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Ascend Sierra 2 Speaker Review

Xyrium

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For people who need a small speaker they can put on or in a bookshelf, I suppose this speaker is an option. However, for those who put them on stands, hence taking up the same floorspace as a floor stander, why not buy floor standing speakers for the same price as these. Actually cheaper once you buy stands for them to balance precariously on?

Because integrating low frequencies into a room properly sometimes requires the increased complexity/flexibility of a sub/sat setup.
 

database

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Oddly enough, the Ascend CBM 170 actually rates higher(6.6 vs 6.3), despite being significantly cheaper. Maybe that speaker is a really good value.
Sure it is... and the Pioneer BS22 is a 7.4 so it must be better than both of them, right?

More likely the preference rating just isn't working very well.
 

richard12511

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Sure it is... and the Pioneer BS22 is a 7.4 so it must be better than both of them, right?

More likely the preference rating just isn't working very well.

If you look the Pioneer BS22 measurements, it's easy to see why it rates so highly. I don't really see a problem with it being rated that highly.
 

Sancus

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Sure it is... and the Pioneer BS22 is a 7.4 so it must be better than both of them, right?

More likely the preference rating just isn't working very well.

People keep wanting to use the preference rating to state which speaker "beats" another speaker and it's not good for that, that's all there is to it. It's still important to keep because it makes navigating a large database possible instead of impossible.

In addition, using the "speaker without LFE" score throws out even rough information on power handling, because(at least for passive speakers, active speakers break it a bit) LFE corresponds to power handling pretty well. And it seems pretty obvious that maintaining excellent FR on/off axis characteristics while also increasing output is challenging.

That all aside, people keep whining about the Pioneer score, but what happens when it gets blind tested and beats a bunch of speakers that "everyone knows are good" but which scored poorly? It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

People really just don't want to accept that the products they're happy with may not actually be the best thing out there for the price.
 

StevenEleven

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Food for thought, Pioneer BS-22s, measurements, from Audioholics, 2013. I won’t say I knew what I was doing, but this is why I bought them. Looked interesting, I bought them for $125 a pair or so, I tried them, I considered it very carefully, I liked them, I kept them. Simple. What @amirm stumbled into seven years later was not exactly a closely kept secret. Listening to them right now. Infinity Primus 150s circa 2003 (no slouches, not at all, I suspect they would [edit for the sake of civility]: [objectively surpass the Ascends by a wide margin in terms of smoothness of FR and tonal balance as well] are now in my 16-year-old’s room. I want to upgrade, I really do. . . I’ve got two really nice subs waiting for some uptown company. . .

1583209976306.jpeg
 
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richard12511

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Food for thought, Pioneer BS-22s, measurements, from Audioholics, 2013. I won’t say I knew what I was doing, but this is why I bought them. Looked interesting, I bought them for $125 a pair so so, I tried them, I considered it very carefully, I liked them, I kept them. Simple. What @amirm stumbled into seven years later was not exactly a closely kept secret. Listening to them right now. Infinity Primus 150s circa 2003 (no slouches, not at all, I suspect they would embarrass the Ascends pretty badly as well) are now in my 16-year-old’s room. I want to upgrade, I really do. . . I’ve got two really nice subs waiting for some uptown company. . .

View attachment 52693
I have a bunch of extra Infinity Beta 20's sitting around in my master closet.
 

Stump909

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Infinity Primus 150s circa 2003 (no slouches, not at all, I suspect they would embarrass the Ascends pretty badly as well)

Lol, this whole thread is a joke. I’m very familiar with the Primus line. Hell I own a 6.1 Primus P363 setup. The Sierra-2’s destroy them. Not even close. Funny everyone chalks up user preferences to cognitive dissonance, except their own. Embarrass? Whats embarrassing is people blindly trusting one model of preference as an end-all speaker performance metric. I’m living in a bizarro reality where good measurements are interpreted as catastrophic.

It’s becoming more apparent that this methodology is too limited in scope and weighted too heavily on a system that many can attest as inaccurate. Good measurements are being hailed as inadequate. Its only obvious to me because I’m oddly aquainted with most of the speakers in question. If the pioneers are going to be touted as unbeatable end-game then theres a major factor missing. Its a remarkable budget speaker. Nothing more, and its limitations were even outlined in the review.
 
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database

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If you look the Pioneer BS22 measurements, it's easy to see why it rates so highly. I don't really see a problem with it being rated that highly.

