Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Are Axiom not good rock speakers???

Yeah, what Mark said. I discovered after getting my Axioms that there are some horrifically mixed popular albums out there by major artists. It's kind of like the realization of that disclaimer they used to have on CD's - this format may reveal shortomings in the original program material.

If you have time and a little slack in your speaker wires, try moving them around a little. I'm not talking much, maybe 6" to a foot in any / every direction you can.

The room my speakers are in is empty (painting) except for a 65" Mits and a loveseat. There are 2 walls about 75% covered with curtains. I had 5 CDs in my CD player, and I was unable to find a spot where all of the CDs sounded good. In some placements I just couldn't believe how absolutely horrible things sounded. Rush's Roll the Bones sounded extremely thin and tinny. Almost like an AM radio out of a 55 Chevy. While Stevie Ray Vaughan sounded incredibly full with a very nice soundstage. I moved the speakers about 8" apart, and 5" closer to the wall, and now Rush was awesome and Stevie sounded like I put him in a can.

As an experiment, I just hung an old blanket from the end of one of the curtain rods over to my Mits, and held it in place with the not connected VP150. This effectively covered about 25% of a third wall. Now all 5 CDs in there sound beautiful. That is actually a huge understatement. It sounds like I'm sitting in the front row for both Rush and Stevie. It is just absolutely amazing to me that the room, speaker placement, and furnishings can make so many differences. Even right up close to the speaker, I can hear the differences, and the blanket is hanging about 12 feet away. It also allowed low volume listening, which is now smooth and silky where before it was tinny.

I sure hope that I can ditch that old ripped up blanket once I get the furniture back in the room. I love the way the speakers sound with it in place, and I'll live with it if I have to. Nothing is going to take this sound away...

Well I change my opinion a little. I dropped a few Pink Floyd CDs (remastered) in the player the other day and the sound was incredible. And this is with an analog signal. Also put in some techno and that sounded really good too. Had to turn down the VTF-2 though and it wans't even up that high. Maybe these just are not that great for metal and hard rock. I'm honestly not that worried about it anyway as this is mostly a HT set-up.

You didn't mentioned what AVR you were using, but if you have an HK, you will absolutely want to try the regular Dolby Pro Logic (not DPLII) processing mode with your older rock music. On about 80% of my CDs it makes a huge difference. I had a friend over who immediately noticed the same thing that I did.

Over the years, I've had a few radios, boom boxes, and car radios that had a Dolby switch. The only thing it ever seemed to do was reduce the volume a little, and make the sound more "compressed". Not on my HK630 - it actually works the way it is supposed to. It appears to increase the width and depth of the soundstage, boosts the midrange, and "cleans up" the highs at the same time.

Personal tastes aside, I played Iron Maiden's Piece of Mind last night using only my M60s. It sounded damn good without DPL, but it was absolutely incredibly with DPL enabled. (As incredible as any band who's lead singer's nickname is "Air Raid Siren" can sound. hehe...) The m60s did a great job of recreating that magical mixture of the dual guitars that makes Maiden stand out amongst the other metal bands. The bass guitar was strong, clear, and easy to follow. Man, now THAT guy has fun playing bass. I never wanted to be a bass player, but I'de give it a shot if I could play with them.

I've also played some AC/DC Back in Black, and From Those About To Rock. The cannons scared the @#%$! out of me even though I knew they were coming. It sounded like I had real artillery in my living room. WOW!!! Im pretty sure Angus and the boys were talking about Axiom when they said:

Weeeeeeeeeee saluuuuuuuute yoooooouuuu!!!

---- FIRE! ----

My answer Monster, Yes. Axioms are good rock speakers. But it took me a lot of screwing with the room, speaker placement, equipment connections, and DSP modes to get them there. So I guess the answer is that they ARE good rock speakers, but they might just not be "easy" rock speakers.

I wonder what the criteria for a "rock" speaker is. Can someone give an example of a "rock" speaker?

Good point.

As someone that worked with sound and lighting for about 10 years with local musicians, I use the same criteria that the musicians use during sound check.

