Visiting Ascend (including S2-EX vs Tower thoughts)
So, I finally was able to get myself to the Ascend home base and I wanted to share my experience.
First, background. I don't live in California but for work I head out to the L.A. area (more specifically, glorious Norwalk) about every three months. Mostly this is fly in on Thursday night, meetings all day Friday, and fly back Friday night—not enough time for much else. But this particular trip was meetings Monday and Tuesday, and I had the Wednesday after free enough that I could extend my stay. So I rented a car for a day and drove the hour down I-5 to San Clemente.
Also relevant background: about three months ago, at the tender age of 49, I decided to learn to play bass guitar. (How that happened is a longer story for another time.) This has somewhat changed how I evaluate speakers. A bass in drop-D tuning can play under 40Hz, which turns out to be something of a challenge for your typical bookshelf speaker, even the mighty Sierras.
First tip for anyone visiting Ascend: Google Maps doesn't really know where it is, but it'll get you into the general area. Also, when you do get there, it's not marked as Ascend—in fact, it's not marked at all. But they really are there in Suite G.
Second tip: If you think Dina is nice on the phone (which she is), just wait until you meet her in person. Just super-sweet and extremely accommodating. (But, she can definitely read UPS the riot act over the phone.)
Mistakes I made:
* I did not bring CDs with the music I wanted, and there was no way to connect my phone. So, don't be a doofus and forget this like I did. Dave's music server has a pretty good selection but I still wish I had brought my own.
* I only budgeted 2.5 hours. Bummer. I could easily have spent double that.
* I went in the morning, so I didn't get to meet Dave. Apparently he's an afternoon guy, which I sympathize with completely, but I would have liked to have met Dave, too.
I started with the standard Sierra-2. I have a pair of these myself, and I wanted to start there to get a good anchor point and get a sense of the room. The positive news here is that the room is very good and the S2s sounded great, with the usual caveat that they're bookshelf speakers and while they produce good bass for their size, they're still bookshelves. For several of the things I listened to, I noted that I'd still really want a sub. (Admittedly, some of the music I picked was selected specifically to get at this.)
So then the Sierra-2 EX. I wanted to know how much of an upgrade these are from the regular S2s, because most of the love people give to the S2s revolves around that famous RAAL tweeter. So how much does that fancy new woofer really do? Went with Tool's "The Pot" and Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" to push the bass and my reaction can best be summed up with this:
OH.
MY.
GOD.
My mouth was literally hanging open—fortunately I was alone in the room at the time. Seriously, I think Dave broke physics. According to my tiny mammalian brain, there is simply no way a box the size of an S2 can do what this speaker did. I actually got up and walked around it, held my hand to the port (which was moving plenty of air, to be sure, but there was no evidence of chuffing) and just shook my head. How a 6" speaker in a little bamboo box can crank out the sub-40s... I just don't know. I mean, yes, I've heard some in the past that try, but the attempt usually renders the bass all muddy and often kind of splashy. The EXs were tight and controlled, and slamming it down in the 30s. Head-scratching, to be sure. If I had walked in and the speakers were behind a screen and Dina had told me these were the towers, I would have believed her.
The fact that the S2 EX can do this without sacrificing anything vs the S2s in the mids, particularly the upper mids, is pretty amazing. It's really a shame I missed the Philharmonic BMR road show because I would just love to know how these two stack up against each other. Not that it really matters anymore since the BMRs are now at Salk prices, but still I'd love to hear them mano a mano.
So I finished my session with the RAAL towers. They're much more efficient than the EXs so I had to turn the amp down down a bit to try to make the comparison with the EX more fair. The towers are... well, they're terrific. They just do everything well—impossibly hard to find things to criticize. The main thing they do better than the EXs is that they're a little cleaner and more detailed in the upper mids. My guess by ear is that the key place where this is going on is around 2.5-3kHz, that is, around what I presume to be the crossover frequency of the EX. There is just something to having a dedicated midrange driver, especially with the RAALs.
But, to be honest—and Dave may not like this—I think the S2 EXs are 85-90% of the speakers the Towers are. The difference between the S2s and the S2 EX is much larger than the difference between the S2 EX and the Towers. And right now the S2 EXs are half the price. Now, the Towers are more efficient and are better in the mid, and that's not nothing, but in my book they aren't $1000/pair better. If you are even vaguely considering buying the Sierra-2 EXs, do it now before the intro price goes up. They are AMAZING. In my case, literally jaw-dropping. And if you own S1s or S2s and are considering upgrading, now is definitely the time.
Big thanks to Dina for being so accommodating!
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Originally Posted by SunByrne