If a speaker with lower "preference rating" than the BS22 is preferred by most users, that suggests to me the preference rating system isn't working very well. Amir states that he wouldn't consider the BS22 a substitute for Sierra 2s in far field due to their difference in power handling. I imagine most users would share the same preference as Amir here (but we can't know for sure since no larger scale blind tests have been done).

People keep wanting to use the preference rating to state which speaker "beats" another speaker and it's not good for that, that's all there is to it.

Yes, it's not, but that's what people will continue to use it for, as long as it's there.

what happens when it gets blind tested and beats a bunch of speakers that "everyone knows are good" but which scored poorly? It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

Blind testing a large sample of users would be the best way to verify that the formula is working as expected, but practically no one is doing that.

Not that it's really necessary for the Pioneer. If you play loud, the BS22 would lose handily. Would the BS22 do favorably against something like the Sierra 2 if they're level matched to play within the limits of the BS22? It's an interesting question. If they do, it may be surprising to some and could validate that the preference rating can be accurate in this specific scenario. But if they don't, then I don't see how the preference rating is very useful at all.
 
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Sancus

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Yes, it's not, but that's what people will continue to use it for, as long as it's there.

For sure, but who cares? They misuse SINAD too. The score has value when you're using it correctly, to separate a large population of speakers from eachother.

You need to do your own research on power handling, your own room/situation if it differs substantially from "farfield listening room", for example on the desktop, and various other things that are noted in the threads about the preference scores and the notes in the google doc.

I'd still rather have the preference score so I can throw out the 3s, 4s and focus on the 6s, 7s and 8s if I'm looking to buy a speaker.

Blind testing a large sample of users would be the best way to verify that the formula is working as expected, but practically no one is doing that.

Amir has previously expressed a desire to set up blind tests locally in the future. We're still in early days, here.
 

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Lol, this whole thread is a joke. I’m very familiar with the Primus line. Hell I own a 6.1 Primus P363 setup. The Sierra-2’s destroy them. Not even close. Funny everyone chalks up user preferences to cognitive dissonance, except their own. Embarrass? Whats embarrassing is people blindly trusting one model of preference as an end-all speaker performance metric. I’m living in a bizarro reality where good measurements are interpreted as catastrophic.

It’s becoming more apparent that this methodology is too limited in scope and weighted too heavily on a system that many can attest as inaccurate. Good measurements are being hailed as inadequate. Its only obvious to me because I’m oddly aquainted with most of the speakers in question. If the pioneers are going to be touted as unbeatable end-game then theres a major factor missing. Its a remarkable budget speaker. Nothing more, and its limitations were even outlined in the review.

Of course unless you've compared them properly you can't definitely say the Sierra 2 "destroy" any speaker can you? This is a large point of the Harman research and why they do their tests blind in the 1st place, you should check out the study related to the dishonesty of sighted listening tests:

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/04/dishonesty-of-sighted-audio-product.html

This is Olive's blog that summarizes it but it shows Harman employees showing brand bias to their own products not surprisingly. The study mentioned that the brand bias of a speaker is more of a factor than the loudspeaker itself...that isn't a typo. I'm not saying the Sierras aren't better than the Primus speakers but unless you've done a proper comparison, all you have done is confirmed your bias.
 

napilopez

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Lol, this whole thread is a joke. I’m very familiar with the Primus line. Hell I own a 6.1 Primus P363 setup. The Sierra-2’s destroy them. Not even close. Funny everyone chalks up user preferences to cognitive dissonance, except their own. Embarrass? Whats embarrassing is people blindly trusting one model of preference as an end-all speaker performance metric. I’m living in a bizarro reality where good measurements are interpreted as catastrophic.

It’s becoming more apparent that this methodology is too limited in scope and weighted too heavily on a system that many can attest as inaccurate. Good measurements are being hailed as inadequate. Its only obvious to me because I’m oddly aquainted with most of the speakers in question. If the pioneers are going to be touted as unbeatable end-game then theres a major factor missing. Its a remarkable budget speaker. Nothing more, and its limitations were even outlined in the review.

While I agree people are taking the score too seriously, the fact of the matter is that based on what we know about speakers and preference, the Infinity's do seem to be better. They measure really well.

That doesn't negate your opinion of them, certainly not your sighted one. But ultimately all the score is doing is condensing some of that data.

On the other hand, the only reason there is an issue here is that the data differs substantially from Ascend's provided measurements. If this weren't the case, I don't think anyone would have an issue. Ascend's measurements of this speaker look pretty fantastic. Amir's look good, not great (by the standards of 'great' we've seen so far).

