hey folks,

so after all y'all's input, I had finally settled on buyin the 22 with a seperate sub to e later purchased in the future.

little did I know, I would find an amazing deal on some used M60s only a couple of days later.

anywa, I picked upthe M60s (which unfortuantely vioated my original desire for the speakers to be easy to move) for less than a pair of M22s =) and I finally set them up today with my HK 430 receiver

and man they sound AMAZING seriously i have just been doing nothing for the past hour except listening to me favorites one after another and hearing how beautiful the sound is reproduced. they sound to me almost as clear as my etymotic research headphones, but with a full and balanced sound that articulates everything masterfully.

unfortuantely, some of my music isn't of the best of quality and I feel like these speakers do such an amazing job on the good sound quality music, that the poor recordings are a bit of a letdown

I have to admit, i had very high expectaions of these speakers and consider me blown away.

rush (my favorite band), dream theater, the beatles, phish, oldies, jazz, techno, everything I'm throwing at the speakers sounds fantastic.

consider me the newest axiom devotee =)

-schizm42

Nice find on the M60s. Can't wait to hear more from you.

Wise choice......welcome to the M60's club!

thanks! its a great club to be in so far =)

Most clubs are great. At least until Andy Dick arrives.

haha nice reference =)

and speaking of reference...

I'm dumbfounded by the m60s for music so far. I still havent listened to movies yet, though i think it'll be a few years before I can afford the rest of the 5.1 setup I'm dreaming about, I think I have found a solid foundation =)

btw, inoticed a big difference when switching my receiver from tone=in to tone-out.

i guess by default the signal passes through the built-in equalizer? this way it bypasses that and the signal seems a little clearer on neutral (I thinkthe speakers are really well balanced, though right now it seems to emphasize the bass a little more than I was expecting... maybe I'm just used to bookshelves)

in what universe do people call these speakers bright btw? I am not hearing that at all.

Two theories...

1. It's just an internet meme people pass around without actually auditioning the equipment.

2. Maybe compared to crappier speakers, the Axioms are missing some of the "muddy" tones you normally get from big boomy cheapies. Maybe removing the mud, makes a flatter speaker seem relatively more bright.

(my vote is #1)

I vote for #1 as well... and once it's been said, people tend to repeat it, eventually, it becomes the prevailing opinion.

On that topic, I just read the review of the Audiobytes in Sound & Vision this month wherein the author called the Audiobytes bright as well. I haven't heard them to know if they actually are, but it seems to me like more perpetuation of the same internet rumor. Note that he also mentioned he likes his speaker sound to be "dark." Weird review, and an adjective I've never heard used to describe sound before that review. If I remember right, he called another speaker he reviewed "wonderfully dark."

Photo of the reviewer? Was he Goth?

Great post schizm42, could not agree more!:)

If "wonderfully dark" is not "chocolaty" I dunno what is :).

That and if the club requires a uniform, it’s a worthless endeavor. -- Carlin

Thats a great find! Like everyone else, I couldn't agree more on the sound.

There are lots of reasons a person could find speakers bright. Interestingly, the term bright was originally meant to describe a speaker that had a more 'live' sound. If I understand correctly it was meant as a compliment to the speaker. Me personally, I like the crispness or edge of live sound. Its one of the reasons I like live recordings.

I am willing to bet that one of the biggest contributors is rooms with lots of reflective surfaces. Such a room would not be forgiving of a speaker that produces all the highs that are supposed to be there.

Now that I have gotten used to the idea of speakers that produce everything on a disc, I notice more and more, instruments and sections of songs where I can hear the extra high frequency energy from reflections in my concrete box (aka room that sucketh). I always noticed it with pipe organ music because those pipes just put out a lot of sound energy, but I am beginning to appreciate the more subtle effects of my room.

Another thing I find funny is that with a speaker like the B&W 802D, flat frequency response means you can use eq to tailor the speaker to the sound you want. Whith a 'lesser' speaker, its just bright or harsh.

Hi,

Yes, needless to say, I've seen the S&V review and the reveiwer's comments that he prefers "dark-sounding speakers". Translated, that means he likes low-fidelity speakers with dull, muted highs and a depressed midrange. Weird indeed!

