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:
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:
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:
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:
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:"
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Check out small sampling of today's garden harvest:
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/
The Horizon is a heavy beast and seems well finished:
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:
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:
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:
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:"
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Check out small sampling of today's garden harvest:
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/
