No, they won’t compete with the ‘big rig’, but you’ll be amazed at just how much music and performance they extract from a surprisingly modest driving system.
It reflects their ‘portable/live performance’ DNA, a world in which driving systems are more about reliability than absolute quality. But it also reflects their ability to track the demands of the incoming signal – without loss or compression – and the natural grace in their reproduction. This is one speaker where you can actually use the terms “horn” and “forgiving” in the same sentence!
The AXjet Pros cost £85,000 a pair (plus sales tax, but including folding flight cases – another indicator of the ‘pro’ DNA that’s embedded in their heritage). Given the material content that is far from unreasonable and compares favourably with the competition. Talking of competition, the obvious point of comparison is the AvantGarde Duo GT (in active form) or the upcoming Mezzo, although I’ve yet to get the latter home. That’s stiff competition from an established company that’s been harvesting excellent reviews on its latest models. Despite the AXjet’s ‘do it all’ credentials I treated them in exactly the same way as I approached the AvantGarde speakers: as a serious audiophile option, with a requirement to play the most demanding material. The AXjet’s credentials when it comes to electronica and dance music are pretty much peerless: I was more interested in their performance with Mahler than DeadMaus (although I’d be lying if I said the second of those didn’t feature in my listening…)
The manufacturer will tell you that the AXjets are relatively insensitive to positioning or set up: place the speakers where you want them, sit down and have somebody point the Afterburners straight at you and you are good to go – a process considerably eased by the casters. They’re right – up to a point. Do that and the AXjet Pros will sound great. But it’s not the whole story. As good as they sound like that, there’s plenty more performance to be had if you put in a bit of effort. My first step was to replace the casters with Track Audio spiked feet – not to mechanically ground the cabinets but to allow precise attitude adjustment. The casters are equipped with M10 threads, so there are any number of replacement options that should suit – although it has to be said that the Track feet certainly look the part.
Plant-ed…
With the feet installed I set about positioning and aligning the speakers, not so much in terms of room boundaries, but relative to the listening seat. I set the cabinets exactly vertical (in terms of azimuth) and precisely the same distance either side of and from the listening seat. Then I spent some considerable time tweaking the rake angle and getting it identical on both speakers. The rewards for all that effort? A seriously increased sense of clarity, focus, concentrated energy, locational precision and temporal integrity that really underlined the traditional strengths of wide-band, single driver designs. As always, subtle balancing of the bass amp’s roll-off and level paid dividends and with that sorted it was time to reach for some serious programme material.
