Ascend Acoustics Horizon Center Speaker Review

[echopraxia]

That's correct, from Amir we 'only' have the M105/106 and F208 but they look 'similar' to this broader RAAL in terms of dispersion.
The Ultima2 series does seem to offer much wider and even horizontal dispersion - I wonder since the surround looks quite thick for a tweeter if it is actually closer to 0,75", but simply a very powerful one. In any case it's an extremely well designed speaker, especially if you consider it's passive.

The Gem2 is on my potential upgrade list along with a few others. Currently with the F206 which after correction are quite superb, but as explained in the loudspeaker EQ thread there's just some things that can't be fixed with EQ.

That’s a good point about the F208 ... checking is horizontal response, it is hard to find where the Ascend Horizon is much wider aside from the upper treble. I do have hearing still up to 17khz, so it should be audible, but I don’t think this appears to be a huge difference.

So now, I can’t really say why the Ascend did so well on subjective treble impressions vs the F206. Everyone had the same comments preferring the Ascend’s treble. Now I just can’t see how I would correlate that to the measurements.

Edit: Actually never mind, I think this might be significant enough: At 90 degrees off axis, the Revel F208 appears to be down almost 10db more at 10khz vs the Ascend Horizon.

 

[Shazb0t]

That’s a good point about the F208 ... checking is horizontal response, it is hard to find where the Ascend Horizon is much wider aside from the upper treble. I do have hearing still up to 17khz, so it should be audible, but I don’t think this appears to be a huge difference.

So now, I can’t really say why the Ascend did so well on subjective treble impressions vs the F206. Everyone had the same comments preferring the Ascend’s treble. Now I just can’t see how I would correlate that to the measurements.

Edit: Actually never mind, I think this might be significant enough: At 90 degrees off axis, the Reven F208 appears to be almost -10db at 10khz vs the Ascend Horizon.

It could have to do with the impulse response of the tweeter. The ribbon is going to be much more responsive than your typical dome tweeter. We don't talk about the effect that impulse response plays on sound much here.

Revel and others haven't been blowing money designing and implementing Beryllium tweeters in their products for no reason.

 

[echopraxia]

Revel and others haven't been blowing money designing and implementing Beryllium tweeters in their products for no reason.

Yeah this really interests me as well. There is a huge difference in subjective sound (as I mentioned) of the Salon2 treble vs F206 treble. I don’t really know how much this is from the beryllium tweeter and how much is from the shallow waveguide. I had mostly assumed this was just from the wider dispersion, but maybe there’s more. It would be really interesting to compare to a F228Be some day, which I think (?) still has similar waveguide to the F228.

 

[TimVG]

Edit: Actually never mind, I think this might be significant enough: At 90 degrees off axis, the Revel F208 appears to be down almost 10db more at 10khz vs the Ascend Horizon.

The overal horizontal average however seems to be pretty close in terms of directivity index.

 

[TimVG]

So now, I can’t really say why the Ascend did so well on subjective treble impressions vs the F206. Everyone had the same comments preferring the Ascend’s treble. Now I just can’t see how I would correlate that to the measurements.

I have to say the treble did bother me a bit about the stock F206 - after some correction however it's pretty darn good.

Still curious about hearing the 'Ultima2 magic' for myself though.. Although there's a couple of other candidates too.

 

[Audio Monkey]

Here are the frequency response measurements that were sent by Ascend for this speaker (from 2012). There is some smoothing in the output, but the results generally align with Amir's analysis.

 

[hardisj]

Amir, unrelated question (well, mostly) but... what is the output signal voltage from the Klippel to the DUT for the FR stuff? Is it 0.1v? I'm just curious. Some of their modules for NF testing are defaulted for 0.1vRMS (you can change them, of course) and I'm just wondering if that's the same for the NFS. Or do they actually default to measure at 2.83vRMS?

Again, just curious. No ulterior motives.

 

[aarons915]

Depends which one - the wider Raal model as used here does not have wider dispersion than speakers with a regular 1" dome tweeter. Which makes sense as the directivity is the consequence of size vs frequency. The tweeter used in the Bookshelf model (2 and 2ex) indeed has very wide dispersion.

Yes and to me it shows that the 70-20 is the more ideal geometry as it has a very smooth on and off axis response, it may not be as wide of dispersion as the 64-10 but it's much more neutral. Still nothing we haven't seen with a good 1" dome though.

 

[amirm]

Amir, unrelated question (well, mostly) but... what is the output signal voltage from the Klippel to the DUT for the FR stuff? Is it 0.1v? I'm just curious. Some of their modules for NF testing are defaulted for 0.1vRMS (you can change them, of course) and I'm just wondering if that's the same for the NFS. Or do they actually default to measure at 2.83vRMS?

Again, just curious. No ulterior motives.

I don't remember what it was. I do remember them asking me why I had set it to 2.83 volts and I mentioned the 2034 spec. Or something like that.

