Since Highlife wanted a
new phrase, I decided to reference Lou and Dae3Dae3's suggestions.
After a month and a half of back and forth mental wrangling over my personal "340 vs. 170 as surrounds" debate, I burned the monthly budget on a pair of 170s.
I like multichannel audio, so my original thinking was 340s would be best if the room worked. My room sucks. Given my placement restrictions, the 170s work better than the 340s would. When I move from my current acoustically challenged room, I will consider getting 340s as side surrounds and moving the 170s to the rear.
They ship tomorrow. Sometime next week I will FINALLY be in 5.1 surround sound. Once I have my system dialed in, I will do an in depth review of my setup. I did a quick and dirty initial impression of my 340M and VTF3 Mk II a few months ago, but I didn't feel it was worth putting in the review forum.
Dave, thanks for letting me pick your brain off and on the past few months. Your help, as well as everybody else on this forum have made buyers remorse a complete non-issue for me. I can't say that for some other big ticket purchases I've made in my lifetime. I'm sold on Ascend as a company as much as it's products.