My new 170's arrived this morning and I just finished wall mounting them on either side of my tv. My first test was a Rod Stewart live cd I happened to have in my player. I am old school so I wanted to try music that I have always enjoyed hearing through the years. I listened to this and a few others with my old re-foamed Advent Heritage towers before I retired them earlier in the morning awaiting my new compact mains. I have always like these speakers for music but when I auditioned the 170's I was blown away at the detail. I now know what pure sounding non fatiguing speakers sound like. I am not a sound guru or highly educated on all the nuances of which speakers have this sound or that, but I am a past musician and I know what I like in music and what it should sound like. These bring me back to the late 60's when high end amps and KLH speakers were all the norm with the vets bringing them back from Vietnam. Now I use an older Yamaha RX-863 and these 350.00 little gems and I am blown away with the sound. My next selection would of course be something from the era so I cued up Retrospective by Leon Russell. His unique voice which tends to be harsh was reproduced with amazing ease and his keyboard genius defined why he is one of the most underrated musician on the planet. Since I am only two hours into these speakers and already in awe I need to spend the rest of the night trying some more of my old favorites and allow my self to be taken back to a time gone by. I will report back in due time with some more thoughts as I wrap my head around the tonality of the music and a few movie tests.
Thank you Dave for creating such a fine speaker at a very affordable price.
Kudos to all your staff at Ascend Acoustics.