Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo NAD and Axiom??

I have recently became a new Axiom fantisier and I'm working on getting seperates for home theatre apps. So far I have one NAD C270 amplifier...so haha...I have a ways to go, but hey! I'm only 18 so theres plenty of time yet.

Anyways, I would like to find some speakers to replace my Fluance ones. So does the warm bass authority sound of the NAD match well with the Axiom speakers, M60 fronts.

Yes.

The 270 and 60's will go well together, i should know, i use the 370 and the 80's.

Your off to a good start for being soo young. Dont get too ahead of yourself yet though, enjoy the music with what you can afford!

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Dont get too ahead of yourself yet though, enjoy the music with what you can afford

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are those words of wisdom from your 'own' personal experience??

you are WAY better off than i was at 20!!

bigjohn

yeah. because i spent all my money on stereo junk i dont have a car! lol.

Since getting into the whole tube/diy scene i have come to the point where i am not about cables or tweaks or anything but the stuff that REALLY matters.

OK wait.. maybe i was better off. i had a hardship motorcycle license at 14, and was driving my truck legal on the street by 15.

it was kinda fun pulling into the parking lot for 8th grade!

but i didnt have squat for a stereo!!

bigjohn

Ahhh, 8th grade. Best three years of my life.

Haha, seems like you guys are the regulars on here. The one thing I can tell the difference from this forum compared to ecoustics is that you guys are a lot more sarcastic on your posts, not a whole lot of humor back at the ecoustic.com days.

Well thats good news te hear, I kinda figured the 60's would sound good with NAD, but I have a while yet before i purchase them. This summer I'm looking at getting the 6 or the 8 channel NAD processor to replace my Yamaha.

And one other thing. How much of a difference is there from 12 gauge speaker wire vs. some speaker cable...like Straight Wire Quartet speaker cable, I think thats 12 gauge also. It's either Straight Wire for the fronts and Pheonix Gold for the rears and center or P.G. for all the channels. Right now I'm using some crap 18 gauge that I have been meaning to replace for the longest time but I wanted to do some research before that just to be comfortable with the upgrade.

And yet again, we have a use for the article.

You will find vastly differing opinions on speaker cable. It's about 60%-40% at my last check, with the small majority saying that speaker cable doesn't really make a difference.

has anyone made and used the speaker cables as described in the article in kcarlisle's post? if so, can you give us your thoughts on how they work? where did you get the components. Thanks.

In all honesty, that "crap" 18 gauge wire is probably not as bad as you think, but it could still stand to be replaced.

If I were you, I'd take all the cable marketing/propaganda with a grain of salt and consider going with genereic 12 gauge wire. There has never been ANY solid, repeatable evidence that speaker cables make a noticeable difference in how speakers sound.

The Phoenix Gold 12-gauge sells for about $.45/foot. You can get a much better deal on blue 12-gauge wire. I found a deal on a 250-foot spool here that works out to about $.17/foot.

I haven't used the exact procedure there, but I have had to use higher gauge (smaller conductor) speaker wire in pairs that way in some applications. We have a portable Crown amp and JBL P.A. setup used for mid-sized press conferences and such - the audio patch bay in the rack is too small to use a good thick wire in so I usually double up the outputs with whatever wire happens to be in the armored box that day (usually 18-16ga. lamp cord tied into knots - I hate using other people's equipment! )

Maybe some day I'll really wow them all and Litz braid the cables. *snicker*

Bren R.

No s.

Anyway, yeah, I made them. They appear to function. Sound comes out of the speakers. I got the cable from Bluejeans, and ended up using banana plugs from Home Depot.

It was more of a fun little project than anything else.

Oh yeah, and it wasn't really all that much fun.

Geez, This again. I'm a EE and there isn't a bat [censored]'s worth of difference between an Wallmart's best extension cord and the very finest gold plated 5,000 strand 4-guage teflon insulated, NASA approved, insured by audio faires and blessed by Bethoveen himself speaker cord at $1,000 a foot.

Wire for Christ sakes is wire. You can dress it up any way you want but after you are done it's still wire! Wire is nothing! It is its purpose for being! Its reason de'etre. Its entire force for life. To be nothing! To be transparent!

Wallmart's best does a good job to be meaningless. Negligable inductance at 1 nH per inch, 50pF per foot, 5 milliohms per meter. None of it means squat when you are working into an 8 or 4 Ohm load impedance. God! When is this thing going to be put to a rest? What does it take? A wooden stake thru the chest? Give me a hammer for Christ sakes!

Anyway I'm all calm now. Good to get all that out. Give me a second to bring my breathng down. OK, I can move on now. Thanks.

I have a C370 driving a pair of Axiom 60's and a big bad-ass SVS sub-woofer. To me this is a perfect combination.

I'm a classical, pre-disposed to Motzart kind of guy. The whole setup is in my shop where I spend my days. Naturaly, the sound system has to be there as well because, that's where I spend my days.

As I said, I'm a EE. I design analog power circuits. I need music and a very good sound system while I work. I'm a tense guy, I run a 10 million dollar business, deal with people who sometimes are assholes and I really need music to calm me. I make a lot of money so I chose the best. I can buy anything I want but I chose Axioms and NADs. They just simply sound very good together.

