Monday, April 11, 2011

Speakers I wish I owned: First in an occasionally appearing series.


When I refoam speakers for others, they often just bring the raw drivers. Sometimes, though, the whole system shows up. These Axiom AX 5s are from the mid eighties, and I just finished refoaming their 10 inch aluminum cone woofers, which are on the speakers's backs. These cost $1800/pair new, and made Axiom's reputation as a serious canadian manufacturer. They are wonderful, with superb bass and overall musicality. I will regret returning them to their owner (take your time, Paul). They have two sets of binding posts, and the toggle switch between them allows for easy switching between single cable and biwire configurations, without removing jumpers. I've never tried biwiring before, but right now I have the tweeters and midranges connected to speaker A on the Sansui G-6700, and the woofers connected to speaker B. The difference is subtle, but worth the extra cables. Single or biwired, I'm really impressed.

1 comment:

cliffsearch said...

Interesting speakers LIoyd. strange how the woofer would in most cases face a wall (I wonder about sound quality). Bi-wiring usually is wired with equal lengths of speaker wire through SPEAKER "A" with 2 positives and 2 negatives. This is to maintain even impedance between tweeter and woofers. I haven't done lot of bi-wiring myself so I'm no expert. If bi-wiring through both A & B speakers, your running the speakers through four separate channels instead of 2. I wonder about impedance variations doing it this way. I have a couple of sets aof speakers that can be be bi-wired, but never seriously explored how much benifit is gained with the bi-wiring process. Also, for those who like to bi-wire it's best to have special speaker cables made up anyway. Regards Cliff