I'm in the market for new speakers, and quite a few people on the avsforum are recommending Ascend. I've never heard them, though, and many of the people recommending them don't actually own them, but just say they are significantly better than the others I'm looking at (Polk, mostly.) So, I'd like to hear some recommendations from those that own them. Here's my situation/setup:

* Just bought a Yamaha RX-V657 AV receiver
* Use will be 80% HT (DVDs and DirecTV HD), 20% music (CD's, plus MAYBE some MP3...but mostly CD)
* Room is 15.5 deep by 14 wide, with one side 3/4 open to the adjoining room
* Rears will likely have to be wall mounted, or sit on the edge of the molding (3/4 way up the wall.) Not much room for floor stands, unless they're small.

Originally, I was looking at either the Polk 104 system (Front=Monitor 40, rear=Monitor 30, CS1 center, and PSW10 sub), or the Polk R20 satellite system (like the size, particularly for the rears, and since using 80% movies/tv, thought this might be good enough.)

But, I've had MANY people tell me to step up to the Ascends, with this possible setup:

Fonts: CBM-170
Rears: HTM-200
Center: CMT-340
Sub: Hsu VTF-2 Mk2

What I'm afraid of, is that most of the people recommending the Ascend's are mostly listening to music, but also a bit of home theater. How will this Ascend setup perform on home theater vs. the Polk 104 system? Will it be worth the extra $500? (I fully expect it to be much better for music...but that's a small percentage of my use.)

I don't mind spending the extra money to get significantly better speakers, I just want to make sure they're right for my application, and for my relatively small room...I've also read that the Ascends are very neutral, and reproduce sound very accurately, which can have adverse affects on lower quality sources. I do have most of my CD's ripped to a media server, and am considering streaming them to my system (for ease of use...) This isn't a *requirement*, but if I did this, how bad would the MP3's sound? (They're ripped using EAC/LAME at 192 VBR...)

Opinions are very much welcome...Fire away!