Upgrading past Ascend's flagship speakers?

[mikesiskav]

The main design goal of the JBL speakers is for professional sound mixers for films and music can continuously listen to 85 dB levels and up to 115 dB peaks at about 20 to 25 ft away, with low distortion. I think this is around 130 dB/W/m efficiency. They had to go to extraordinary lengths to get a tweeter and 15 inch woofer to play nice together. In other words, just to get the off axis response to match the on axis response pretty closely out as far as 60 degrees off axis. You can listen to the designers of the speaker talk about the specifics on the somewhat recent Home Theater Geeks episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDmzfpf3fCk ). I found the podcast episode very interesting. I loved hearing about all of this new and exciting design approaches that went into making this speaker.

For most typical consumers we do not need this speaker. Ascend already designs loudspeakers that are accurate with exceptional off axis response, excellent transient response and many other attributes. As long as you are not wanting to play them at 85dB continuously with 115 dB peaks at 20 to 25 ft away, the Ascend towers with the Raal ribbon tweeter might even outperform the JBLs in some areas. Do you need speakers that can play this loud? Even Scott Wilkenson, the host of the podcast, asked the JBL designers several times why recording engineers want to listen to the speakers at such a high level for extended periods of time. His concern was damage to their hearing. If I had a home theater that I was setting up for 20 or 30 people I might seriously consider the JBLs. Realistically, I might setup a home theater for at most two rows of seats where the second row is at most 15 feet away from the speakers. The Sierra towers should give more output that I would ever want or need in that case. In fact, the bigger challenge for a multiple row setup from my perspective is getting the sight-lines right so that all the viewers can see the screen unobstructed. But, I like a really big screen for an immersive experience. This is why I am likely just going to stay with one row of seats in my home theater.

Anyways, the reason why Golden ear, SVS, etc. are putting these "subwoofers" in their cabinets is to appeal to the audiophile crowd that thinks subwoofers are bad. The only speakers that this crowd wants in their room are full range large tower speakers for a two channel setup. In just about any room, if you were to cut off the lower portion of those cabinets to give you the freedom to move the subwoofers around in the room to find the best location for uniform bass (midpoints of opposing walls in sealed rectangular rooms) and put the top portion, the satellite speakers, where you can get the best imaging, it would be possible to get the speakers to sound good in more than just one seat. In fact, with a bit of EQ on the subs, you can likely make it sound better in several seats than you could in one seat leaving the speaker together as a tower and no EQ. I am mentioning this because the audiophile crowd doesn't even like much manipulating the sound with things like EQ either, to help correct anomalies that arise from the room interaction.

I should mention that having tower speakers in a larger space can be of use to help pressurize the space. A recent article goes into much detail with this: https://www.audioholics.com/room-aco...ation-of-sound. So speakers like the SVS towers, Golden Ear towers, etc. can be of use from this perspective. However, the Sierra towers should be sufficient in most spaces, even ones that are quite large, in terms of helping the subwoofer pressurize the space. But, I doubt the SVS towers, or Golden Ear towers and the like, were originally designed with this in mind. I do think that they are more likely trying to cater to the audiophile crowd that doesn't like subwoofers and plan to use them in a two channel setup.

Thanks for posting that JBL video. I’ve never seen it before and it was quite interesting. Clearly the JBL design team incorporates a significant amount of science and engineering into their speaker designs. It’s too bad they really didn’t talk much at all about the reasons for having 20hz low frequency extension. They did spend quite a bit of time discussing the dynamic output capabilities of the m2.

Before I go further, I should mention that I am not one of those 2 channel audiophile snobs who hates subwoofers. In fact my current speakers only play down to about 80hz and I just ordered a Rythmik F8 from Ascend. I’m a big believer in measurements and have often measured my own system with REW.

The reason I mentioned the m2 is because it is a full range speaker with 20hz extension. It is absolutely true that the m2 was designed for professional monitoring for music and movies and that they need to play at sustained 85db, and peaks of 115db at 20-25ft. This results in 130 db maximum output at 1 meter (not 130db/W/m sensitivity as you said. Sensitivity on the m2 is 92db/W/m). Yes, they can handle a ton of power.

With regards to low frequency extension and high output capability, I think it’s important to differentiate the two. People often assume that a large speaker with big woofers will be able to play at high volumes and simultaneously plunge to the lowest frequencies. But that is not always the case. Take for example the JTR Triple 12 loudspeaker, which despite having three 12” woofers and having a maximum output of 130dB, is only rated to play down to 60hz. A little while back I installed a complete JTR home theater system for a customer of mine which consisted of three Triple 12s for the front, six slanted 8s for surround and two 18” captivator subwoofers. And it was spectacular! The best home theater system I’ve ever heard. Now this was a pretty good size room with seating for 15 and not everyone has that kind of room to fill.

Now considering that high dynamic range capability does not go hand in hand with low frequency extension, I ask the question again, why did JBL/Harmon design the m2 to have 20hz extension? It clearly is not because they need high maximum output as we’ve already discussed. They are two separate things. If Harmon believes that crossing over to a subwoofer at 60-80hz is always the best practice, then they would have designed the m2 to play down to somewhere around 50hz, and tell everyone to use a subwoofer.

And this is not the only Harmon speaker to have low frequency extension. The Revel Ultima Salon 2 plays down to 23hz. Now I suppose you could say that Revel is pandering to the audiophile crowd, but based on what you said regarding the engineering research that Harmon conducts, it doesn’t seem like they are the type of company to do this.

I’m sorry for spending so much time discussing other brands of speakers here on the Ascend forum. The topic was the next level after Ascend Towers, and lower frequency response was what I came up with. Clearly it’s something you see quite often in higher priced speakers. Does that necessarily mean it’s a better speaker? Absolutely not. I think when it comes to speakers and speaker design, there are a ton of options to choose from and different designs have different positives and negatives. It’s a balancing act so to speak. I think to say that one way is always better than another is really not looking at the whole picture. It’s kind of like saying ribbons are always better than dome tweeters, or horn loaded compression drivers are the best, or sealed subs are the best, etc... I think that this also applies to full range speakers vs speakers crossed over to subwoofers. I don’t necessarily believe one way is always better than the other. I think it depends on the room, and it depends on the content you’re listening to, and the volume you’re playing at, and what you the listener are looking for in your music and movies.

[mikesiskav]

This makes a lot of sense. Now after seeing that the M2's are also meant to be used from quite a distance and are meant for huge dynamic range, I bet they wouldn't go down very low at the volumes I listen at or the distance I sit from my speakers. Very interesting stuff.

The m2 was designed to handle reference volumes at 20-25 feet. But you can certainly sit much closer if you want. According to the m2 manual, the minimum recommended seating distance is about 4 feet. Now that would be interesting!

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