GR Research Speaker Upgrade Review (Sierra-2EX V2)

[DanTheMan]

In the important 1-8 kHz range the AsciLab F6B is so much cleaner than both Versions of the Ascend Sierrra.
Even at 91 dB!!!
Even at 96 dB!!!




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The only reason Danny won't make "upgrade" kits for AsciLab is because Amir sells them.

In all reality, the Ascend may well be preferred by more listeners. Wider dispersion leads to a sense of envelopment. Both are great speakers for sure but I wouldn't use one metric to proclaim one superior. There are 2 brands of speakers I really want to own right now: Ascend and AsciLab. Instead I have ADAM and Roland, both of which I love. My ADAMs have been with me well over a decade.

 

[JSmith]

What is the legal aspect in the US on this?

Here we have someone selling a product, using the name and pictures of the product to sell something that may damage the speakers it is intended to modify.

Apart from voiding ones warranty with Ascend, surely this creates an avenue for legal action against GR Research by Ascend Acoustics? A "Cease and Desist" letter from a Lawyer should at the very least be considered.


JSmith

 

[kemmler3D]

What is the legal aspect in the US on this?

Here we have someone selling a product, using the name and pictures of the product to sell something that may damage the speakers it is intended to modify.

Apart from voiding ones warranty with Ascend, surely this creates an avenue for legal action against GR Research by Ascend Acoustics? A "Cease and Desist" letter from a Lawyer should at the very least be considered.


JSmith

It doesn't look like he actually stole the photos, did he?

I think Ascend could go after him for trademark violation but it might not stick, he's not really claiming association with them, more the opposite.

Otherwise I guess first sale doctrine applies, I (not a lawyer) think he's in the clear.

Plenty of aftermarket car parts companies sell this and that questionable equipment for specific cars, without permission from the brand, I think this is similar.

 

[Pauli]

Made my AS AI consultant playing around a bit

As AsciLab and Ascend Acoustics aspire, assume, assess, and assert aspects of acoustic accuracy, an assistant asked, as an aside, whether assembling so many as-words actually assists assimilation or merely assures absolute astonishment.

 

[ScienceMajorSellout]

As a child raised in the Catholic Church but tuned out pretty solidly atheist by 6th grade, I look at this schism like the atheist vs religious apologists debates that were going big about 20 years ago. The ASR camp is analogous the Hitchens/Harris/Dawkins/
Denett camp and Danny Ritchie and his customers are akin to the William Lane Craig/Tourek/D'Souza camp. Although I do apologize as I believe a couple of those zealots in particular have caused more harm than the sometimes superfluous or even deleterious crossover upgrades.

But just as Christopher Hitchens said he doesn't know why but if given the chance to just eliminate religion or instantly convert all religious people into apostates, he wouldn't do it.
I feel similarly. And also to quote Hitchens, "people should be able to play with their toys as long as their toys don't affect my life or my kids or their school.". Danny hits and misses which is a lot like religious admonitions. The Bible says pride comes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall and those words are as wise and applicable today (especially today) as they ever were. But it also says the punishment for (and I'll euphemize) criminally defiling a chaste young maiden is paying her father 50 shekels and then marrying her (and don't get me started on slavery, misogyny, and genocide). So it's not the place to go to for every issue. Nor are crossover upgrades. In fact, to my knowledge the only undisputed panacea for every acoustic defect in a loudspeaker is a pair of tube connectors.

Final point in favor of Danny and also very expensive speaker cables that can't be differentiated through ABX testing. Robert Sapolsky's mentions in his lectures many studies about human perception. My favorite is that if you put group A and B through the exact same job interview questions but group A was in a comfortable chair and group B was in a wooden chair, then group B will as a whole rate the interview as harder than group A. Audiophiles get to pick their chair. I can't lie, I do it too. My AQ cables I scored from an estate sale at 95% off MSRP are more fun to plug in than my homemade ones and even knowing I got such a deal ads air and separation. I can appreciate cabling "jewelery" even though it objectively changes nothing. And I like knowing I swapped out a few ferrous parts from the signal path. So it follows snake oil drinkers are ACTUALLY having a better experience than it they didn't. I appreciate ASR calling balls and strikes (and saving me so much time and money!!). But in the spirit of the late Christopher Hitchens, we shouldn't be too hardon people that want to play with their balls when ultimately their balls do nothing but look extremely impressive. They aren't hurting us and the truth now is so available i don't feel all that sorry for people that had to burn a few bucks of tuition for not doing their free diligence. Namaste.

 

[Roland68]

What is the legal aspect in the US on this?

Here we have someone selling a product, using the name and pictures of the product to sell something that may damage the speakers it is intended to modify.

Apart from voiding ones warranty with Ascend, surely this creates an avenue for legal action against GR Research by Ascend Acoustics? A "Cease and Desist" letter from a Lawyer should at the very least be considered.


JSmith

There's no legal basis for this.

