Ascend Acoustics Announces New Klippel NFS-Optimized Sierra Towers and Horizon Center

[mj30250]

Ascend confirmed that there will be four versions of both the Sierra towers and Horizon center:

The "ELX" will be the flagship offering and available in two configurations:

Current custom 70-20xram RAAL ribbon tweeter, new crossover, midrange, and woofers
Titan dome tweeter with new crossover, midrange, and woofers

The V2 Ribbon Tower / Horizon:

Current custom 70-20xram RAAL ribbon tweeter, new crossover, but with the original midrange and woofers

The Titan Tower / Horizon:

Titan dome tweeter, new crossover, but with the original midrange and woofers

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

hope they do not use mid ranges as woofer ( the 5.25 woofers )... it's pointless in such big thing ( floorstanding )

 

[MarkS]

View attachment 246488

I'm sure we're all very interested to hear your comparative impressions of these two!

 

[mj30250]

I'm sure we're all very interested to hear your comparative impressions of these two!

I'll be sharing detailed impressions soon. For now I'll say that I preferred the F226Bes to the original RAAL towers. Outside of more heavily vocal and acoustic material, they sounded bigger, fuller, and better composed overall, particularly from midbass frequencies through the bulk of the midrange.

The ELX RAAL towers improve upon nearly everything, particularly in that area where the Revels had dominated, as well as in deep bass extension. They are the most well balanced passive speakers I've personally ever heard.

 

[mj30250]

How does a speaker sound "bigger"? Higher SPL? Elevated tweeter maybe? Dispersion? Something else?
What, exactly, is "fuller"? How does a speaker sound "fuller" or less "full"? Is there a measurement that shows that?
And how does a speaker sound "better composed"? Again, is there a measurement that shows that? Is there a speaker that does not sound "composed" at all, and can be used as a reference?

Jim

And this is why I was hesitant to share brief, on-the-fly impressions here.

Anyway, it all goes back to balance to me. A speaker that is too lean or too heavy in mid to upper bass will not sound as composed with many more complicated musical passages as a speaker that is largely flat across those frequencies. This, along with dispersion and raw SPL of course, can also impact the impression of scale or "size". A bass-lean speaker (or one which shelves up mids/highs) will sound less full and impactful as certain instruments / vocals / effects will be perceived as recessed. You can see the silky-smooth mid to upper bass response of the F226Bes in Erin's measurements:

Here are the original RAAL towers in comparison:

When Ascend releases the spins for the new RAAL ELX towers, you'll see that the response top-to-bottom is far flatter while maintaining excellent directivity.

 

[mj30250]

Thank you.
I like (and understand) your explanation a LOT better than your original impressions. I may (or may not) disagree with it, but at least it relates to and is referenced to something concrete.

(For a moment there, I thought I had wandered into SBAF. )

Jim

Fair enough.

Apart from a lack of free time to complete a detailed write-up at present, the primary reason that I'm currently being rather vague and broad in my impressions is that I would much prefer the Klippel measurements for the ELX towers and Horizon to be published so that my subjective observations can be correlated to the data. I found there to be some differences between the Ascends and the Revels to my ears that I'm not fully understanding when I attempt to translate them to the measurements of both speakers, and I'll be interested to read others' thoughts.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

So, they are using mid ranges (5.25) as woofers again?

 

[mj30250]

So, they are using mid ranges (5.25) as woofers again?

I'm not sure what you're driving at exactly, but the midrange is a fully customized 6" woofer based on SEAS's Excel line.

The bass drivers are 6" SEAS Prestige Titan woofers customized with a larger magnet system and different frame.

Edit:

Since Ascend hasn't published distortion measurements for the new towers yet, here they are for the Sierra LX bookshelf speakers, which use the same bass woofer as the new towers, but obviously just one each instead of 2, so THD for the towers will be lower at the same SPLs.

 

[Multicore]

We have the ribbon towers. Does anyone have an idea what the upgrade kit will cost?

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

I'm not sure what you're driving at exactly, but the midrange is a fully customized 6" woofer based on SEAS's Excel line.

The bass drivers are 6" SEAS Prestige Titan woofers customized with a larger magnet system and different frame.

Edit:

Since Ascend hasn't published distortion measurements for the new towers yet, here they are for the Sierra LX bookshelf speakers, which use the same bass woofer as the new towers, but obviously just one each instead of 2, so THD for the towers will be lower at the same SPLs.

Nice, i was ask the same thing in their forum


Thank you for correct me

 

[ADale]

We have the ribbon towers. Does anyone have an idea what the upgrade kit will cost?

Details are to be released a little at a time according to Ascend. Some in the next day or two.

