New Sierra-2 impressions...

[billy p]

Yup...with the Towers I found 60hz worked best in my room...the bass sounded more natural less localized...even with the SB13U going solo...I tried some higher cutoffs(120hz) but simply found the sweet spot to be around 60hz largely due to location restrains. The most important thing to remember is to get your sub to blend in with your speakers.

[FirstReflect]

Thanks, billy p

Yes, in my room, I wound up with 80 Hz for my Horizon RAAL Center, 60 Hz for my Front L/R, 70 Hz for my Surrounds, Backs, and Heights, and 120 Hz for my Wides.

My Front L/R and Center speakers, they all play nice and linear down to 40 Hz on their own. My Surrounds, Backs, and Heights all output linearly down to about 45 Hz. And my Wides are linear down to about 100 Hz. But not one if them sounds that way in my particular room, and they do not sound identical from seat to seat.

My pair of SVS Ultra subs, though, positioned at the mid-point of both side walls, they sound not only linear down to below 20 Hz, but they also sound uniform from seat to seat.

So I used the bass sweeps, discovered how low the speakers could play before they started to sound non-linear and/or non-uniform, and then set the crossover above that point

The results are darn near magical. It's really quite unbelievable. I can play a bass sweep through any and every channel now, and the entire sweep just sounds even, linear, and best of all, completely uniform in every seating position. I do not even notice that my subwoofers are there, which is utterly insane given how physically close they are to my seats! But all the theory about multiple subwoofers and sound wave interference patterns totally works in practice! It just sounds as though each and every speaker in my system plays linearly down to below 20 Hz all on its own! And at every seat in the room!

There is simply no way to achieve that same illusion with the speakers alone. That's not the fault of the speakers. They are doing their job. Most people would look at the specs of my Horizon Center and ask, "why the heck are you using an 80 Hz crossover?" Furthermore, if they listened to my Horizon Center play a bass sweep all by itself with the speaker outside, they'd think I'm even more bonkers for setting it to 80 Hz, since it plays so well all the way down to at least 40 Hz!

But it is not just the speaker alone. It is the speaker, plus my room's reflections, plus the locations of my seats. Those things all interact, and in my particular instance, they happen to result in a big old null at 70 Hz. The sound waves come out of the speaker itself nice and linear and accurate, but by the time those sound waves reach my ears at my seat, reflections of those sound waves off of my walls, ceiling, and floor have conferred and interfered to result in a cancellation right at the spot where my primary seat goes. So instead, my subwoofers take over at 80 Hz, and I eliminate that problem

This is why I do not consider bass extension to be something that buyers and reviewers should stress so much. Whatever extension and linearity or non-linearity you heard in your room? It's unique to that room! It's not because of the speakers. I get a little frustrated by how much people emphasize bass extension in speakers. One person will say the speakers play very low and you don't need a subwoofer. Another person will say the exact same speakers don't play all that low, and you definitely need a subwoofer. Neither person is lying. That's undoubtedly what they heard, for real. BUT IT'S NOT BECAUSE OF THE SPEAKERS. The room, the room, the room. It's because of the room…and where your seats happen to be placed within that room relative to where the speakers are placed.

Best part of my argument: it's easy to prove Just play that bass sweep through one speaker by itself, have a listen, then move seats, or move the speaker. The sound changes! Well, the speaker didn't change. The bass sweep didn't change. So that just leaves sound wave interference as the culprit. And we can fix that by using multiple subwoofers

[davef]

Dave What do you recommend using my preamp setting on for the new Sierra 2's WITH SUB...
Full range Or High pass
Respect to the other answers. Just wondering what Dave would do.

Regardless of the speakers being used, if you are using a subwoofer -- I always recommend setting the speakers to high passed. If you do not, having bass coming from multiple sources in different positions will result in some frequencies being cancelled (out of phase) and some frequencies being doubled (in phase).

[TheHolyCannoli]

Just received my Sierra-2 fronts and center in satin espresso. The finish looks excellent and I'm happy I went with the darker espresso over the cherry. I got a bit nervous at one point as I was running my finger along the rubber surround of he woofer. I felt what I thought was a tear or crease, but then I turned on the lights in my room and noticed that the surround is somewhat ribbed....phew. Side note, I've been having terrible luck with my purchases lately, most recently having to return a $1300 Ariens snowblower, TWICE, because of defects.

