Something old is young again, introducing the Sierra-1 V2!!!

[davef]

A bit over 16 years ago, we released a speaker that truly changed the well-established landscape of high-performance audio. A speaker specifically designed for good accuracy, dynamic capabilities, sound staging and imaging, wide and linear dispersion, good bass response and power handling. It was our goal to produce an extremely well-rounded speaker that would satisfy home theater enthusiasts, audiophiles and those who just want to enjoy listening to any source material.

The Sierra-1 exceeded our best expectations, often being directly compared to speakers costing more than double the price and putting them to shame. Winning multiple prestigious awards, the Sierra-1 became “The Bookshelf Speaker to Beat”, setting a new performance standard for speakers under $1000, yet far exceeding most speakers costing many times this price. Truly a legendary speaker and even to this day, stands up well to competition at this price point.

If someone were to ask me, in my now 35+ years of designing loudspeakers, which speaker is closest to my heart – that answer would be easy, the Sierra-1. The design principles and overall philosophy developed for the Sierra-1 led to an entire line of highly regarded speakers that have firmly entrenched Ascend Acoustics as a leading manufacturer of high-performance affordable loudspeakers.

We have never wavered; those same principles hold true now more than ever.

Circling back to apply everything we have learned, utilizing all the latest technologies and research to bring you what is going to be one of the objectively best measuring passive bookshelf speakers in the world.

It has been a long time coming but it is finally time to introduce the Sierra-1 V2! A fitting tribute to a speaker that changed everything and will once again.

[davef]

Approximately 30 years ago, as a somewhat cocky young engineer designing speakers for M&K, under the tutelage of Ken Kreisel and the late Dr. Lester Field, I had naively thought I knew enough about loudspeaker design such that my products would compete well with everything else out there. They did just that and then some…

M&K was growing fast, and it was time to expand the engineering department, we hired several engineers from Harman. One of them, a young guy like me, was eager to learn my techniques and in turn, he would share his with me. This was my first formal introduction to spinorama, more specifically – Sound Power response. This engineer would take my designs, generate the Sound Power response, and then point out areas for improvement.

The Sound Power response of a speaker is the total anechoic radiation of the speaker at all frequencies. It considers on-axis and all off-axis angles, horizontally and vertically. The measurements are then combined using weighted averages based on the projection of those specific angles on a sphere. To achieve true neutrality, the speaker must radiate sound uniformly across its entire rated bandwidth. The Sound Power response is the only way to properly attain this critical data. Ideally, you want a smooth response starting from the lower frequencies that slowly and steadily decline in amplitude through 20kHz, with few glaring bumps or dips.

This is a key performance metric that I have always used to gauge overall neutrality along with the on-axis frequency response. Achieving a decently flat on-axis response is not difficult but achieving that together with a good Sound Power response becomes quite challenging. Back then, it was nearly impossible as the technology to take the proper measurements needed for such complex optimizations simply wasn’t good enough, and the necessary technologies in driver design regarding dispersion were severely lacking.

This ex-Harman engineer and I would often challenge each other to determine who could come the closest to what was considered the ideal Sound Power response. That challenge has stuck with me for decades. Harman engineers stated it could be achieved by using a wave guide on the tweeter to best match the directivity of the tweeter with the woofer at the chosen crossover point, but I still hadn’t seen a text-book Sound Power response, even from Harman.

Fast forward to today, we have significant technological advancements in all aspects of loudspeaker design, but none as critically important as the advancements in measuring, for which Ascend Acoustics is at the absolute forefront.

With the goal of taking everything that the Sierra-1 was very good at and making it better, that old challenge of achieving an ideal sound power response presented itself once again. With everything we have learned, with the advanced technologies now at our disposal – could we now achieve this illusive feat?

Indeed, it has taken ~30 years but thanks to the high-resolution measurement data provided by our Klippel NFS combined with highly advanced computer modeling and optimizations, I can finally say this challenge is now over. The Sierra-1 V2 accomplishes this and more, with objective measurements that far exceed the vast majority of speakers out there at ANY price.

Sierra-1 V2 CEA 2034 Measurements

The Sound Power response is the dashed/dotted red line extending in a downward slope from about 70Hz to 20kHz. This is as close to textbook perfect as I have seen in any loudspeaker, regardless of price!

[davef]

Perhaps even more of a challenge, and this has been previously discussed in our forum – much like the original Sierra-1, how do we still offer a speaker of this component quality and technology for under $1000?

The solution to this was two-fold. First, we had to simply ignore all the development time and costs as well as our massive investments in R&D and price the speaker solely based on component costs + at least some profit for us.

Unfortunately, that still didn’t get us to where we needed to be; close – but not quite.

