Ascend RAAL Tower Companion

[ematthews]

I own the RAAL towers and have to say they are the best towers I have heard. Nothing beats them with high quality recordings. With that said lower quality recordings don't do so well with these. I do listen at times to YouTube, Spotify etc at times and find it a bit tough to do. I am looking for a different speaker to sit next to my RAAL towers where I can switch my cables over when I listen to less quality material. Any suggestion in the Ascend line up?

[ematthews]

Or to add to this. Any other speaker manufacture that has a bookshelf speaker that plays well with poorly recorded audio. I was wondering about the CMB-170 from Ascend since it has the soft dome tweeter.

[curtis]

Or to add to this. Any other speaker manufacture that has a bookshelf speaker that plays well with poorly recorded audio. I was wondering about the CMB-170 from Ascend since it has the soft dome tweeter.

All Ascend speakers are accurate.

IMO, there are so many things that can cause a poor recording, and they can't generally be compensated for with a speaker.

You need to isolate what you are trying to fix, go from there. A lot of compensation can. E achieved by using simple tone controls.

[sharkman]

ematthews, on the poor quality recordings, I've got plenty of those too, on my iphone. I found a great solution, but it was in how the music gets converted to analog. After having a bad experience with a separate DAC(XDA-1 Emotiva), I tried another in a Schiit Modi Uber. I was so impressed I sent it back for a Bifrost Multibit DAC. With my system, it gets more detail out of poor recordings though I don't have anything like the Ascend Towers. I have a Nad C375BEE, and for speakers I swap between the Sierra 1, Tannoy Definition 6.1 and Revolution DC4T.

None of these speakers have ribbon tweeters, but I did notice that formerly lousy mp3 files sound quite listenable on a better DAC like the Schiit.

[ematthews]

ematthews, on the poor quality recordings, I've got plenty of those too, on my iphone. I found a great solution, but it was in how the music gets converted to analog. After having a bad experience with a separate DAC(XDA-1 Emotiva), I tried another in a Schiit Modi Uber. I was so impressed I sent it back for a Bifrost Multibit DAC. With my system, it gets more detail out of poor recordings though I don't have anything like the Ascend Towers. I have a Nad C375BEE, and for speakers I swap between the Sierra 1, Tannoy Definition 6.1 and Revolution DC4T.

None of these speakers have ribbon tweeters, but I did notice that formerly lousy mp3 files sound quite listenable on a better DAC like the Schiit.

Thanks. I am using the internal DAC on my Parasound P5 Preamp.
Curtis. I was told that RAAL ribbons don't play well with poor source material because they are so accurate.

[sharkman]

Hmm, that's a tough one. I don't know if you've experimented with DACs at all, my experience is limited to the DAC in the Oppo 95 and Nad C565BEE and the stand alone Audioquest Red and Emotiva XDA-1 DACs. I can say without reservation that all DACs are not the same.

I can also say that the secret sauce proprietary filtering and what not that Schiit does is really good. The owners are actual engineers that have a background in amps and Dacs, just as the Ascend owner has a background in speakers(among other things?).

I have owned the Sierra 2, though I don't presently have it. Raals are quite detailed, perhaps someone has found a solution for the Tower with poor recordings.

[ematthews]

I will do some changing around of my DAC's
I have the Parasound P2 and also the Zdac 2
Wouldn't mind using my Chord Mojo with the big system. Best DAC I have currently. This little wonder is fantastic with headphones. Source is my Iphone.

[sharkman]

Yeah, mixing it up might give you some different characteristics than the P5. It never hurts to try.

I have heard good things about that Chord unit.

[davef]

I own the RAAL towers and have to say they are the best towers I have heard. Nothing beats them with high quality recordings. With that said lower quality recordings don't do so well with these. I do listen at times to YouTube, Spotify etc at times and find it a bit tough to do. I am looking for a different speaker to sit next to my RAAL towers where I can switch my cables over when I listen to less quality material. Any suggestion in the Ascend line up?

I would say out of all of our speakers, our Sierra-1 do the best with poorly recorded source material but you might want to first try what others have also suggested. Personally, I love our ribbon towers with even poor source material as I do like to hear it all, the good and the bad...

[SunByrne]

That's funny, as one of the things I noticed when I upgraded my Sierra-1s to NrTs is that they punished bad recordings more than the regular Sierra-1s. Not so much that I can't live with it, but the extra detail and forwardness made it harder to ignore flaws in the recording.

So, when I upgrade from NrTs to 2s, I guess I get to go through this again? Hmm... somehow I think it'll still be worth it.