The moment a product is sold, anyone can do what they want with it. The same applies to any accessories and spare parts for the product, including modifications.
Of course, they can't pretend they're original manufacturer parts or that they have any connection to the manufacturer.
They also can't use images/illustrations they didn't create or pay for.
They can mention the name, of course, but it must be clear that it's a third-party product that isn't affiliated with them.

The question of liability is considerably more complex and depends on the applicable law.
Generally, the product warranty is void if the customer (or a professional) makes any modifications.
Whether the professional provider of this tuning can be held liable if, for example, the tweeter burns out, is even more difficult to determine. Especially since a lot of evidence is required in this case, such as performance at the time of the defect, work performed, etc.

Only if GR Research themselves carry out the modification for a fee would they be clearly liable.

 

[charlielaub]

It would be nice if all speakers could provide flat or at least smoothly varying on axis frequency response AND relatively well controlled off axis responses. The fact is, when you build a 2-way loudspeaker and use a passive crossover you are up against multiple challenges that are standing in the way of these goals. So most loudspeakers that you can buy will fall short.

Also, keep in mind that the end user puts the loudspeakers into some listening space, and that space has its own response characteristic. You can combine a flawed loudspeaker (when measured in quasi-anechoic conditions) with a room that complements its characteristics in a way that mostly corrects its flaws and end up with something that sounds very nice! There is no need for FIR room correction, you just need to find the right match. For example, the "new" crossover has something like a BBC dip. Put that into a bright room and it might sound nice. Since there is a wide variety of room responses out there, I think we can expect that loudspeakers with non-ideal frequency responses will remain popular for a long time to come.

 

[wwenze]

As a child raised in the Catholic Church but tuned out pretty solidly atheist by 6th grade, I look at this schism like the atheist vs religious apologists debates that were going big about 20 years ago. The ASR camp is analogous the Hitchens/Harris/Dawkins/
Denett camp and Danny Ritchie and his customers are akin to the William Lane Craig/Tourek/D'Souza camp.

As a child raised in Asia reading this

 

[antcollinet]

But I have seen measurements of several other GR modifications and they are much better than the original (I haven't seen them all)

I'd be interested to see those measurements if you have links (as long as they are independent measurements)

 

[Ropeburn]

Here are a few from the Ascend forum and the closed for now thread on this topic:


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Good heavens! Mum and dad used to wind inductors and transformers in the 80s and they looked better. Because professionals have standards! Those power resistors, are they the oldschool wire wound ones too? Look exactly like some I have flying around from that time too. Bestest GDR quality lol.

Those cheap parts most probably are perfectly fine, which wouldn't be an issue at all... if only they weren't EXACTLY what Danny himself calls "cheesy". Indeed the kind you'd expect in a super cheap kit or speaker as mentioned above, and he sells them as part of an expensive supposed high quality super duper upgrade. Imagine you pay 500 (is that per speaker? lmao) and you get this what at first glance looks like a 30-50 moneys bag of parts from the next best electronics store. Haha!

This is way beyond sad or outrageous or whatever, but straight up comedy and Realsatire. Thanks for posting these, made my day!

 

[john11]

I've never liked two-way speakers. All the speakers I have ever built have been 3 drive units minimum.
A few years ago i switched to using an active subwoofer for the bass, that's a big improvement,
then i don't need a crossover for the midrange driver, and use small second order filter on the tweeter - fantastic sound. Drivers without crossover are excellent.
They take away a lot of the expense and problems associated with speaker design, as this review has made evident

 

[dasherzx]

its okay to fix headless panther speakers but some of them are really pointless, like this one and the mofi sp8 "upgrade".

 

[totti1965]

The only reason Danny won't make "upgrade" kits for AsciLab is because Amir sells them.

In all reality, the Ascend may well be preferred by more listeners. Wider dispersion leads to a sense of envelopment. Both are great speakers for sure but I wouldn't use one metric to proclaim one superior. There are 2 brands of speakers I really want to own right now: Ascend and AsciLab. Instead I have ADAM and Roland, both of which I love. My ADAMs have been with me well over a decade.

I was also VERY close to buy an Ascend Acoustics Sierra LX, the Bamboo cabinets are soooooo beautiful!!!
But then I´ve got the opportunity to buy a Hobby Hifi WaveMon 182/22, completely build by the founder of Hobby Hifi, a German Speaker builder Magazin, Bernd Timmermanns himself (it was a Laboratory-Sale)!

I like my speakers so much (and the many MLSSA Measurements I have got with them....)
A Klippel measurement would be interesting.

 

[AaronJ]

Here are a few from the Ascend forum and the closed for now thread on this topic:


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What the actual f*ck? It’s just a box of parts? And people pay $500 for this? How stupid can people be?

 

[RickS]

A thought occurred to me:

This is one of his speakers that uses a planar magnetic tweeter. These are mechanically a little different to a true ribbon (a planar is basically a ribbon that has a plastic diaphragm bonded to the ribbon, for lack of a better description) but are actually very similar in operation... And it also shows very high distortion.
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I'm beginning to think that as soon as he gets outside of basic dome tweeter land he doesn't know how to deal with these drivers.