To be clear, this isn't to say ascend's measurements are false. I'm simply pointing out the discrepancy that's leading to both the score and discussion being what it is. Someone mentioned the possibility of a damaged or deteriorated speaker, and though I don't have a real reason to believe that's the case, we saw it happen with the Kali LP-6.

It is also worth noting that I found these results surprising given that the two other ascend speakers have been measured by the NRC measure quite well and both track ascend's measurements more closely. See, for example, the CBM-170 (ascend, NRC). That seems like a remarkable pair of speakers for $300 by the way - I'm not sure I've ever seen $300 speakers measure so well. EDIT: Oh boy, I just saw see Amir reviewed those speakers too. Here we go again... His measurements show significantly less energy from about 700Hz down which will definitely throw off the tonal balance...

All that being said, I go back and forth on the utility of the preference score because these discussions keep coming up where people seem to ignore the score context. What the preference score tells you is expected preference within the comfort zone of two speakers. If you have a tiny pair of studio monitors that are super linear but start to compress at 70dB they are going to lose to less linear speakers speaker with better SPL capabilities.

There will definitely be times when cheap old speakers beat expensive new ones - Harman seems to have seen this happen plenty of times with its own designs, with cheaper speakers beating more expensive ones within certain playback limits. But for the added price, you normally get speakers that are able to maintain their preference abilities in a multitude of listening scenarios.
 
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napilopez

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That is interesting and a bit concerning. In order to be fair to Ascend it would be helpful to get some insight into what is going on there. It does seem even on the NRC and Ascend graphs the treble is getting out of control beginning at 45 degrees (this is an area where my reach exceeds my grasp, though—maybe you could confirm or refute), but still it seems to paint a very favorable portrait of the CBM-170. So is this damaged gear, or not so great QC, or vulnerable construction, or accepted variation among units—it seems like a very tough question.

There are pros and cons to getting user-submitted gear. Anyway, I don't want to start a whole debate about the measurement process or damaged speakers again, I'm simply pointing out the discrepancy for what it is. Whether or not you think this speaker is good will depend on whether you believe Amir's measurements more than Acends. In the case of the CBM-170, which I had not seen Amir also reviewed when I first made the above post, the three measurements track more closely overall - Amir's actually looks closer to Ascend's than the NRCs.
 

Jon AA

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Whats embarrassing is people blindly trusting one model of preference as an end-all speaker performance metric.

...If the pioneers are going to be touted as unbeatable end-game...
Please Google the term "Strawman Argument." Nobody here is trying to argue either of those things. But you're sure winning the argument against them...those things nobody is actually trying to argue....

It has been said hundreds of times here already that the preference score is but one metric with specific limitations. It's up to you to use your brain, put it in context, and consider other metrics that may be important to you. If you can't do that, it's not the fault of the preference score, it's yours.

And can you quote one single person trying to argue the Pioneer is an "Unbeatable end-game speaker?"
 

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If one day we have independent measurements of the other model, the SIERRA-2EX, we can be safer. http://www.ascendacoustics.com/pages/products/speakers/SRM2EX/srm2exmeas.html

So much discrepancy in the measurements is too striking, maybe there was a quality control problem with the tweeter.

Now, so many pronounced resonances are indicative of cost savings, and that is only attributable to Ascend Acoustics.
 
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maty

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maty

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To finish with the resonances problem, the Studio Monitor aka NX-Studio:

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=160647.msg1764167#msg1764167
1. MDF is fine. It is dense and less resonant than other materials. It is also cheap and easy to purchase and cut.

2. The front baffle is 1.375" thick [MDF] already. So there is no resonance issue. Also the woofer frame is made from a polymer material that is non-resonance and will not transmit a resonant to the front baffle like most woofers. And it surface mounts so baffle material is not removed for mounting like many drivers that have to be recessed...
 

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I brought them as a stepping stone to Ascends tower’s. The plan was (before illness and joblessness!) to buy towers down the line and move the Sierra-2s to surround channels.
This makes good sense.
 

Bear123

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Because integrating low frequencies into a room properly sometimes requires the increased complexity/flexibility of a sub/sat setup.
This isn't a reason; all speakers should be crossed to subs regardless wether tower or bookshelf.
 

Xyrium

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Only agreed if placement of the mains is optimal. Meaning, I would not use towers unless they have proper breathing room. I agree that subs should always supplement them, however.
 
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