Listen to the snare drum. Does it sound sharp, crisp, and not tinny. Then listen to each tom (drum) for nice, short controlled thumps of the proper tone with no ringing or dull sound. Then the kick drum. It should be a very solid, dull, but powerful thmump. Cymbals should sound bright as hell, especially when nothing else is playing. ANY music with a lot of cymbals in it should be very bright. Stand within 2 feet of one when a pro bashes it and tell me it's not bright. Phooey on you, I say...

Then I just listen to each instrument at a time, checking to see that it sounds just right. It's easy to do once you get the hang of it. Look at the CD case to get the # of musicians, and the type of instruments that they play if you don't know the band. Concentrate on each instrument as you listen. If I find that the bass sounds muddy or too low in volume, I move the speaker a bit away from or closer to the wall to fix it. Eventually, you'll find a spot where all of the instruments sound correct in their own right. Of course, none of this is specific to rock music, so I can say that a good speaker should be able to play all types of music well.

The one thing that a good "rock" speaker needs is the ability to play loud. The M60s have a point where once you feed them a certain amount of power they just really liven up and seem to demand more. The more power I feed them, the better they sound. Unbelieveable. I ran out of power way before I ran out of speaker...

I'm going to peform the absolute test of a speaker. I have a friend, Ben who has a few VERY nice CDs out now. (Yes, that was a plug - the man is a great guitar player - buy one of his CDs - I'll call him to let him know the MP3 links are dead...). I'm going to invite him over to listen to his own CDs on my Axiom setup. I've heard him play live a hundred times. Indoors, outdoors, acoustic, electric, and on his own stereo at his house as well. I can tell you for sure that MY setup sounds exactly like he does live. Amie better write that $20 check to me now, because I KNOW Ben will be buying some M60s soon. At any rate, he is also on a few harder rock CDs from a few other bands as a "hired" guitar, so we'll have some other stuff he knows as well. His own stuff is very jazz / classical oriented guitar. The ultimate test would be to have him plug his guitar into my AVR and have him whip out his PERFECT rendition of the White Cliffs of Dover through my Axioms. He plays it better than Eric Johnson himself... I'll let you guys know what he thinks after he listens to "First Light" over here.

I guess I'll chime in on this one. First of all, my music tastes bounce around. What I play on my M22's ranges from classical, jazz, progressive rock (Dream Theater), mellow rock (Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree) to hard rock (Opeth), and even some swing. My impression is that it only sounds as good as the recording. Thus far, all the things I've listed sound nothing short of amazing. Dream Theater's new cd is VERY hard and I thought it wouldn't sound all that great on Axioms at first. I put it on and BAM!! It was great. The mids and bass were so thick and I could still hear the distinct notes and all of the details. The odd thing is that the music even sounded natural and balanced.

I've also listended to Pink Floyd's Pulse and it sounds just as good. Another example is Porcupine Tree's cd In Absentia (which is a great cd). It's a very dynamic album. The first track is rather hard so how does it do on the Axioms? Just as great *wink* In contrast, take the track Heart Attack in a Layby which is very mellow and contains a lot of vocal layers. The best way to to describe this song on Axioms is immersive. So are axioms good "rock" speakers. I'd say yes as long their playing well mixed "rock" music. (or is that a paradox?) Anyway, sorry for the long post.

Now that I have everything set up I tried some more of my collection. I must have some really badly mastered metal CDs. Nothing sounds that good at all. Metallica, Iron Maiden, Anthrax, Disturbed, Mushroomhead as well as many others all sound pretty bad. Put on some Shania Twain and Gordon Lightfoot and it sounded incredible. Especially on PLII. Also The Crystal Method, Prodigy and Lords of Acid sounded pretty damn good as well as Zeppelin. Guess I'll kee the harder stuff for the car.

Allright! Another Porcupine Tree fan! I was beginning to think I was the only one. They're the best band nobody'e ever heard of, IMHO. They definitely have taken the torch of Progressive Rock from Pink Floyd and Alan Parsons.

Mark

Mark.

Porcupine Tree huh?? Never heard of them but now I'm interested with comparisons to Floyd and APP. What would be a good CD to get to give them a try?? I always like giving different bands a try. Someone recently turned me on to Iced Earth. Being a long-time Iron Maiden fan they are right up my alley.