Note that NFS uses db-lab as the underlying measurement system so it doesn't have its own settings with respect to such things.

NFS does normalize to 2.83 volts though during reporting no matter what you used during measurements which is nice. Sadly this only works for passive speakers as it is unaware of active speaker gain.

 

[BN1]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Ascend Acoustics Horizon Center speaker with RAAL tweeter upgrade. It costs US $1,495 according to its owner ($350 tweeter upgrade fee).

The Horizon is a heavy beast and seems well finished:

View attachment 77214

It is too heavy for my photo booth so you see it where I put to listen to it. The fabric under it is made out of special material that helps push the electrical energy that would normally be wasted in speaker/crossover wires back into the speaker. I plan to market it as an effective tweak but we digress.

Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.

I used over 800 measurement point which was enough to compute the sound field of the speaker within 1%error.

Temperature was 77 degrees. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.

Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.

Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:

View attachment 77215

Not too bad! There is a cancellation around 500 Hz and a couple of resonant peaks (where all the curves tilt up together).

Due to inclusion of mid-range, directivity is good which we like to see in a center speaker that has to cover wide listening area in a home theater situation.

Early window graph averages to a good curve but individual reflections do vary a lot:

View attachment 77216

What this says to me is that the acoustic properties of your room will impact this curve as it modifies reflections differently than our simulated room below.

Putting the two together we get our predicted in-room response:

View attachment 77217

The variations we saw in on-axis response mellow out a bit which is good.

Directivity Response
Looking at how sound radiates in different planes, we get this in what we call "beam width:"

View attachment 77218

For a center speaker, we want wide beam width as this allows the side reflections to hit the walls and expand the perception of the speaker to be closer to the width of the display. Having 70 degrees here with reasonable flatness helps. Most smaller speakers are around 50 degrees for example.

I have worked on making the 3-D version of the above be easier to interpret. Let me know what you think:

View attachment 77219

An idea response would be a shaft of red color and the smoothly falling into blue. We have a lot of choppiness here but we need to examine more speakers using these settings to get better calibrated.

Here is our vertical response:

View attachment 77220

We see that I put the microphone at the center of the tweeter (all the way to the right). I can't figure out why the acoustic center of the mid-range is above that as I have indicated. Anyone has an explanation?

Anyway, vertical directivity gets very narrow around 4 kHz so best to have your ear at the RAAL tweeter center.

Here is our CSD/waterfall:

View attachment 77223

Speaker Distortion Measurements
This speaker is too wide for my current deep dive distortion measurements (I am working on fixing that) so we are just going to run with standard response we get out of Klippel system:

View attachment 77222

We have a problem around 1 kHz and to some extent, around 3 to 3.5 kHz. We can see the same in absolute levels:

View attachment 77225

Notice that distortion is actually higher than the fundamental tone below 35 Hz. This often happens and it says that what you get will not resembled the original tone. So some filtering of that may be advised.

Impedance and Phase Measurements
This is a low impedance speaker so best to get a capable amplifier to drive it:

View attachment 77226

There are also some "kinks" indicating resonances. I see one around 380 Hz for example.

Speaker Listening Tests
I placed the speaker in my usual spot as you see in the review photo. But due to large width of this speaker, I had to move the stand a bit.

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).

So I went and looked up the measurements which I had created a couple of days before and forgotten by now and corrected a couple of minor things:

View attachment 77227

As usual, ignore the filter at 102 Hz as that deals with a room mode in my listening space that exist with all speakers. The rest are self-explanatory and are based on predicted in-room response. They are "eyeballed" so more precise computation may be better.

The sum total of the speaker corrections improved detailed, gave it a bit more airiness and reduced distortion/accentuation of highs. Not a whole lot bot some amount.

Once there, the Horizon Center was very nice sounding and was capable of playing very loud.

On my deep, deep bass track it would bottom out but do better than that typical bookshelf speaker.

Conclusions
Objectively and subjectively the Ascend Acoustics Center speaker rated well. It is not perfect but gets close enough at the asking price to be fine.

I give it a like but for some reason is not something I would buy. You all decide on your own.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Check out small sampling of today's garden harvest:

View attachment 77229

Need money to get some nice meat or fish to go with it! So don't be cheap and
donate what you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Amir - thanks for doing this one. It's too big for my setup but I had considered it a "top-end" center channel and now we know how it measures. Old ears and damaged hearing makes dialogue tough on most movies/TV. What are the technical aspects that I should look for in a good cc for dialogue ? I am starting from a 5.1.2 system - Elac b5.2/c5.2 for fronts, Yamaha RX-A660 avr.

 

[amirm]

Amir - thanks for doing this one. It's too big for my setup but I had considered it a "top-end" center channel and now we know how it measures. Old ears and damaged hearing makes dialogue tough on most movies/TV. What are the technical aspects that I should look for in a good cc for dialogue ? I am starting from a 5.1.2 system - Elac b5.2/c5.2 for fronts, Yamaha RX-A660 avr.

