Another surround speaker question - what will pair well with Tower with RAAL option?

[petmotel]

Jay, the Lunas are very similar to the HTM-200 SE

This gave me a nice smile! I'm sure plenty here have experienced the HTM-200s but I've no experience with those either. The only non ribbon Ascends I've heard were Sierra-1NRTs which I no longer own. I do own 11 RAAL equipped Ascends, I'm really drawn to what the ribbons bring to the sound.

Jay

[elan120]

I use Sierra-2EXs as the side surrounds in my system and love them in that role. For me, I'm always in the sweet spot, so I'm not sure that wider horizontal dispersion would contribute to the experience.

There are instances in movie soundtracks where there are loud, impactful effects coming from the surrounds, during which I'm thinking the extreme dynamic capabilities of the EXs is a very good thing. I've not yet experienced the Lunas, so I have no first hand opinion concerning their dynamic capabilities. All this to say that I think you will be very pleased with your choice!

Jay

That sounds good. I will be sitting in the sweet spot as well, so the S2EX appears to be the right choice, and in addition, since the bass on S2EX goes lower, it will likely have wider range of crossover frequencies to experiment with the subwoofer.

I am very much looking forward to have the speakers setup and start playing some materials through them.

[N Boros]

This gave me a nice smile! I'm sure plenty here have experienced the HTM-200s but I've no experience with those either. The only non ribbon Ascends I've heard were Sierra-1NRTs which I no longer own. I do own 11 RAAL equipped Ascends, I'm really drawn to what the ribbons bring to the sound.

Jay

I have the HTM 200s for surrounds in two rooms. Living room has CMT 340s for mains and center. My theater area has Sierra 2s as fronts. I think they blend very well in both systems. I was planning to upgrade to Lunas for surround down the line, but it will likely be pretty far down the line if I do it at all, having listened to them now.

I will say that the HTM 200s should be chosen mainly if you can wall mount them. In my theater area I have one of them on a stand and the other wall mounted. The crossover on the stand mounted one is 100 or maybe even 120 Hz, whereas wall mounted they can get down to around 80 Hz. If they were stand mounted out in the room I think that the CBM 170s would be a better choice. I plan to put up a couple of walls so that my theater area becomes an enclosed theater room, so both surrounds will be wall mounted hopefully soon. Honestly it still sounds great though, but I would prefer to have both at a lowers crossover.

My opinion could change after getting a couple of wall up, getting a lower noise floor and putting up acoustic treatments to improve the overall sound. So I’ll to until that point to decide if I want to upgrade to lunas for surrounds.

[davef]

Jay, the Lunas are very similar to the HTM-200 SE

I don't agree with this statement. The 200's and Luna's have nothing at all in common, other than both being compact speakers. 200's are really a smaller version of our CBM-170 and the Luna's are a smaller version of our Sierra-2/Sierra-2EX.

[choirbass]

I’m not disagreeing with you Dave. For me the Lunas were an ideal front channel option coming from the HTM-200 SEs. Primarily due to their size similarities, with the Lunas being even more ideal.

I might be in the minority, but I don’t hear a difference between the SE tweeters and RAAL tweeters.