The next step presented itself during Covid, with some of our vendors now requiring much larger volume purchases than previously. This slightly lowered the cost of each component but required us to order much higher quantities.

The woofers in our towers were fully based on the original Sierra-1 woofer with some additional optimizations but with no bucking magnet or shielding can (original Sierra-1 woofer is fully magnetically shielded). These days, magnets are quite expensive and while we lose about 2dB in sensitivity due to the loss of the bucking magnet, higher power receivers and amplifiers are readily available, so the loss of some sensitivity is no longer a concern. Magnetic shielding is simply no longer needed and by using the same woofer as our V2 Tower, we are able to purchase in even higher quantities, further reducing the cost.

With the massive success of our LX and to gain the much-needed directivity we were after, it was an easy decision to replace the original Sierra-1 tweeter with our Titan tweeter, a significantly better tweeter overall.

The end-result, much like the original Sierra-1, the Sierra-1 V2 fully reigns supreme as the overall best performing passive loudspeaker under $1000 per pair!

While the Sierra-1 did everything very good, S1V2 is better in every possible performance category, from excellent dynamics to soundstage and imaging, to warm and natural mids with detailed airy and non-fatiguing highs all combined with unmatched neutrality and accuracy.

Is the Sierra-1 V2 a better speaker than our LX? No, the LX has deeper, and punchier bass combined with lower distortion in the woofer region, as well as overall better dynamics and higher power handling. However, if you don’t need the incredible bass that the LX offers or the high-power handling / high output capabilities – the Sierra-1 V2 at ~$500 less becomes the obvious choice and a new and true bang for buck champion in a class of its own. In addition, the S1V2 makes for an ideal nearfield monitor.

Sierra-1V2 will retail for $998 / pair + shipping, introductory pricing from now through Jan 1st is $948/pair. And more good news, Sierra-1 V2 will begin shipping in approximately 2 weeks.

And finally, to back up our own measurements – we sent a pair to Erin at Erin’s Audio Corner quite some time ago and our measurements closely mirror his own, a true testament and critical factor in the advantages of owning our own Klippel NFS. Hats off to Klippel!!! It was previously nearly impossible to expect measurements taken of the same speaker in different environments and different measurement systems to closely match. If you could get within +/- 3 dB throughout the measured bandwidth, that was considered impressive. The question would then be, which measurement actually best represents the speaker?

Our Klippel NFS measurements match Erin’s within about +/- 0.5dB. For someone who has been measuring loudspeakers for 35+ years, with experience using basically every hardware and software measurement system out there, this is truly remarkable. The differences are close enough to absolutely confirm the unprecedented accuracy of the Klippel NFS. The advantages this presents are huge and any loudspeaker manufacturer that doubts this or refuses to embrace this new technology is at a tremendous disadvantage.

It has been a long time coming, but please welcome the return of the Sierra-1 in what is now the Sierra-1 V2!

Wishing everyone a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

[natetg57]

Congrats on the new speaker. This looks like an excellent starting point for many people. How does the midrange compare to the LX?

[racrawford65]

Congrats Dave on releasing yet another great speaker.
Happy Thanksgiving

[themarkkram]

I just watched Erin's review V2. Looks like an awsome speaker. Great job Dave.

[redsandvb]

Very excited about these! Thanks for all the hard work!

[theophile]

Great news, Dave! Yet Another Ascend Acoustic High-End "great value speaker product" for the Discerning Audiophile!

Ted

[SunByrne]

First and foremost, wow!

Looks like the new S1s measure incredibly well, particularly for something under a grand. Congratulations to Dave for doing it yet again.

So, since Dave got the Klippel there'd been this incredible avalanche of new products. The LX, the V2 versions of like half the Sierra line, the 340s, the ELX Horizon and Towers... it was really unbelievable that Dave could do so much in so little time. Things have been a little quieter lately, which is probably good for Dave's sanity. But you have to figure there's still always something brewing.

And here we are. I kind of wondered if we'd get a V2 of the S1 with just new crossovers (like the V2 for the Duos and EXs) but this is a full set of new drivers. Pour one out for the venerable S1 drivers, gang, they are no more. Presumably this means the upgrades kits from S1 to S1 V2 will be more spendy than the V2 kits for the Duos and EXs. I will admit that I am curious about the price on the upgrade kits since those aren't yet listed on the web site, and I do still have a pair of original S1s in my stable of Sierra bookshelves.

Also, will these take the standard S1 Q-Plugs or the new LX Q-Plugs?

[goldark]

I have the Sierra 2 EX v2 right now and have no complaints. However, the Sierra 1 v2 has a significantly higher preference score. Does the Sierra 1 v2 sound 'better' than the Sierra 2 EX v2?