Floor-standing under $3k?

[MarcT]

Well, alright then.

There's more low end than we've ever had in a home stereo—that's plainly obvious. Also, I wanna say, more detail, less coloration and distortion? Idk if that's the difference we're hearing but it has the expected pros and cons.

Surprisingly enough the bass was first revealed in vocals. First song we put on was Swamp Cabbage Tallahassee from the Honk album. The drama here was the voice. Goosebumps. Some voices have a surprisingly low lowest first format and I guess we had been missing that. And the cons were evident too: love it as we both do, the song got tiring. The guitar and cymbals in the latter third of the song are intense and ... yikes.

We watch movies and TV with the same system and the boxes did something remarkable with the typically annoying dramatic soundtrack dynamics directors of "epic" TV seem to prefer since The Wire and Breaking Bad. Normally as it gets later in the evening I feel the need to turn the volume down when the dramatic music or sound effects swell dramatically because I had to turn it up so we could understand the dramatically quiet dialog. Now we can listen to the dramatic dynamics of the Man in the High Castle without having to touch the remote. Either the speakers' quality makes for more intelligible dialog at low SPL, or the relative absence of distortion/coloration in the loud parts makes them seem not so loud, or both. Either way, it's nice.

Just for a start.

Glad you are liking the new speakers! Interestingly, if you want to hear some freaking deep bass in vocals, you have got to check out Leonard Cohen's song, You Want it Darker. When he sings the lyrics, "hineni, hineni", it vibrates the whole house with my speakers. Dude had the lowest voice I ever heard.

As to movies, check out Russel Crowe's voice in The Mummy(the new one with Tom Cruise) in the scenes where they are in the newly discovered crypt vault in London. Crowe's voice is just subterranean there.

 

[echopraxia]

Well, alright then.

There's more low end than we've ever had in a home stereo—that's plainly obvious. Also, I wanna say, more detail, less coloration and distortion? Idk if that's the difference we're hearing but it has the expected pros and cons.

Surprisingly enough the bass was first revealed in vocals. First song we put on was Swamp Cabbage Tallahassee from the Honk album. The drama here was the voice. Goosebumps. Some voices have a surprisingly low lowest first format and I guess we had been missing that. And the cons were evident too: love it as we both do, the song got tiring. The guitar and cymbals in the latter third of the song are intense and ... yikes.

We watch movies and TV with the same system and the boxes did something remarkable with the typically annoying dramatic soundtrack dynamics directors of "epic" TV seem to prefer since The Wire and Breaking Bad. Normally as it gets later in the evening I feel the need to turn the volume down when the dramatic music or sound effects swell dramatically because I had to turn it up so we could understand the dramatically quiet dialog. Now we can listen to the dramatic dynamics of the Man in the High Castle without having to touch the remote. Either the speakers' quality makes for more intelligible dialog at low SPL, or the relative absence of distortion/coloration in the loud parts makes them seem not so loud, or both. Either way, it's nice.

Just for a start.

Glad you’re liking them! Btw what you describe about fatiguing cymbals etc. I find to be far better on the my Ascend RAAL Towers than any other neutral speakers I’ve ever had (it is a bit better than my Revel F206 for example, though both are quite good — both speakers don’t have any large inherent spikes in the treble).

But in some rooms with a lot of natural reverb, any neutral speaker can be fatiguing, to some extent. By any chance is this in a room with hard floors or other reflective surfaces? In any case, in such rooms, I’ve had good results from equalization. I would recommend listening without EQ for a while (just in case some of it is your ears not being accustomed to the different sound signature), then trying to adjust EQ to your preference (or even better to measurement if you have a calibration mic).

Often better than EQ though (especially in the higher frequencies) is room treatment, but I understand that may not always be an option. However, in one of my worst reverberating rooms, I have had wonderfully positive results by something as simple as adding a rug from Target ($100). It went from being acoustically horrendous (even a clap would echo harshly) to acoustically acceptable with that simple addition. And later I plan to add those cheap foam panels from Amazon ($1/sq.ft.) to the walls at some point, and expect to be able to bring it from acoustically horrible all the way up to acoustically excellent

 

[thefsb]

Glad you’re liking them! Btw what you describe about fatiguing cymbals etc. I find to be far better on the my Ascend RAAL Towers than any other neutral speakers I’ve ever had (it is a bit better than my Revel F206 for example, though both are quite good — both speakers don’t have any large inherent spikes in the treble).

But in some rooms with a lot of natural reverb, any neutral speaker can be fatiguing, to some extent. By any chance is this in a room with hard floors or other reflective surfaces? In any case, in such rooms, I’ve had good results from equalization. I would recommend listening without EQ for a while (just in case some of it is your ears not being accustomed to the different sound signature), then trying to adjust EQ to your preference (or even better to measurement if you have a calibration mic).

Often better than EQ though (especially in the higher frequencies) is room treatment, but I understand that may not always be an option. However, in one of my worst reverberating rooms, I have had wonderfully positive results by something as simple as adding a rug from Target ($100). It went from being acoustically horrendous (even a clap would echo harshly) to acoustically acceptable with that simple addition. And later I plan to add those cheap foam panels from Amazon ($1/sq.ft.) to the walls at some point, and expect to be able to bring it from acoustically horrible all the way up to acoustically excellent

Actually I think in this case the problem really is the recording. It sounded rough, badly unbalanced while other recordings of kit drums sound great. We haven't had much time with the speakers yet so I just thought I'd share a couple of initial impressions for fun.

I'm interested to try room measurements and EQ, in particular FIR, which I haven't though about much since the 80s when I was into signal processing for communications as a student. The room is not reverberant. I think for mid and high frequencies is may be in pretty good shape. There are a couple of simple fixes but for LF I really need to measure.

But we tried a bass lift yesterday. I noticed that we can play the music loud and the amp and speakers seem to have no trouble delivering lots of energy in low frequencies, way more than we can use most of the time. So I took the response measurement that Ascend kindly includes with the "documentation" of the boxes and figured that a a biquad high-shelf with f = 50 Hz, Q = 0.33 and gain = -10 dB looks pretty much like the complement of the speakers' bass roll off. I applied that using BubbleUpnp Server, and we listened at modest levels to the Material cover of Cucumber Slumber (Fluxus Mix) and Kraftwerk's 2009 remaster of Tour de France. They both sounded lovely and fun with such indulgent, glamorous luxury that it seemed decadent.

 

[thefsb]

Scratch that. It is decadent.