I picked the C370 because from listening to it there is nothing better including the boutique amps. I heard plenty of them. Speakers, the same way. Nothing better to my ears than the 60s.

Lots of missteps along the way. I won't mention them. Speakers and amps. Gave it to my kids. They have some mighty expensive stuff.

Mariss

lol.

I agree with you, dude... I just wanted to play around, you know, and have some cool looking thick cable going to my speakers. It's an ego thing or something.

You, with speaker wire induced SPS?

I'm much calmer today. Back on my meds; it must be the meds. :-)

Look, everyone has something they become unhinged about; you know, where you want to beat the TV or the radio with your shoe until it begs for mercy. For me, it's pretty harmless; speaker wires. Otherwise I'm an easy going, go along to get along kind of guy. It's a Swiss cheese kind of thing; mostly solid except for where the holes are.

Amplifiers when done right are exquisitely designed works of engineering. Speakers even more so because they are works of art. Art is what transcends engineering because what you are after cannot often be defined by formulized, didactic formulas. Speakers transform emotionless volts and amperes, 0.01% TDH, 15 to 50kHz bandwith, 120db S/N ratio and all that other EE stuff into sound waves.

It is only those sound waves and our perception of them that can touch that something significant inside all of us.

Our ears are the gatekeepers; bad speakers, nothing. Good speakers, they can transport you and summon all manner of blissfull emotions; tastes, sights, touch and memories.

Sound, (and we are talking about artificial sound here, you are not in the concert hall after all), is best when it's free of artifice. The best speakers have the humility to make themselves transparent. That is the penultimate goal. Just you and the music.

In this hierarchy of two, the amplifier matters less. It is hard today to make and sell a bad amplifier. The truth is a $99 Sherwood stereo is within 95% of the best $4,000 boutique amp at normal (non-painful) listening levels. I have 'scopes, I have THD analysers, I have pure sinewave generators. I have personally tested everything I've bought (and passed on to my kids). The magic is not in the amps.

I used to design vacuum tube power amplifiers way back when. A good MOSFET power amp with little feedback does just as well. I believe instruments and a 'scope better here.

The magic IS in the speakers. This is something that defies measurement if the speakers being compared are free of cheap flaws. Here it also preference comes into play. We are individuals and what is bliss for you might be irritating and distracting for me. This is only natural, we are talking about the speaker to listener interface; there are no electronic instruments to measure and quantify that.

My advice? Spend money on the speakers. They are the car, the amp is the tires. You can always buy cool tires later.

Back to wires.

Wires connecting the two are completely inconsequential. They are in EE terms, passive components. Passive components cannot modify a signal. They cannot distort it, they cannot accentuate it, they cannot do anything except attenuate it. If they attenuate, turn up the volume 1db!

This thing really kills me. The advertisments for the "Bethoveen and Kiss approved cables" appeal to the dumbest and dollar rich among you. P.T. Barnum had your measure many years ago.

My white-coated attentant says it's time for more meds. Ahrg...

Mariss

I enjoyed reading that immensely, but only in part because I agree with you. You have a unique way of assembling words that I like.

Thanks Peter. I was looking for the way to say EXACTLY what you said. I really did enjoy the post. I particularly liked:

"Amplifiers when done right are exquisitely designed works of engineering. Speakers even more so because they are works of art. Art is what transcends engineering because what you are after cannot often be defined by formulized, didactic formulas.

Articulately (and, IMHO, accurately) stated.

I'm in the same boat with Ajax where I was going to say exactly the same, but then I got too lazy and I decided to wait until someone said that they agreed, to which I'd reply "me too," or "three" as it is in this case.

I'm guilty of the "lazy me too" syndrome a lot of the time, too. As long as the first reply duty rotates -- and as far as I can tell, it does -- then it's all good.

Lovely essay, Mariss. Thank you for sharing your composition with us. And to think I nearly missed this thread!

Art, beauty, blessings...these are all around us. We must but perceive the world in the best way.

I see in your picture what I surmise to be your son. Many blessings to you. They grow so fast. Please love them and teach them what they will need to know. You are so honored to be able to do that. You will never be able to re-live your own childhood except thru what you teach your little ones.

Mariss

Mariss has become our very own Socrates, just for out little forum .

You can tell a lot about a man by how he's raised his kids. Tom's a good daddy.

Peter, you are too kind. I could never imagine a greater compliment.

I firmly believe that one of the main reasons why God put me here is to be Emily and Alex's Daddy. Still, some days you simply do not connect, and the nobility and purpose of parenthood is subjugated to the human frailties of emotion and necessity.

I'm just doing my best to care for all the people in my life. And make them listen to good music. And drink better beer.

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I'm just doing my best to care for all the people in my life. And make them listen to good music. And drink better beer

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someone needs to put that on a t-shirt!!

bigjohn

I'd be remiss without saying that mwc (and his sons) demontstated to me that he's also a great dad. An Axiom coincidence???

As a new father, it's great to have people to look up to -- not in the "role model" sort of way, but in the inspiration sort of way. Could good music and good beer really be the key to raising happy kids?

What no praise for me and what a GREAT dad I am? I'm deeply offended!

I was going to say "two out of the three axiomites i visited are great dads. The third might have been, but evidence of children was lacking."

Details, Details. I mean, that's pretty rude, leaving me out JUST because I don't have children. That's parental discrimination.