The Axiom Audio Blind Listening Test Overview

[admin]

This years annual visit to Axiom Audio brought about their announcement of their new V3 series of loudspeakers and running me through the ringer in their blind listening tests. Axiom conducts blind tests to reduce listener bias and ensure their product upgrades result in audibly provable results before making product changes. If you ever have a chance to personally visit Axiom Audio, I highly encourage you to bring along some music and request a blind listening session. Even if you decide which speaker sounds best to you within a few minutes, milk the experience and revel in the sonic delight.

Discuss "The Axiom Audio Blind Listening Test Overview" here. Read the article.

 

[ChunkyDark]

Couple of questions;
Next time can you bring a couple hundred friends with you?
And can mere mortals get their hands on some of that material?
I'm going to be doing a 4 speaker shoot out next week and I would love to be able to do blind testing without messing with the sound.

Thanks,
Chunkydark

 

[AJinFLA]

Hi Gene,

Thanks again for your report. Couple questions .
Where were the speaker pairs located wrt to each other? Were they side by side, both either to the left or right of the other, or inside, outside?

Much better . Are there any off axis loss measurements? Is the loss progressive vs angle of incidence? Do they have total sound power loss data?
TIA

cheers,

AJ

 

[engtaz]

Thanks for the write up.

 

[Alex2507]

I don’t believe you get the whole picture on how a speaker system interacts as a pair listening in mono.

I'm just thinking that how a pair interacts might mostly be a function of the off axis response and secondly the room but meaningful/objective comparisons might become impossible ... that was a deep thought for me.

When giving a location in Canada you need to include the province, Ontario. You don't want to cause an international incident with the 3 Canuks on the forum. It might not seem like a big deal but that is 75% of their stereo owning population.

I wonder what the difference in cost is in the two inductors that you listened to ... and it's interesting that Axiom cares enough to run the test.

Were there lots of bugs up there?

 

[fredk]

When giving a location in Canada you need to include the province, Ontario. You don't want to cause an international incident with the 3 Canuks on the forum. It might not seem like a big deal but that is 75% of their stereo owning population.

Why? Us Ontarians know that there are some people silly enough to want to live somewhere else. Its a free country...

Were there lots of bugs up there?

Not after the first two-four.

 

[MinusTheBear]

Now is there any research that discusses reliability advantages of using higher quality components in regards to capacitors, resistors, inductors etc? Now if there is proof that higher quality components last longer (remain up to spec) over longer periods of time, then there still is a valid argument of having a higher build quality in the crossover region.

 

[GirgleMirt]

So what speakers were used in the blind test? Were they only Axiom speakers?

 

[MinusTheBear]

So what speakers were used in the blind test? Were they only Axiom speakers?

Yes, their flagship speaker - one stock and one with a modified crossover component.

 

[TLS Guy]

Now is there any research that discusses reliability advantages of using higher quality components in regards to capacitors, resistors, inductors etc? Now if there is proof that higher quality components last longer (remain up to spec) over longer periods of time, then there still is a valid argument of having a higher build quality in the crossover region.

Good crossover parts are not snake oil. Iron cored chokes have too much hysteresis distortion. Air cored chokes have to be larger as there are more turns. Heavy gauge copper keeps the DC resistance down. Cheap electrolytic caps are a misery and fail over time. Good Polypropylene caps like Solen virtually never fail.

Cheap components in the crossover shoot a speaker right in the foot before you start. And yes, you can easily measure the effects of cheap crossover parts on the bench.

 

[MinusTheBear]

Good crossover parts are not snake oil. Iron cored chokes have too much hysteresis distortion. Air cored chokes have to be larger as there are more turns. Heavy gauge copper keeps the DC resistance down. Cheap electrolytic caps are a misery and fail over time. Good Polypropylene caps like Solen virtually never fail.

Cheap components in the crossover shoot a speaker right in the foot before you start. And yes, you can easily measure the effects of cheap crossover parts on the bench.

Is there any data that you know of that is available that looks at the measured differences across components of various standards of build quality that you would typically find in a crossover (caps, resistors, inductors etc).

Something like this would make for an excellent future Audioholics article.

 

[haraldo]

Again thanks for very good read Gene

Interesting the fact that you were unable to consistently hear a difference between standard and upgraded x-over components, doesn't that qualify to credits to Axiom for making the speakers with the less costy components sound as good as the upgraded version?

Does anyone have any idea about how much better the v3 series of the speaker range is... compared to the previous one?

Wonder what bugs may be in Canada, I heard about a quite big one..... think it's called Grizzly Bear
It's supposed to be even bigger than the bugs in the swamps of Southeast Ukraine

For a long time, I had a wish to try out some of Axiom's products, perhaps it's time to get the finger out and order something
The speakers look like no-brainers......

Is there any data that you know of that is available that looks at the measured differences across components of various standards of build quality that you would typically find in a crossover (caps, resistors, inductors etc).

Something like this would make for an excellent future Audioholics article.

If you can hear the difference consistently, it's reason enough to upgrade isn't it?
I really believe sometimes we may hear differences that's hard or perhaps even impossible to quantify by consistent measurements, simply because we humans don't know so much about physics.....