NFS Luna / Duo Follow up

[davef]

Dave,

After reading (most of) both threads on this I wanted to publicly thank you and offer my admiration for how you handled this whole situation stemming from the ASR review(s).

You dug in to see if there was any "there" there, and ultimately made a significant investment in time and money that will hopefully pay dividends for Ascend (and therefore its customers, like me) for years to come.

I work in manufacturing myself, and as the science advances, more and more, as a world, we find ourselves able to measure things in unprecedented detail. In addition to seeing inside the plastic parts we make with a metrology grade CT scanner (accuracy about 4um, NIST traceable), we can measure feature size on parts inches in size with physical probes down to just over 1um, about the size of a typical bacteria. As the parts get larger, accuracy degrades to over 2um .

As a more every day example for readers, standard tests can now measure water quality for many contaminates down to parts per trillion levels (1 part per trillion, PPT is 1 drop in 500,000 barrels of water).

This additional detail can start to cause new “problems”, because it exposes things that while they are very real, they may not matter.

E.g. What is “pure water”? There’s no such thing as 100% pure H2O in any real world setting. Try to explain that to your every-day consumer.

As a practicing mechanical engineer, the hardest part of my job is always making the judgement call of what is “good enough”.

With audio science and the NFS it appears you are having to contend with the same mix of potentially extraneous data/detail and science that may not be settled or very precise (e.g. “95% of trained listeners can not detect distortion X”).

Unfortunately, the hardest part of all of this may be finding good psychoacoustics data and then educating your customers on the same, such as you did at the start of this thread.

Good luck to you sir. I will be placing an order for a Duo V2 as I would benefit from a nice center channel in my living room setup (moving from 2.1 to 3.1, with NrT towers as mains), and there’s no room for the OG Horizon I have (it’s waiting for a finished theater room).

-NE

Hey NE, it has been a while! Thank you so much for the wonderful feedback.

As a practicing mechanical engineer, the hardest part of my job is always making the judgement call of what is “good enough”.

With audio science and the NFS it appears you are having to contend with the same mix of potentially extraneous data/detail and science that may not be settled or very precise (e.g. “95% of trained listeners can not detect distortion X”).

Yes, this is exactly the case and it is quite challenging for this industry.

What I personally found most interesting is that with one of ASR's most recent reviews, the $10K/pair Wilson TuneTots, the measurements were horrible yet Amir preferred the way these sound over the vastly superior measuring Revel M106. He even stated that the TuneTot had "deeper and cleaner bass" than the M106, which directly contradicts his own measurements. TuneTot measurements with port open -3dB @ 80Hz with a steep rolloff and massive ringing at 120Hz, while M106 measurements = -3dB @ 60Hz, with a natural and accurate rolloff.

Hmmm..... How can this be???

Good luck to you sir. I will be placing an order for a Duo V2 as I would benefit from a nice center channel in my living room setup (moving from 2.1 to 3.1, with NrT towers as mains), and there’s no room for the OG Horizon I have (it’s waiting for a finished theater room)

V2's will finally start becoming available later next month. We are working out the shipping details of the components this week.

[davef]

Dave, are you going to send a V2 over to ASR for a retest? He sure did a lot of damage to your company with his clickbait style negative reviews. I wouldn't even trust him have Erin's Audio Corner review the V2 version. Do you plan on updating the website with new Klippell measurements for all your speakers?

No plans to send anything over to ASR for a review, I will most certainly consider it should they ask but with owning our own NFS and considering Amir bases his subjective reviews on listening to a single speaker (which takes away the soundstage benefits of RAAL ribbons) - I really don't see any reason.

I don't know Erin but he does seem like an honest and ethical reviewer, with a background in science but with enough listening experience to understand that even with highly advanced Klippel NFS measurements, there very well could be more to what we hear than what we can see....

Yes, we will eventually post Klippel NFS measurements for all of our speakers. New website will go live without some of this data, but will be slowly updated. I just hope the general public understands that as good as the NFS data is, there is still a ton we don't understand with regard to what sounds good to us, as recently proven by the Wilson TuneTot review. Regardless, it is valuable info...

[MDinno]

No plans to send anything over to ASR for a review, I will most certainly consider it should they ask but with owning our own NFS and considering Amir bases his subjective reviews on listening to a single speaker (which takes away the soundstage benefits of RAAL ribbons) - I really don't see any reason.

I don't know Erin but he does seem like an honest and ethical reviewer, with a background in science but with enough listening experience to understand that even with highly advanced Klippel NFS measurements, there very well could be more to what we hear than what we can see....

