Hi,

I got a new M22ti and like most of the speaker except one thing, the speakers have a very long reverberation time. For example, when I stopped playing the music, it takes about a second for the sound to die out. I am sure it is from the bottom driver, not my room. 1 second seems too long, and when I play human voice, for example, an audio book, it is very annoying. So I wonder if this is a faulty unit, or this is by design, and what can I do to reduce this effect.

I asked Axiom audio and get the following answer. Just post here to see if any one else got similiar experience and want to find out how to fix it.

Thanks,

======= Quoted answer from Axiom =============
This is an odd affect. Make sure that the speaker is not corner loaded as this tends to increase any output. If you notice this in one speaker please switch the speaker leads to see if follows the speaker.
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Something is amiss, for sure. A speaker that's working properly should not be physically able to do what you're saying it's doing. If you stop a signal, the driver should stop moving essentially immediately.

Is it happening from only one speaker? If so, swap the left and right channels, as Axiom suggested. If the problem does not stay with the same speaker, then the problem is upstream (i.e. your amp or source).

I can't imagine a speaker cone simply flopping around without it being powered to do so.... Peter's suggestion makes sense as far as switching the speakers to rule it out, but I have to say it's likely an amp/receiver thing.

Is there any chance you have the receiver's DSP on "arena" or "Huge, honkin' Hall"?

I am using iPod to drive a T-amp. Don't think it can give any "big concert hall" effect.

Do you have another amp you can use to see if the T amp may be at fault?

If the speaker is moving for that long with out some sort of input then it has to be some sort of other worldly, supernatural infection.

I would definately look at the source or the amp.....maybe hire an exorcist.

Yes, it is weird. The reverb only happens at low frequency and the volumn decay exponentially. It lost some clearity and detail in LOW freq, in fact, in most cases not very noticable. However, it is really weird for audio books. Sounds like someone recital in huge concert hall. :-) or :-(

Another vote for something amiss with the amp or source. The magnet should all but prevent any cone movement unless it's being fed a signal.

It would be ideal if you had a second amp handy to try the speakers out with. Or another pair of speakers to try the amp/source out with.

If it is in both M22's, it almost definately is the amp.

Are you sure that you don't have your receiver set to some sort of echo effect? That would probably do it. Check your settings, there is usually a "direct" or "straight" mode on your reciever.

You're running what kind of T-Amp? That's technically just an amplifier class.

One of those homemade kits ones? Or a low voltage (battery or "wall wart" powered?) commercial one?

Either way, the first step would be trying to drive another set of 8 ohm speakers with it. It sounds like, for whatever reason, you're getting audio foldback on the signal side of the amp. That is, the output is being summed (or added in) to the input signal, the same way a digital delay works... I'll bet anything the amp exhibits this on any 8 ohm load.

You can definately rule out the speakers as the issue here. There's just no real way to build a passive speaker to do this, even if you wanted to.

Bren R.

Thanks for all the help. I finally found out it is my sound card. I was playing the audio book CD from iTunes and the sound card is configed to use "stereo speaker" as output. For whatever reason, the sound card add some crazy special effects to simulate the Carnegie Hall. Set the sound card outuput to "headphone" solves the problem. iPod and my other Creative MP3 player are fine.

Now my problem is the sound card has couple of dozens of output device choice and I have no idea what the card is trying to do. I guess my only choice is to leave it as "headphone", thanks to the really intuitive interface/naming design. :-(

Again, thanks.

Glad you found it. You had mentioned that "I am using iPod to drive a T-amp. Don't think it can give any "big concert hall" effect." so that throws off where we look for problems if it did happen with your PC but not with the iPod.

Bren R.

Yeah I was under the assumption that it was iPod to T-amp to speakers. Makes it hard to give advice when the offending piece is not even mentioned.

Sorry about that. Again, thanks all.

The main thing is you got it figured out. Enjoy