/hr for a tech. That's very reasonable. Having your own is so much more boss.

The Model 7 is even older than the Monitor 7, the Model 7 was an 8” two-way. There was a lot of collaboration in those days. It was all about pushing Floyd’s research forward. We all had our own ways of doing things but there was no wavering from chasing the perfect Family-of-Curves. Over the years we have all continued to perfect the Family-of-Curves through more experiments with more curves and more averages of curves. Back in those days averaging curves was not really practical as they were not stored in a computer. Now we can easily average them seven ways to Sunday and run double-blind tests on those averaged curves. We have come a long way since those beginning days but to Floyd’s credit, he put us all on the path of using science as the basis of our designs.

The double-blind testing was a sobering thing. When I first showed up with my speaker, that I thought was so awesome, I learned inside of half a day of taking some basic measurements and a double-blind test that I had better get my butt into that laboratory and learn how to do it right, . Interestingly not everyone saw it that way. There were people who would bring in their latest idea for the perfect speaker and leave blaming the testing for their poor results.

We were much later than the others in the group in going to US marketplace with the Axiom brand. Since we also sold design services and manufacturing that side of the business kept us crazy busy building factory space, buying the latest CNC machinery, and increasing overall production output. At the peak we had over two tractor-trailer loads a day going to Circuit City warehouses.

Sorry about botching that Paradigm link. Admittedly it did look too "modern" with those polypropylene drivers. I can't find any images of the original Model 7.

I still find it impossible to understand how you choose what curves to implement. Like you say, you can create any recipe you want, and likely a plethora of those recipes can look good "on paper". And you can only conduct a finite number of listen tests. Feedback from the listen tests isn't high resolution enough to allow the designer to hone in on the particular characteristics of a set of curves that ought to be preserved.

This is such a different challenge from any product design I've ever worked on. Numbers have always told me the whole story. I've never had to rely on subjective feedback.

That's makes a lot of really good business sense ...

Were you manufacturing speakers for the other speaker manufactures, electronic manufactures who wanted their own speaker line, a circuit city brand, or all of the above?

How did you get the word out that you had the know how and the manufacturing capabilities to pull in these contracts?

I imagine it had to be years of ramping up before you bought a CNC (they were really expensive back then). On 2nd thought, a CNC is almost a requirement, did someone bootstrap you with a contract?

Defensiveness is a understandable first reaction. And I can understand someone saying they like the sound regardless of the results ... but I can't really see how blind testing can blamed for poor results ... it's a survey of people's opinions on the sound quality against another speaker.

Totally!

Hard to build speakers and not believe they are amazing with all the effort and theory applied...

Dont ask me how I know the feeling. Built some and shared here. Fun ride, but daunting looking back. What was I thinking?! Glad they were fixable with Dirac. (What a cool aid in understanding preference)

Direct comparison often reveals just how blatantly wrong things can be in a hurry. Amazing story Ian shared about his first speakers hitting the chamber. Would be a really sobering feeling and probably inspiring at the same time to understand how to proceed to get better.

Really cool history!