 

[samysound]

The new Ascend tower will be an interesting comparison to the recently announced Philharmonic BMR HT

 

[TimW]

The new Ascend tower will be an interesting comparison to the recently announced Philharmonic BMR HT

Is this a new version of the BMR or is it the tower that came out last year?

 

[Ericglo]

I'm not sure what you're driving at exactly, but the midrange is a fully customized 6" woofer based on SEAS's Excel line.

The bass drivers are 6" SEAS Prestige Titan woofers customized with a larger magnet system and different frame.

Edit:

Since Ascend hasn't published distortion measurements for the new towers yet, here they are for the Sierra LX bookshelf speakers, which use the same bass woofer as the new towers, but obviously just one each instead of 2, so THD for the towers will be lower at the same SPLs.

I am curious why Ascend went with the 6" driver instead of a smaller driver for the midrange. Seas has smaller drivers in that lineup.

I am not criticizing the decision. Just curious. My old PSB Stratus Golds used a 6" for a mid.

 

[Ericglo]

Is this a new version of the BMR or is it the tower that came out last year?

They are coming out with a new HT tower. Search on Dennis's posts and you will find info about it.

 

[ryanosaur]

Is this a new version of the BMR or is it the tower that came out last year?

It is a new Tower. Tectonic Labs did a new BMR Driver that is 8 ohms iirc, coupled with a Mundorf AMT and dual 6.5" Purifi Woofs...
This from Dennis:

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/philharmonic-audio-dennis-murphy.1348949/post-62097396

Fortunately, newly developed drivers have solved the problem Tectonic has just come out with a new 8 Ohm BMR driver that is more robust that the 4 Ohm we've been using, and it can be run in parallel to boost sensitivity. Purifi has also made a new version of their breakthrough 6.5" woofer that is more sensitive and doesn't require a large cabinet. It doesn't go quite as low as their first offering, but that's what subs are for in HT. Finally, I located a very refined AMT tweeter from Mundorf of Germany that is only 3/4" wide and has significantly wider dispersion than 1" domes and also is very robust and sensitive.

He debuted it at the Capitol Audio Fest and is still tweaking it.

 

[mj30250]

I am curious why Ascend went with the 6" driver instead of a smaller driver for the midrange. Seas has smaller drivers in that lineup.

I am not criticizing the decision. Just curious. My old PSB Stratus Golds used a 6" for a mid.

That would be a question for Dave, but I imagine it was partially for reasons of production streamlining / economies of scale as it's the same driver used in the 2EX bookshelf speakers.

And having seen the measurements for the ELX towers, the dispersion on these is essentially +/- 100 degrees with a smooth handoff to the wide RAAL ribbon, so I don't know that a smaller driver would have offered any advantages in this configuration.

Here's the dispersion for the 2EX V2:

 

[MarkS]

Apart from a lack of free time to complete a detailed write-up at present, the primary reason that I'm currently being rather vague and broad in my impressions is that I would much prefer the Klippel measurements for the ELX towers and Horizon to be published so that my subjective observations can be correlated to the data.

I prefer to think of subjective impressions themselves as data, just as measurements are data. Once both are in hand, then attempts to correlate them can be made.

Within this point of view, the superior methodology is to obtain the two data sets independently.

Alas, some ASR members believe that subjective impressions, by themselves, are not worth anything, and chastise those who provide them. I do not agree with this.

After all, getting good subjective impressions out of our music-reproduction systems is the ultimate goal! If all we cared about was measurements, we would just look at graphs all day, and never listen to anything.

 

[Ricardojoa]

So, they are using mid ranges (5.25) as woofers again?

Not really. As big as some of the lower end revel model but that digs just as low as the larger revels.

 

[muad]

I prefer to think of subjective impressions themselves as data, just as measurements are data. Once both are in hand, then attempts to correlate them can be made.

Within this point of view, the superior methodology is to obtain the two data sets independently.

Alas, some ASR members believe that subjective impressions, by themselves, are not worth anything, and chastise those who provide them. I do not agree with this.

After all, getting good subjective impressions out of our music-reproduction systems is the ultimate goal! If all we cared about was measurements, we would just look at graphs all day, and never listen to anything.

Totally agree with this.

I was sold on the LX based on measurements. Really an excellent speaker, clean as hell and can take a ton of power. I would have expected them to sound perfect based on the Klippel data. But... I found the uppermids or highs too much. Songs like "in the air tonight", Phil Collins voice didn't have any body. This is with the speaker not too far out from the wall in a moderately reflective room. I'm still trying to find what the correlates with in the data. I tried eqing the peaks at 1khz and 3 khz etc, but nothing really helped. Not sure which aspect of the spins apply to what I heard. Kinda reminded me of the BMR v1.5.

Now I see the new super sierra towers coming out... I know when I see the measurements, I'm gonna want to buy a pair. I'm a sucker for good spins apparently