Why I bought Ascends

[BEM]

Hello all. First post.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I decided it was time to upgrade my home theater setup, so I began the world wide search for "good" quality and "affordable" hardware. Back in my younger days, I was a pretty serious "budget" audiophile - I had a lot more interest than money. But I've been out of the game for a number of years and needed to brush up. So I've spent the past couple of months prowling the web, reading reviews, and checking specs. There was a lot I needed to catch up on.

Two weeks ago, I put the final piece into place and ordered a seven piece set from Ascend: 340 mains, 340 center, and 200s for surround. I couldn't be happier even though they haven't shipped yet. I'm anxiously awaiting their arrival. This is the first time that I've made a major purchase sight unseen and sound unheard - but I seriously doubt I will be disappointed.

As an added bonus, I had the privilege of having Dave take my order. When he gave me his name, I asked if he was "the" Dave - he replied that he was. I was impressed, so I thought I would post here to explain why I chose Ascend.

1. I'm impressed with the engineering. I started my career as an aeronautical engineer (I do software work now) and I have an appreciation for good engineering. You can spot good engineering when the manufacturer goes beyond telling you how great their product is and explains why they chose the particular nuts, bolts, and screws. Dave has provided a lot of information here about the how and why of his speaker designs. Every system is a compromise between desire and deliverables, so knowing the builders design goals and compromises goes a long way in evaluating the deliverables.

2. The "buzz" was overwhelming. I didn't start out looking for particular speakers because I knew a lot had changed since I last looked hard. I spent several hours (nearly every night) prowling the various audio/video forums and information sites looking for the buzz. I started with the names I knew from the old days, Infinity, Polk, Boston Acoustic, Klipsch, DCM, Acoustic Research, and **** (yeah, **** - I'm replacing an AM10 system). As I search and read, I picked up the buzz on four new names - Hsu, SVS, Ascend, and Axiom. Part of that was due to their internet marketing efforts, but most was good feedback. In particular, I noted that Ascend and Hsu were mentioned together - again, partly due to marketing, but mostly not. The thing I paid particular attention to was that I could not find a single negative comment about the Ascends. There was some less than glorious praise, but nothing truly negative. There's always a "halo" effect for new buyers of any product; i.e. "I bought it, it's expensive, it's GOT to be good" - but I wasn't sensing any of that. And trust me, I read virtually every comment posted on this forum. There's a saying in business - "if a customer is happy, he'll tell two people that he knows well, if he's unhappy he'll tell everybody." I wasn't seeing any unhappy customers.

3. I like the attitude. If the Ascends had been twice the price, I could still afford it, but I probably would have bought something else. Ascend delivers what many people believe to be an excellent product at a "fair" price. No frills, no flash, no glitter, no inflated values. They sell function, not form - and I wanted function. In addition, they seem to make every effort to ensure that you get what YOU want, not just what they have to sell.

So that's why the Ascends are on the way.

[BEM]

Back again.

Rather than start another thread, I thought I'd come back here and ask a question. This has to do with how best to drive the Ascends.

I have 3 Proton amplifiers that will be driving most of the surround system. The Protons are "dual-mono" amps, so basically it's a 6 mono setup. The Pioneer is being used primarily as a preamp/processor.

I've considered two options:

A. Use the Protons to drive the Front, Side, and Back channels. Then drive the center channel with the Pioneer amp.

B. Drive the Front, Center, and Side channels with the Protons and drive the Back channels with the Pioneer, since the rear will get the least amount of work.

The Pioneer is rated at 100wpc, but we know that's not "all channels driven". The Protons are rated 50wpc (continuous), but can handle peaks over 200.

I lean toward option A, but I'm concerned that using different amps on the front stage might break up the tone a bit. I've got to string some wire through the walls, so I'd like to get it right the first time.

Anybody have an opinion?

[curtis]

Welcome to the board! Great first post, and I agree with you on the thoughts about "the" Dave.

For your second post...I would do scenerio "B" for the exact reason you listed...the rear surrounds to not get that much work, and matching the amps for the front stage is the way to go.

Then again...I would end up playing with all scenarios to see what I liked best if, in fact, I could actually perceive a difference.

[einsteinjb]

Welcome to the board! Great first post, and I agree with you on the thoughts about "the" Dave.

For your second post...I would do scenerio "B" for the exact reason you listed...the rear surrounds to not get that much work, and matching the amps for the front stage is the way to go.

Then again...I would end up playing with all scenarios to see what I liked best if, in fact, I could actually perceive a difference.

Agreed on both counts.

If you're going to run the wires through the wall, and if you're locating all your amps and receiver close together as most folks would do, it shouldn't matter which way you plan to power the speakers as all the wires should have enough slack on the electronics end to run any particular set to one of the amps or the receiver. Leaves your options open to add another amp at some point too so all your speakers have the same type of power.