The Audiobytes, like all of Axiom's speakers, aim for a smooth, wide frequency response, the underlying objective being overall linearity through all the musical octaves. A speaker should NOT superimpose its own colorations and irregularities on top of the music being reproduced. It should reproduce what's in the original source, with no tonal additions or subtractions of its own. If the source recording is at fault, the speaker should reveal it; if you don't like what you hear then you might be able to improve things with a touch of EQ or the tone controls.

If the S&V reviewer bothered to do double-blind listening tests, he might be chagrined to discover, like hundreds of others who've participated in such tests, that the speakers he picked as sounding most natural (or "best", however you want to interpret it) would be the most linear and exhibit the smoothest overall response through bass, midrange and treble. Decades of such tests (in which Axiom has participated) have demonstrated the very high statistical corrleation between smooth, linear response in measurements and the preferences of listeners in blind tests. That is how I do the listening tests to all of Axiom's protoypes and production speakers, and that's how I did the tests with the Audiobytes, even comparing several different crossover designs with an A/B comparator.

In sharp contrast to the S&V review, here's a recent review of the Audiobytes published at MyMac, by a reviewer who clearly knows smooth, transparent sound when he hears it:

http://www.mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=3430

By the way, the reviewer asked to purchase the Audiobyte review system after the review appeared.

Regards,

Alan

Hi schizm42,

I'm delighted you're pleased with the balanced wide-range response and natural, detailed sound quality of the M60s. By the way, the M22's midrange and highs are very similar to the M60s; of course the 60s have much more extended bass output and a more robust upper bass.

Re tone-in, tone-out. Make sure the tone controls (or EQ settings) are at the center detents. While all tone-control and EQ circuits should ideally be neutral when the controls are centered, they never are. Because they are essentially filters, the frequency response through those circuits may show deviations as large as 1 or 2 dB, and those errors are usually in the midrange where our hearing is most sensitive, which is likely what you heard. Using the tone-out setting will remove the circuitry from the signal path totally so the electronic frequency response should be quite linear.

Regards,

Alan

wow, its cool to hear the reasons behind the tone control differences =)

And yeah, I do really appreciate the accuracy of the sound. there are a couple of tracks I've been trying to figure out exactly what the drummer has been doing on for years, and I finally was able to this morning because of the detail and separation i hear among different drums on these here M60s =)

To me the adjective "dark" to describe the Axiom M80s has become a compliment with regard to revelation of all of the latent nuance that's hidden in the shadows of the soundtrack, the pianissimo, the oboe, the buried horn or string.

I have come to love the sound of dark, it's moody, it's uplifting, it's enlightening, it's more real, especially in comparison to electronic bright . . .

The experience of overly bright only seems to come into play at high volumes, when the axiom treble still comes on as neutral, balanced, and strong as it does at moderate volumes.

To me this seems an intriguing anomaly: with crappy equipment you have to boost loudness to generate excitement at low volumes but with axiom equipment you may have to tame the sonic reality of balanced frequency response at high volumes? I suspect audio engineering of the recordings may play a hand in the tweaks necessary to maximize realism, since they must be anticipating our playback equipment.

I'm starting to wonder if I do need dynamic eq when the commercials come on and to combat compression, but at low to moderate volumes on satellite tv, the presentation is pristine.

Alan, that's classic! The guy dumps on the speakers in the magazine and then asks to buy them. I hope you told him no.

Jason

Nice Mark.

From Alan's message I think it was the Mymac reviewer who wanted to buy them.

Oh boo, I wanted it to be the reviewer who looked down on the Audiobytes who secretly wanted them. Oh well.

Welcome!!
Your first impressions of the M60s definitely match the wonderment that I felt when mine arrived. Well written.

Their accuracy, a good thing, is rather unforgiving of poorly recorded source material, but as you have said, that shows they are indeed doing what they promise. The sheer amazement from the good recordings more than make up for poorly produced ones.

If your listening to music via MP3 files, you may want to consider re-ripping your CDs into a lossless format like FLAC. This made definate improvements for me. However, a really crappy recording will still be a really crappy recording but at least it won't be further re-compressed crap.

Glad your having fun.