Re: Sierra RAAL Tower Vs Aperion Verus II Grand
I know I haven't been on the forum in forever, but I came back when someone asked about my speaker upgrade experience and had to chime in here. I auditioned the Aperion Verus Grand I system when I was looking for speakers. I really did enjoy them quite a bit, as was said earlier the main hallmark for me was the soundstage width and height, especially the height. Everything had a sense of being grand, so the name was certainly proper, but there was a sense of a little bit of detail smearing. I bought the Sierra Towers without hearing them, but went based off the stellar engineer, technology, and a review that mentioned the bands Tool and Opeth as being killer through these speakers and those are two of my favorite bands.
The main thing that struck me right out the gate was that the veil was lifted over every other speaker I'd ever heard, including the Aperion system. There is not a single detail that the Sierra Towers will hide. They lay all of it out for you, even problems and flaws in movies and music that you love. There's a major sense of "being there" with everything I listen to with them, even if there isn't quite a sense of envelopment in the sound like there is with the Aperion system, but I much prefer having immaculate detail to a soundstage that is artificially made larger.
When you really break down the engineering of the two, the Aperion system was clearly inferior in a lot of ways since they use cheap Chinese cabinets and their driver materials are mostly PVC. Their tweeter design is a stabilized dome tweeter that is never, ever going to compare to the RAAL ribbon. Not just in one category, but pretty much every single one of them. That dome just doesn't even come close to doing the job, and it's a big reason why the Sierra Tower out-classes that speaker.
-Alex
PS4/Nvidia Shield --> Emotiva XMC-1 --> Emotiva XPA-5 --> Ascend Acoustics Sierra Towers and Horizon Center w/ RAAL tweeters (L/C/R), HTM-200 SE (Surrounds), 2x Rythmik F12 subwoofers