I find it very suspicious how the Denon 3700 gets shot down but one call with Denon all of a sudden it gets high praise. Erin's Audio Corner is much more fair and accurate. Trust me these reviews are the joke within the industry.
Come on, you get superior measurements for free here so suggest use them if you believe in science and then simply jump over the subjective part of the review would actual be a easy way to be here, that said its hard to figure out if you posted here for nothing other reason than a ASR provocation.
Respect your personal acoustic opinion of the illusion comparing Ascend Sierra 2 verse NHT C3, that said if you really understand graphs there is one curve called DI (Directivity Index) that should tell you Ascend Sierra 2 and NHT C3 miss quallity in they both perform a jagged DI curve, so for me it looks that when you tell Ascend Sierra 2 is the best book shelves you ever heard and it reproduce realistic high hat sounds its nothing than a illusive coincidence because of acoustic design flaws/compromise for those two speaker systems clearly tracked/proven reading their DI curves.
Below is few constructive comments comparing objective graphs for NHT C3 verse Ascend Sierra 2 side by side:
Bandwidth corners is wider for NHT C3 than Ascend Sierra 2 and they both perform none smooth jagged curves be it the important DI curve or whatever other curves printed in the Spinorama plot.
In Ascend Sierra 2 sounded so wonderfull to your ears you could try bandwidth limit NHT C3 using below 4x PEQ's and see if especially low end will improve and suit much better to the local room enviroment.
Having a none smooth DI curve means there is design flaws/compromises going on, clear seen below where both NHT C3 (left column) and Ascend Sierra 2 (right column) have their curves EQ smoothed, whenever one try smooth the Listening window curve (best for nearfield listening) then the jagginesh from DI curve will be a replicated mirror in PIR and Power response curves, or whenever one try smooth the Power response curve (best for farfield listening) then the jagginesh from DI curve will be replicated in the Listening window curve.
Below two ones show much better or smoother DI curves than above two ones, they picked special out because they have nearly same bandwidth's as above two ones
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