Not sure, but what you are observing is Danny's misguided approach to trying to improve driver integration. As with the Ascends, he is often lowering the crossover point for the tweeter. He does so with seemingly little regard for the tweeter's specifications. He does not bother to measure as he claims THD is a minor factor. While he does have some valid understanding of crossover design, he too often is designing by his intuitions. Even if the intuition has some basis in reality, without proper measurements to verify, he fails to see when limits have been reached.

 

[peniku8]

All of what I quoted was incorrect: "I think Amir meant "Smoothed" instead of "Gated" in that comment about resolution, because "Gated measurement" in itself does not mean low resolution and in fact is also how the HF Klippel data is obtained on a faster run."

Gated always means lower resolution in lower frequencies. It is mathematically mandated. There is also no "faster run" in Klippel NFS. And certainly doesn't imply anything about lower resolution in Klippel results because it uses gating. What I wrote was correct yet you said I must have misspoken.

I don't even know how to approach this because you keep twisting/misunderstanding my words/phrasing and repeating my points so here is a short summary of the full conversation from my POV, maybe yours is just different and I expressed myself poorly:

-You write "Gated measurement means low resolution" onto a highly smoothed graph published by a 3rd party
-I clarify "Gated itself doesn't necessarily mean *low* resolution; it only means low resolution if the gating time is too short in relation to the frequency"; e.g. if you gate a speaker's IR to 2000ms, it'll be high resolution; similarly, if you gate a tweeter measurement to 20ms, that too will be high resolution; I know you know this but I wanted to clarify this to someone unfamiliar with the tech, because this is how misconceptions are born
-You keep doubling down that you were right regardless

So either you don't understand how gating works and what it does (I doubt that!) or we're having yet another completely outcome-less discussion about something we fundamentally agree on, but you refuse to acknowledge that I think your initial phrasing could've sounded misleading to those less proficient with the measurement tech. If you wrote "gating means lower resolution" like you did in your reply or wrote "4ms gating time means low resolution (below a few KHz)" I wouldn't even have commented.

I know that I generally only comment when I disagree with something (because I don't think I have anything useful to add to the conversation otherwise) which might make me appear like someone who is never happy with anything, but I wanna let you know that I tremendously appreciate all the NFS data you publish and I love seeing your speaker reviews (and I've showed that in the past by donating to the forum). My comments are never meant to attack you or anything of the sort, but rather, I'd like to offer more in-depth insights and clarification to those who aren't working in the field or not into the technicalities, but like reading your speaker reviews.

Gated always means lower resolution in lower frequencies.

There are non-fixed time gating approaches where this is not the case. REW offers two of those. Klippel also uses this, see screenshots below.

There is also no "faster run" in Klippel NFS.

What I mean with a "faster run" was the fact that you can get away with fewer measurement points without compromising on resolution if you have a low "reflection free frequency" (aka be able to gate a good part of the HF even below 3KHz) with the NFS resulting in a "quicker" run.

If you still want to die on that hill "gating means low resolution", instead of replying to me, you should send a mail to Klippel, telling them that their measurement system produces low resolution data because they use gating (yes, even for the holographic field separated part of the measurement), because that is the only conclusion one could draw from doubling down on this.

(Time windowing=Gating)

And here is a "low resolution gated measurement I guess" (reflection free!) I took of a compression driver, as illustration:

 

[Koeitje]

Designers who know what they are doing versus a designer that doesn't.

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

Every one of those mods comes with "upgrades in parts." Upgrades that he can't show objectively to make a difference. Nor does he do any listening tests of the mod to confirm the same. According to him, most people purchase the mod with said upgrades. In this specific upgrade, he has included such parts and hence the reason the cost has ballooned to over $500.

Agreed, but that is why I wrote in my previous post:
"I am not discussing how cost-effective are his modifications - I am sure they could be cheaper with optimal selection of brands and models of components."

He is also dismissive of EQ performing similar to his mod for nothing in most cases, saying it does something bad to sound.

Disclaimer: I haven't seen any of his YouTube videos - I was looking at measured graphs in his website only.

And while you are on his site, you may be tempted to buy his power cables, etc.

Well, that is not different from any other salesmen.

He now blocks me from purchasing his products. He cancelled the last power tweak he is selling. And of course doesn't send me any review samples. His excuse? He wants me to listen, in some special room, with ears that I apparently don't have. When I say I want to measure them, he says he has already done that. As you see here, clearly he has not.
All of this comes with a heap of attitude. And as noted, heavy handed censorship. I dared to post in Audiocircle but the mods there give him ultimate power and admonish people saying negative things. Comments in Youtube are likewise deleted.
These things go against what we are about here. So please excuse the membership for venting. They have ample reason to do so.

I didn't know this. That kind of attitude is not acceptable, for sure.

 

[DatSpeakerTho]

It doesn't look like he actually stole the photos, did he?

He did, what you see up on his site and youtube video currently is an updated image he was forced to upload after being contacted about it.

 

[Ropeburn]

I am sure they could be cheaper with optimal selection of brands and models of components."

Have you looked at the actual parts? In Danny's own words: cheesy.

It could be cheaper without the 1000% markup.