Hello every one

[fzgtics]

I just received and hooked up my 170 mains and 340 center this past Friday and I am ecstatic. I've been watching several bluray movies and it sounds good. In fact we were watching I am Legend and there is a scene in the beginning where Will Smith is stalking a deer and a lion leaps from the left and gets the deer. The sound of the lion roaring from the left main freaked my dogs out. They both jumped up and started barking. LOL Later we watched Pineapple Express on DTS and the sounds and cheap dreamweaver voices were like everything was in a cave. I think it was the dts because when I switched it to multichannel HD MA it sounded much better. I think I read that these speakers will sound even better after breaking in a little bit, correct? This may have been brought up before but has Ascend thought about selling baseball caps or T-shirts with the Ascend logo? I'd buy one.

[hearing specialist]

Sounds like your really enjoying your new toys, and speaking from my own personal experience...the more mine break-in and my system is re-calibrated, the better the sound. I'm amazed at how drivers sound pre-breakin vs. post. They get so much better in time. I would encourage you also consider re-calibrating your system periodically to maximize the sound of the broke in drivers.

Happy listening

[curtis]

break-in is a highly debated subject...

[hearing specialist]

Just sharing my professional and personal experience as mentioned above.

Professional Qualifying statement: When working for a Auditory medical device/Hearing DSP Hearing aid manufacturer, we had to prove to the FDA that (A)the loudspeakers/transducers used to measure Real-Ear measurements via Kemar did not vary our test results vs. (B)proving that the measurements could vary our Puretone measurements with same loudspeaker enclosure. With the variables in loudspeaker manufacturers and the different tollerances in how they are engineered, we looked for drivers that were burned in at their factory and measured tollerances were well documented for us to proceed with the FDA approval process.

I can run Puretone signals at mid and lower frequencies in a ANSI calibrated sound booth and receive different tonal qualities over time with that driver. Not so much amplitude, but quality of the sound. I know that most burn in using a "Broadband" signal vs. a guy like me will use Puretones to measure each frequency without affecting any others. Just my opinion here

[curtis]

The debate isn't whether there is break-in or not.

The debate is on how much time it takes and if it is audible...even if it is measurable.

[hearing specialist]

Heh, thanks for responding and mucho thanks for founding this forum!!!

I fully 100% agree. We had to factor all that, ..."with said butyl surrounds how much audio degradation will occur with a continued signal"...blah, blah...

Dang government

I just know that everytime I re-calibrate after say 40hrs of use and all the measurement variables are reduced to guage the difference my sound is always better.

[curtis]

BTW...I am in the camp of "who cares?"...just listen and enjoy.

I just know that everytime I re-calibrate after say 40hrs of use and all the measurement variables are reduced to guage the difference my sound is always better.

When you re-calibrate, do you know how and how much the settings have changed?

Being a hearing specialist, you certainly know about psycho acoustics, right?

[hearing specialist]

Yes sir, hopefully just the acoustics side of that 2 part.

My receiver doesn't grant me that option even though most in the 2K range does. My biggest notable differences other than increased quality of sound is that as my drivers break in they need less signal to achieve same reference output, as reflected in my "Levels" section within my receiver. Thanks for talkin with me!

[curtis]

Yes sir, hopefully just the acoustics side of that 2 part.

My receiver doesn't grant me that option even though most in the 2K range does. My biggest notable differences other than increased quality of sound is that as my drivers break in they need less signal to achieve same reference output, as reflected in my "Levels" section within my receiver. Thanks for talkin with me!

Interesting!

Have you recorded those changes over time? What is the difference between the 40 hour intervals?

What speakers do you have, and how long have you had them?

[hearing specialist]

Because I'm in constant improving stage, my enclosures and matching up drivers in hopes of molding the sound physically (enclosure mods like adding 50lbs of non drying modeling clay to internal walls for each tower/main) before letting my receiver shape it digitally, my greatest change in signal came around this past holiday season when I couldn't mess with my stuff due to family in town. I went from 1st calibration session in which it set the level for each tower at 75%. Now, this is with the older titanium tweets and Morel drivers and that sensitivity was suppose to be 91db at initial build. I thought hmmm, i've never had my receiver ever set anything up that strong and the output was not blow you out of the water crazy loud either. After the first 40hrs and a 2nd calibration, the signal dropped to about 45% from 75% and it was night and day, huge difference. Beit I never ran pink noise, white noise or anything crazy through them and the titanium tweets were supposedly already broke in and matched. Output was louder and of course the definition was huge.

Reference: Yamaha RX-V465
System: 4.2 (Tang Band and Morel Drivers)
Mains: Tower TWW (I will be a future Ascend tower buyer)
Rears: Tower MTM (what he said ^)
Subs: Stereo 10" subs (I will be a future owner of Rythmic products)
Mains: 60" apart and 10.5' to my ear canals sitting at reference listening position