Review of my Sierra Towers with RAAL
I thought I would give my impressions of the Sierra towers with RAAL, now that I’ve had them for a few months and at least a couple hundred hours of listening. I had ordered the towers with the custom (low profile) horizon center and two Rythmik F12 subwoofers. I received the subwoofers within the first month of ordering. The towers came in 2 months after ordering and the custom low profile horizon center speaker was about 3 months after ordering.
I immediately performed a comparison between my Def Tech BP30s and the Sierra Towers once they arrived. I did so with the knowledge that the sound will change (and it did) as I had recalled that my Def Tech speakers changed a lot after the first 100 hours of use. From the beginning the Sierra’s sounded much smoother on the top end and more coherent in the midrange. The bass was notably less than the Def Techs, but that was expected right out of the box.
Now that the Sierra’s are “broken-in” the bass is more prominent without being “muddy” like the Def Techs. As I had stated in a previous post, my listening area is a typical Florida room with a living room that opens up to a kitchen and dinning room. It is more then 600 sq ft in all and the ceiling are 10 ft high, so the room is prone to reflection/echo problems. With my Def Techs being a bipolar design with metal dome tweeters, I had a very poor synergy between the room acoustics and the speakers’ inherent “brightness”. As I mentioned before, I tried speakers from Focal and Revel in my home and both of them had a bright/sharp/piercing quality to their tweeters that reminded me of my Def Techs. I had begun to worry that my room may be causing a lot of my problems, and no speaker was going to please me in my current environment (at least not without lots of room treatments). Listening to the Sierra Towers in Sugarcanes home made me very hopeful as he too had a typical Florida room.
I’m very happy to say that the Sierra Towers with RAAL have plenty of treble detail without any of the sharp/piercing quality that many of the metal and even silk tweeters seemed to have. I’m able to turn the volume up considerably higher without ever experiencing the harshness that I had become accustomed to with my previous speakers. In fact, I find the sound to be much more involving and enjoyable as it becomes louder. The sound is every bit as good as I remembered when auditioning them. The treble, even in my room, is still excellent. Detailed, yet smooth without the sibilance/ringing that I’ve heard in so many other speakers. The midrange is very clear with excellent vocals and good separation between instruments. The bass is fast and accurate without any of the “muddiness” that my Def Techs have. The Sierra’s are capable of playing quite deep and don’t require a subwoofer for much of what I listen to, but I do keep the subs playing all the time because they add a nice weight to the music (when appropriate) and movies are definitely more fun with the dual subs.
Just yesterday, I reconnected the Def Techs to do one last side by side comparison, and the improvement in sound of the Sierra’s was very obvious. In fact, I was listening to the Def Techs at moderate/loud volume when my wife came home and asked which speaker I was playing. I told her that I was listening to my old speakers and she stated “Oh, good. I was hoping it wasn’t the new ones because it didn’t sound good at all. I didn’t realize how much better the new ones are until now”. I must say that this made my day, because my wife doesn’t complement my electronics purchases unless she can see or hear a clear improvement.
As I’m sure you can tell, I’m very happy with my decision to buy the Sierra Towers. I’m exceptionally happy about the fact that I can listen to music and be completely involved in what I’m hearing without having to buy room treatments that my wife would have been opposed to. After years of searching for speakers, I was beginning to think that I wasn’t going to find a solution to my needs that would completely satisfy my musical desires.
Would I change anything if I were to do it again? Yes. I would have bought the Sierra’s in espresso, or in a custom color. I find the black bamboo to be nice, but not as attractive as Sugarcane’s espresso. There is something about the contrast of the woofers and RAAL tweeter when installed in a lighter colored box than black. Of course, I knew that black wasn’t what I “really” wanted; it was the color that my wife was accepting of. Although now that we’ve had the Sierra’s for a few months, she thinks that she would have preferred to go with the espresso or a custom espresso (to match our dark espresso furniture). If only she had told me earlier!
I’m now looking to upgrade my receiver and disc player (Oppo 103/105 or Cambridge 752BD). I was never able to listen to my Def Techs at a volume that was too high for my receiver to handle because the brightness of the tweeters always became annoying before I could push my Marantz receiver too hard. I have noticed that because the Sierra’s are so much smoother and cleaner sounding, that I can bring the volume up considerably more to the point that the receiver begins to strain. When playing multichannel classical SACDs I’ve noticed that the lights on my Marantz dim significantly with loud passages and the fan blows so loud after just one song that it is disruptive during quiet passages. The search for audio perfection continues, but at least now I’ve got the most important part of the chain figured out (speakers) and I can upgrade the rest in time.
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Originally Posted by swallan
