Which Ascend speaker is best for dialog/vocals?

[Goride]

I am curious as to which speaker, from the HTM-200se all the way up to the Sierra Tower RAAL, would have the cleanest, clearest, and most legible reproduction of dialog in movies and vocals in music.

I ask this because I wear hearing aids. I am deficient in the 2khz-8khz range (which means I have trouble with "s" sounds in words and such). I do have pretty nice hearing aids to help with this range though (expensive too, more than twice as much as a Sierra Tower ). So they help quite a bit. However, they are not perfect.

I really do like the sound of the Ascends I have heard. The music is just wonderful (especially some Jesse Cook albums I have been listening to; I highly suggest trying him out if you haven't heard his stuff).

However, I have noticed that when listening to music it, it seems that the singer's vocals are coming from "behind" the instruments. Similarily, I find that when watching movies, often the dialog seems to be coming from "behind" the environment. (I do not really know if I am describing this correctly with the word "behind." Rather than the lead singer in front of the band, and the band playing behind the singer, I guess it kind of sounds like the band is out front, and the singer is behind them. But I do not mean that the vocals sound like they are coming from behind the speaker itself. The imaging is very well, and it sounds like the voice is somewhere in space out between the speakers (in stereo)). This makes it a bit difficult to understand what is being said when a lot of instruments are playing, or a lot of action going on in movies.

I think this is more of a personal issue, given my hearing circumstances. But I was just wondering if any particular model (or tweeter version) of the Ascends were known to produce a more pronounced set of dialog/vocals? Or perhaps if not more pronounced, maybe more articulate and clear? I think this might help me.

[curtis]

All Ascends, in my experience are great through that range.

This might be something better discussed with Dave.

[davef]

Hi Goride,

Welcome to the forum!

I have worked with many people with various types of hearing issues and I am more than happy to work with you as well

For overall clarity and lack of fatigue, you will definitely want to go with our RAAL ribbon tweeter. I would recommend either our towers or our custom RAAL ribbon Sierra-1.

The frequency range of your hearing loss is in the presence region so we can make a minor crossover modification to compensate for the losses in this range which will indeed bring the vocals back in front, like they should be. I can offer this mod on any of our products for you and we have done this for several customers

Please send me an email or private message so we can discuss in greater detail.

I look forward to hearing from you!

[rsmt2000]

we can make a minor crossover modification to compensate for the losses in this range which will indeed bring the vocals back in front!

Just wondering what does the change do? Play the problematic frequencies louder? I dont want to know any proprietary technology but would like to understand things at a very basic level.

[Goride]

Thank you for the reponses.

As a quick update, this prompted me to go have my hearing aids looked at, and there needed to be some basic maintenance done on them. When I left their office this morning it is a night and day difference.

So basically I may have "jumped the gun" and this whole thing may have been the fault of my hearing aids and not the speakers. But I don't know yet because I have not had a chance to get home and listen to them yet. (Although the sierra-1 graph does dip a smidge right in my problematic frequency range, so the raal still might be the better way to go. Also, as a side note, I saw the graph of the NRT version, and that one seems to level out that dip - so that one may be an option as well (but I am guessing the raal will still be more clear).)

At any rate I need to give them a re-listen. Depending on how it goes, Dave, I may be sending you an email/pm to discuss my option.

Thanks again.