Yes, we will eventually post Klippel NFS measurements for all of our speakers. New website will go live without some of this data, but will be slowly updated. I just hope the general public understands that as good as the NFS data is, there is still a ton we don't understand with regard to what sounds good to us, as recently proven by the Wilson TuneTot review. Regardless, it is valuable info...

Erin just responded to me on his last Youtube video(Quick Update) that he would be more than happy to review any of your speakers. He's well aware of everything that has happened with that other reviewer and is following your results with your new Klippel device.

[davef]

Erin just responded to me on his last Youtube video(Quick Update) that he would be more than happy to review any of your speakers. He's well aware of everything that has happened with that other reviewer and is following your results with your new Klippel device.

Thanks, I hope Erin reaches out, at a minimum - I would enjoy discussing the Klippel NFS with him.

[Robert]

Hi Dave,

So with the release of the official V2 versions soon, I have a pair of Lunas that were modified early last year to what I thought was the V2 version. I reordered a pair of Sierra 2 EXs and actually still prefer them over my Lunas for surrounds, especially for multichannel music in my media room.

I'll likely place the Lunas up for sale. Is it safe to say "V2"? I tried to place them up for sale (not on this site) early last year, but the ASR review popped up right after I posted it.....and I never could sell them. I'll give it another go this year. After this, I'm all settled on my preferred Ascend speakers.

[Mag_Neato]

......New website will go live without some of this data, but will be slowly updated. ...

Any target date for the new site going live? Asking for a friend!

[D33vious]

Hi Dave,

So with the release of the official V2 versions soon, I have a pair of Lunas that were modified early last year to what I thought was the V2 version. I reordered a pair of Sierra 2 EXs and actually still prefer them over my Lunas for surrounds, especially for multichannel music in my media room.

I'll likely place the Lunas up for sale. Is it safe to say "V2"? I tried to place them up for sale (not on this site) early last year, but the ASR review popped up right after I posted it.....and I never could sell them. I'll give it another go this year. After this, I'm all settled on my preferred Ascend speakers.

I believe you to be the same person who also had the single Luna Duo also upgraded at that time. If so, then being the person who purchased that from you, I would also ask Dave the same question regarding that specific Luna Duo and if I would be safe to consider it a V2. I believe the wording that was used in the process of my purchase was that it was something like a V1.95, but it it would be nice to see Dave's answer for this speaker as well.

[davef]

Hi Dave,

So with the release of the official V2 versions soon, I have a pair of Lunas that were modified early last year to what I thought was the V2 version. I reordered a pair of Sierra 2 EXs and actually still prefer them over my Lunas for surrounds, especially for multichannel music in my media room.

I'll likely place the Lunas up for sale. Is it safe to say "V2"? I tried to place them up for sale (not on this site) early last year, but the ASR review popped up right after I posted it.....and I never could sell them. I'll give it another go this year. After this, I'm all settled on my preferred Ascend speakers.

I really can't offer any advice with regard to how to list items for sale. The final version of the V2 crossover will be just slightly different than what we have been hand modifying now. Measurement wise, they are practically indistinguishable. "Official" V2 crossovers, unfortunately, got delayed in transit to us due to Covid. Last I heard everything had to be unloaded and put into storage, and will then be reloaded onto another ship. This current global situation is really nuts.

That stated, ETA is now middle to late February. At that time, contact me and we can work out a fair price for a crossover swap, since your Luna's already have everything else and then they will "officially" be V2 versions.

[D33vious]

Hi Dave,

Would you say the same applies to the Luna Duo that I believe you also worked on for Robert? Would you say that calling it a V1.95 (as previously described to me) is a fair assessment of the Duo you previously modified, as well as his Lunas?

[Robert]

I really can't offer any advice with regard to how to list items for sale. The final version of the V2 crossover will be just slightly different than what we have been hand modifying now. Measurement wise, they are practically indistinguishable. "Official" V2 crossovers, unfortunately, got delayed in transit to us due to Covid. Last I heard everything had to be unloaded and put into storage, and will then be reloaded onto another ship. This current global situation is really nuts.

That stated, ETA is now middle to late February. At that time, contact me and we can work out a fair price for a crossover swap, since your Luna's already have everything else and then they will "officially" be V2 versions.

Awesome! Thanks, Dave! I figured that it was about the same. I definitely didn't need any selling advice, just wanted to make sure I was clear with the "V2" distinction as before for a used speaker ad title. They are great speakers and I may still have a speaker "shootout" between my Dad's PSB Image XBs and the Lunas soon (along with a subwoofer). I really want him to try to hear the RAAL difference.