Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Grills off or on sounds better?

I took the grills off of my VP150 the other night while watching a movie and I could swear that the dialogue was a little clearer. I almost never play the mains with the covers on.

ok thats it, tonight I'm going to blindfold myself, have my kid either leave them on or take them off, and see what I hear.

To make it scientific, they'll have to stifle their giggles!

Personally, I have not noticed a difference with most of my Axioms. The exception was the M2. When I was using them as computer speakers I could not stand the highs with the grills off. These were the only set I had that I could see being described as "ear bleedingly bright", although that is a bit of hyperbole. I found that the grills tamed the highs fairly nicely.

The only other speakers that I have owned where the grills made a difference was the Paradigm Monitor 11. With those is was more of an overall grill benefit, not just a high note taming.

I would like to remove the front grills from my M60's and VP150, however, and maybe this is picking too much of a nit, I find the white speaker cones somewhat distracting. In this case, I wish Axiom would change these to a black color which, in my opinion, would integrate better especially with the special dark cabinet finishes. As far as sound goes I hear little if any difference on or off. Paradigm, on the other hand over the years, with several models has integrated their grills with the speaker mounting methods to minimize diffraction.

I find it interesting that you would notice a large difference with the M2's, but not the others. Does Axiom use different grill fabric on the different models? That would be the only reason I can think of why there would be such a contrast to the sound of the speakers.

At 50 years of age and my hearing compromised approximately 350 live shows under my belt(and countless hours in a loud John Deere tractor cab) I am certainly unable to detect any difference. I like the looks of the speakers with the grills off, but with 3 kids- grills are on for the foreseeable future.

Shoulda bought a Case.

I used to notice a difference between grills-on and grills-off with homemade speakers and heavy black Radio Shack grill cloth, but don't notice a difference with my current Axioms.

Then again, my ears were also 30 years younger at the time

It all seems the same, so I have no idea why I would notice it only with the M2s. Could be that the other speakers are already within the range that the grills affect, or, more likely, that I'm simply out to lunch.