I'm in the middle of renovations, so I'm stuck with a 3.1 setup in a medium size room with minimal furnishings. My music collection is buried somewhere in an unlabelled moving box, and I'm still struggling with the thought of watching a blu-ray with no surround channels. Therefore, my first sonic impression is limited to HDTV programming. First thing that really jumps out is how crisp the highs seem. Even with background music that is significantly subdued compared to the rest of the programming, the cymbals and guitar strings are very distinct. Also, the sound of a glass vase shattering on-screen was so remarkably life-like that the dog jumped to his feet and was on high-alert.

I haven't done anything close to critical listening with music or high quality sources, and with that said, I'm actually surprised I've been able to hear a significant difference while simply watching television with mostly news/dialogue programming.

[ematthews]

I could not do that. I would have to tear into my music and give it a go...Mine are due here Friday. Hope they get here so I have the full weekend for the set up. Speaker stands came in today. Tomorrow the assembly starts and I am not looking forward to the kitty fill. These Sanus stands have three very small fill holes....
So get a CD out and fill us in...

[curtis]

These Sanus stands have three very small fill holes....

Get a funnel.

[Mag_Neato]

I thought I'd post an update to my impressions of the Sierra-2 after upgrading.

I had a little free time last night while the girls were out to do some listening. I've been debating whether to run them full range in Pure direct w/out a sub or crossed with a sub in stereo. To me, the pure direct mode has yielded audibly better (to me) results and so I usually have it going that way. The RAAL tweeter gets the lion's share of attention, and with good reason. It is amazing. However, the new SEAS woofer is equally, if not MORE impressive! I pushed the -2's in pure direct (full range) with more power than I ever felt comfortable feeding the NrT's with and they never batted an eye. I had not played the track "Never Mind" by Infected Mushroom on the -2's until last night. I had them cranked as much as I dared with Marantz SR6003 pushing 100 watts per channel. I was blown away.

If you want to be amazed at the capabilities of these speakers this is one of my recommended tracks. I streamed it from Spotify. My jaw hit the floor and I had to laugh. These speakers should easily cost over
$3000.

Dave, as I said before.....out of the ballpark.

[jahjd2000]

Yup...with the Towers I found 60hz worked best in my room...the bass sounded more natural less localized...even with the SB13U going solo...I tried some higher cutoffs(120hz) but simply found the sweet spot to be around 60hz largely due to location restrains. The most important thing to remember is to get your sub to blend in with your speakers.

I agree with this 100%. For the longest time I had been running my set up in a suboptimal way. After rotating my sub 90 degrees and properly calibrating it with udyssey (basically trimming the gain on my sub..before I ran it too hot), it sounds so much better now. My Epik Empire blends in seamlessly with my Ascend towers and Horizon center. Any localization I had in the past is virtually gone. The bass is now much more uniform and it sounds like it's coming from the front stage now (my sub is near field next to the sofa). I'm loving this new configuration.

[curtis]

I thought I'd post an update to my impressions of the Sierra-2 after upgrading.

I had a little free time last night while the girls were out to do some listening. I've been debating whether to run them full range in Pure direct w/out a sub or crossed with a sub in stereo. To me, the pure direct mode has yielded audibly better (to me) results and so I usually have it going that way. The RAAL tweeter gets the lion's share of attention, and with good reason. It is amazing. However, the new SEAS woofer is equally, if not MORE impressive! I pushed the -2's in pure direct (full range) with more power than I ever felt comfortable feeding the NrT's with and they never batted an eye. I had not played the track "Never Mind" by Infected Mushroom on the -2's until last night. I had them cranked as much as I dared with Marantz SR6003 pushing 100 watts per channel. I was blown away.

If you want to be amazed at the capabilities of these speakers this is one of my recommended tracks. I streamed it from Spotify. My jaw hit the floor and I had to laugh. These speakers should easily cost over
$3000.

Dave, as I said before.....out of the ballpark.

Yeah...they can take a lot of power. That was evident in Ascend's demo room.

What crossover points have you tried? I'd start going lower until I couldn't hear a difference.

[Mag_Neato]

I can only go down to 60Hz with the SR6003. 60, 80, 100, etc. up to 180.

I am going to look into adding an external crossover I can run at speaker level between the Marantz and the speakers to use in pure direct.