First impression was that "this speaker is alright." Bass was standing out a bit but no way of telling if that was too much or hitting some room mode. Or else, what it should have been producing.
I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with it other than my excitement level was not at max. Yes, that is a technical term. It is covered under US ISO standard, 23476-A (annex E).
I have these speakers, and the corresponding towers as well.
Personally, I find they sound better than this subjective review indicates, at least when I EQ them to a more declining in-room curve. Granted, I’ve mostly compared the Towers and not the Horizon alone — but for those who don’t know, the Horizon has the same drivers etc as the towers, just in a different (horizontal) configuration.
In
this blind test I ran, 4 participants compared the Ascend Towers vs the Revel F206. No EQ or subwoofer was used. The results were a tie with bass preference going to the Revel and treble preference going to the Ascends.
Before anyone accuses me of bias: If I had not been one of those participants, the Ascends would have won overall. Personally, I also find that the Revel sounds better behaved 0-1khz, which is indeed very important. But the treble and dispersion width of the Ascend Towers lead it to win favor in many songs.
Even in the songs I compared where the Revel won, I still noted that the Ascends win on treble and soundstage but the Revel F206 wins in bass. In fact, almost everyone described this observation over and over again, in different words.
The only other speaker I have that really satisfies with a wide dispersion and detailed treble presentation as much or more than my Ascend RAAL speakers, are my Revel Salon2’s.
Yes, even my Genelec 8351B does not match the wide sound of the RAAL tweeter. Obviously, the dispersion is clearly different. Obviously, the Genelec 8351B measures (and sounds) better in every other way (aside from the treble soundstage width), and I do
overall prefer the Genelec over any other speaker I have ever had except the Salon2’s (in which case each have pros and cons to balance). Nonetheless, the Ascend’s wide dispersion still is very appealing and in some ways is still audibly preferred at least in some cases, even over otherwise much better measuring speakers like the Genelec 8351B.
I believe this reason is also mainly why I prefer the Salon2’s for relaxed listening over the Genelec 8351B, even though the Salon2’s spin is much worse — my subjective preferences tend to put a lot of weight in wide dispersion, and the Salon2 does this incredibly well.