[BEM]

When I got up this morning, I realized there was another option I hadn't considered - running the entire front stage off the Pioneer and using the Protons for the back channels.

But I'm partial to the Protons, and really wanted to use them to power the mains. I've had them for years, and they're pretty hard to come by these days. I had two from my audio system and I was able to pick up the third one off of Ebay. Finding a fourth might be a problem for a while.

It might be worthwhile to try switching the amps on different channels, just to see if there's any difference. I hadn't really considered that because of the extra wiring. One of the requirements (from the wife ) was that I clean up the rat's nest of wiring behind the TV. The dust bunnies multiple rapidly in there and it's a little hard to clean them out without unplugging everything. So all the new wiring is going into (or on) the wall behind it.

In the final setup the Pioneer and the Protons will be in separate cabinets on opposite sides of the TV, so they will be about 8 feet apart. That's a lot of wire bundled on the floor if I want to be able to switch back and forth.

I need to give some thought to a speaker "patch panel" behind the TV, but the downside of that is it creates more "breaks" in the line.

[Quinn]

Protons are rebadged NADs are they not?

[BEM]

That's a question I can't answer. Never thought about.

But I did a quick web search anyway.

It appears that NAD and Proton are (were?) sister companies, so it may not be a simple rebadging of the same product.

The best reference I could find was off a British website. It was off a review of an AMC amp.

AMC Amp article

"If NAD had ever made a tube amp, then this would have been it. Designed by Peter Bath (who worked for Dolby, AR and indeed NAD), and manufactured by IEEE in Taipei (makers of Cambridge Audio, Luxman, Proton and indeed NAD products), it shared considerable DNA with the ubiquitous 3020."

[TomK]

For what it's worth I bought the same speakers that you have on order with the exception of the rear surrounds. I only have the 5.1 array. I love them. I doubt you will be sending them back. I am NOT an engineer but I have constructed my own speaker systems and am quite familiar with the trials and tribulations of speaker building. Like you I was impressed by what I read by Dave. I'll take a "geek" (his words not mine) any day over a flashy used car salesman approach to buying speakers. Good listening!
TomK

[BEM]

Thanks for the commentary guys. I think I have the ideal solution to my problem now.

My delima about how to wire the system was really more aesthetic than technical. I wanted to fully utilize the Protons, which is why I was leaning towards option A; i.e. running the center channel off the Pioneer. With option B, I'd only be using 5 of the 6 channels available on the Protons. Part of the appeal of those amps is being able to watch the meters jump while the music's playing. Having one meter sit there and do nothing all day just wouldn't be "aesthetically pleasing". It's a small thing, but hey, we all have our quirks.

But the epiphany came this morning when I remembered that the 340s can be bi-wired!

I did a quite search of the forum and found that Dave had already provided just the information I needed.

Where confusion seems to develop is that many people now define bi-amping simply as using more than one amplifier feeding the same signal into the speaker. This can be done with our CMT-340 series speakers, however, there is much to be considered before attempting this..

It is critically important to use the exact same amplifier. As you know, not all amplifiers sound the same or have the same gain… In fact, there are probably as many different amps as there are speakers. Imagine using an amplifier that sounds different from another, and one of those amps is feeding the tweeter while the other feeds the woofer. Do you think the loudspeaker would perform within specification? Certainly not, plus, different impedances of the amplifiers could greatly affect how the crossover “blends” the tweeter response with the woofer response. Crossover point might be moved higher or lower, the delicate phase alignment might be thrown off.. All greatly hurting the performance…

Some receivers offer a “bi-amping” feature so that if you are not using that 3rd pair of speaker outputs (7.1) you can run another set of cables from that output to the speaker. This used to be called “amplifier bridging” and I guess the marketing geniuses decided that bi-amping is a more exciting term, even though it is technically incorrect. This type of bi-amping can present a slight performance improvement in power and dynamics only. However, keep in mind that all the amplifiers in your receiver are running off the SAME power supply so technically speaking, the benefits you might achieve in added power and dynamics are severely limited by. It is NOT the same as using two separate amplifiers…

Passive bi-amping is possible, but as I recommended in my original post, you MUST use (2) identical amplifiers thus sending the exact same signal to the high-frequency input of the crossover and another signal (from the other amp) to the low-frequency input.

Hey! I can do that!

The Protons are "dual-mono", each channel has it's own power supply, so I can "passively bi-amp" the center speaker by feeding the same signal to both sides of the amp. That would eliminate the "dead meter" aesthetic.

Then it hit me that I could "bi-amp" the entire front stage.

So the new plan is to use the three Protons to run the 340s (L/C/R) exclusively (bi-amped) and use the Pioneer to run the 4 surround channels. The 340s will all have the same drive system and the 200s will have their own. Any differences in "amplifier sound" will be separated between the front stage and the surrounds and shouldn't be noticable. It also satisfies the aesthetics.

Now I can go string wire.