Thank you for your impressions of the Sierra-2, DR. I've been meaning to make some comments for a while now, but I've been either very busy or very lazy. In many ways, your initial impression is my greatest fear, that I won't love them because they will be very different compared to the Sierra-1. I love that warm, sweet, velvety top end of the Sierra-1- it's very forgiving, smooth, and pleasing to listen to everything on them.
You say the Sierra-2 is brutally honest, and that is pretty much how I imagine them being. About half of my music collection is lossless and half is lossy, but what really matters is recording quality, and a lot of my favorite songs aren't recorded with the best equipment, etc. Or they are intentionally dressed down in their fidelity-ness, for lack of a better word. That's just how they are, and I wish I could made them sound 'high-definition', for lack of another better word.
So my fear is that if I get the Sierra-2, a lot of my favorite songs won't sound as good. That, and I mostly use my HTPC for playing YouTube music videos while entertaining/hanging with friends, and we all know Youtube isn't the best for SQ, but it is pretty good nowadays. Maybe I could link to some videos and ask if you could evaluate how they sound on the Sierra-2's?
Above all else, I love a smooth sounding speaker, and I've heard that word used multiple times to describe the Sierra-2, so I have much hope.
I don't want it to seem like all my musical tastes are questionable from a purely SQ perspective, because a lot of my favorite songs do sound very, very good. And if the Sierra-2 can take those songs that sound very good and make them sound even better and more real, I am ALL for that! Plus, it sounds like a very nice improvement for movies/TV with dialogue and intelligibility in mind.