The biggest problem with dialog intelligibility is usually in the movie recording/mixing. So many other sounds are competing with the voices (background music, effects, etc.). For a speaker, one with wide directivity is good but probably the easiest fix is to turn up the level for the center channel a bit.

 

[Bear123]

I wonder why, given the size of the baffle, Ascend didn't choose to use larger woofers and/or space them much closer together. Wouldn't closer spacing improve off axis response? Perhaps the woofers are crossed low enough that lobing/comb filtering/whatever is not an issue?

 

[MZKM]

the easiest fix is to turn up the level for the center channel a bit.

For most tv shows and many moves, the center channel handles like 90% of the on-screen sound, the left/right are mainly used for echo and soundtrack/score effects (same for surround). It’s usually only blockbusters where they really play with the audio.

For instance, on an episode of Modern Family, they were at a graduation and on a close up scene of the family in attendance, the background noise of the teacher saying the names of the students was still going on, yet it came out solely of the center channel and not the surrounds. This was a very popular show with a large budget, yet it‘s basically mono.

 

[richard12511]

That’s a good point about the F208 ... checking is horizontal response, it is hard to find where the Ascend Horizon is much wider aside from the upper treble. I do have hearing still up to 17khz, so it should be audible, but I don’t think this appears to be a huge difference.

So now, I can’t really say why the Ascend did so well on subjective treble impressions vs the F206. Everyone had the same comments preferring the Ascend’s treble. Now I just can’t see how I would correlate that to the measurements.

Edit: Actually never mind, I think this might be significant enough: At 90 degrees off axis, the Revel F208 appears to be down almost 10db more at 10khz vs the Ascend Horizon.

It's important to note that the F208 seems to measure quite a bit better than the F206 based on the spins that Harman released, so it may not be super practical to try and correlate the F208 spin to a blind test of the F206.

 

[Rene]

For most tv shows and many moves, the center channel handles like 90% of the on-screen sound, the left/right are mainly used for echo and soundtrack/score effects (same for surround). It’s usually only blockbusters where they really play with the audio.

For instance, on an episode of Modern Family, they were at a graduation and on a close up scene of the family in attendance, the background noise of the teacher saying the names of the students was still going on, yet it came out solely of the center channel and not the surrounds. This was a very popular show with a large budget, yet it‘s basically mono.

My experience has been that many DVD's sound is poorly mastered with respect to dialog. I believe it is still assumed that most viewers are using 1960 mono TV sets! Anything mastered for DVD since the mid '90s should have a proper center channel for dialog.

Another point to be mentioned (and frequently forgotten in the posts) is that this review is for a CENTER CHANNEL LOUDSPEAKER intended for the DIALOG CHANNEL, which should be high-pass filtered below 100-200Hz as dialog channels are not meant to contain extreme bass frequencies.

 

[MZKM]

My experience has been that many DVD's sound is poorly mastered with respect to dialog. I believe it is still assumed that most viewers are using 1960 mono TV sets! Anything mastered for DVD since the mid '90s should have a proper center channel for dialog.

Another point to be mentioned (and frequently forgotten in the posts) is that this review is for a CENTER CHANNEL LOUDSPEAKER intended for the DIALOG CHANNEL, which should be high-pass filtered below 100-200Hz as dialog channels are not meant to contain extreme bass frequencies.

Due note that the name doesn’t include “Center”, Ascend markets it as both a center and mains:

Amir uses Revel center channels for all his satellites, so there are crazy people that will use this as mains.

 

[TimVG]

Another point to be mentioned (and frequently forgotten in the posts) is that this review is for a CENTER CHANNEL LOUDSPEAKER intended for the DIALOG CHANNEL, which should be high-pass filtered below 100-200Hz as dialog channels are not meant to contain extreme bass frequencies.

The center channel is not just the 'dialogue channel' - most of the on-screen action is played back through it! It is arguably the single most important speaker in a home theater and needs to be just as capable as the L/R channels.

 

[Rene]

Due note that the name doesn’t include “Center”, Ascend markets it as both a center and mains:
View attachment 77325

Amir uses Revel center channels for all his satellites, so there are crazy people that will use this as mains.

A most unusual driver layout for mains.

It was Amir who reviewed it as a center channel speaker.

 

[Rene]

The center channel is not just the 'dialogue channel' - most of the on-screen action is played back through it! It is arguably the single most important speaker in a home theater and needs to be just as capable as the L/R channels.

Sorry, the center channel was INTENDED in the 5.1 specification for dialog. It doesn't mean it is always used correctly.
This may help explain: https://www.lifewire.com/center-channel-speaker-4142693

 

[MZKM]

Sorry, the center channel was INTENDED in the 5.1 specification for dialog. It doesn't mean it is always used correctly.
This may help explain: https://www.lifewire.com/center-channel-speaker-4142693

Doesn’t matter the intended use, it matters the actual use. Give me a $500/pair mains and a $1000 center over the inverse.