You made a good choice with Ascend.
Now full speed ahead in full confidence that your speakers will not be the weak link in your system.
If your Ascends don't sound good, look elsewhere.
At 1rst, my CBM-170SE's sounded good, but fell short of what I expected from the hype.
I started paying some needed attention to sub integration and especially room acoustics and man, the 170's are really starting to shine and punch well above their weight.
I'm starting to get lost in the sound to the point a few times I've been well into the 2nd round of a cd and hadn't realized the 1rst time through was done!
Live it up.