My Ascends have shipped

[BOLTS]

Hello everyone. I has just recently registered for your forum and wished to intoduce myself. I'm in Cocoa, Florida and noticed some other members from central Florida area.

I have purchased two the of 170's plus the 340 center speaker for our family room HT. I needed the surrounds to flush mount on the back wall and preferred a bipole due to the sofa being placed against the wall. There was also no good location on the side walls so I supplemented the Ascends with two Definitive Technology BP2X's. I'm looking forward to the Ascend's arrival.

Sorry about no avatar but I have not found a Tampa Bay Lightning avatar small enough to work here yet.

[drewface]

welcome to the boards and the ascend family! i'm sure you'll be very happy with your purchase.

[bikeman]

Welcome, Bolts. Let us know your impressions after you've had a good opportunity to hear the new speakers.

David

[audibleconnoisseur]

Welcome BOLTS!

Hey, you would have been 'nuts' not to pick Ascend and I am gald to see you didn't get 'screwed' using another 'rachet job' company!

..........I know, shameless! I just couldn't resist.......... I am ashamed :p

Sure you want to hang out around us clowns?

[drewface]

Welcome BOLTS!

Hey, you would have been 'nuts' not to pick Ascend and I am gald to see you didn't get 'screwed' using another 'rachet job' company!

..........I know, shameless! I just couldn't resist.......... I am ashamed :p

Sure you want to hang out around us clowns?
wow...


way to scare off the new guy! :p

[BOLTS]

Thanks for the warm welcomes. Sounds like a good group here. The Ascends should finish off my family room upgrades (who am I kidding). I will grab some Banana clips this weekend (getting behind the receiver in the entertainment center is a pain) and be ready to go when all the speakers arrive Tuesday evening.

[muzz]

Welcome BOLTS!

Hey, you would have been 'nuts' not to pick Ascend and I am gald to see you didn't get 'screwed' using another 'rachet job' company!

..........I know, shameless! I just couldn't resist.......... I am ashamed :p

Sure you want to hang out around us clowns?

Speak for yourself!! :p

[BOLTS]

Speakers arrived!

First thing I noticed was how unwarranted the criticisms of the enclosures appears to be. The speakers are not at all ugly. While not of the quality of my Den's Infinity kappa 400's Danish Maple the Ascend speakers are also 1/6 the cost. Don't change a thing.

I had intended on mounting the speakers to the sides of the entertainment center. However, the speaker brackets are not big enough to allow enough clearance to sling the speakers 90 degrees to face the listening area. Rather than mount one on the front wall and one one the side wall thereby destroying the soundstage and imaging I will attempt to mount about 3 inches of wood between the entertainment center and the mount. After staining I hope it will look presentable.
I'm not sure what to do with the center channel. I have placed the speaker on a bridge connecting the two towers of the entertainment center. However, the bridge is about 2.5 feet above the top of the DLP. I have to see how it sounds. There is a shelf below the TV that could be used but it is too likely to draw the attention of our Manx. The thread on center mounting solutions mentioned a good mount for sale on the site but I have not been able to locate it.

Hopefully in a few days everything will be mounted and I will be enjoying the speakers.

One more thing. As controller of a medium sized aerospace company I was real pleased to see the MADE in USA on the back of the speakers. I know how difficult it can be in today's global economy. I wish the Very best of luck and good fortune to Ascend.

[drewface]

so excited you posted twice, i see ;)

EDIT: someone fixed it...

[Dread Pirate Robert]

First thing I noticed was how unwarranted the criticisms of the enclosures appears to be. The speakers are not at all ugly. While not of the quality of my Den's Infinity kappa 400's Danish Maple the Ascend speakers are also 1/6 the cost. Don't change a thing.

I've always thought that they looked fine in photos, and after living with my 170s for over a month now, I think they're quite attractive speakers--austere yet classy and well made. They're pretty stealthy, too, sort of disappearing into the room visually after a while, which is fine by me as I'd rather spend my time listening to them than looking at them anyway. :)


I had intended on mounting the speakers to the sides of the entertainment center. However, the speaker brackets are not big enough to allow enough clearance to sling the speakers 90 degrees to face the listening area. Rather than mount one on the front wall and one one the side wall thereby destroying the soundstage and imaging I will attempt to mount about 3 inches of wood between the entertainment center and the mount. After staining I hope it will look presentable.

That sounds like a feasible strategy for the typical type of OmniMount bracket, but there are alternatives like the BT-77 (which seems almost purpose-built for the 170), small TV mounts (which the BT-77 essentially is, more or less), or in a case like yours, even a simple, open shelf intended for wall mounting should do the trick.


I'm not sure what to do with the center channel. I have placed the speaker on a bridge connecting the two towers of the entertainment center. However, the bridge is about 2.5 feet above the top of the DLP.

Is there no way to install a shelf closer to the TV using a few L-brackets or something like that? It would only have to support about 26 lbs, which should be easy as long as it is supported on two sides (I presume the 340 center would be far too deep and heavy to be placed on the DLP itself, though).


I have to see how it sounds.

From my perspective, even placing the center immediately above or below the screen at a different height from that of the other front speakers, which nearly everybody does, is a compromise that I can easily hear--so much so that I've raised my other fronts to the same height in order to compensate, which is also a major compromise, obviously. However, that's just me--you should experiment with various configurations to find out which sounds best to you. The relatively wide dispersion of Ascend speakers (even in the vertical plane) lends itself to such experimentation well.


There is a shelf below the TV that could be used but it is too likely to draw the attention of our Manx. The thread on center mounting solutions mentioned a good mount for sale on the site but I have not been able to locate it.

I don't believe that particular mount is available from the manufacturer anymore, although I could be mistaken. Perhaps if you'd upload a picture of your entertainment center, we could come up with more specific suggestions.


Hopefully in a few days everything will be mounted and I will be enjoying the speakers.

It seemed like forever (actually a few days) before I could decide on how to mount my speakers, but I'm glad I took the time to experiment and consider all of my options. Unfortunately, it seems that there is no "perfect" solution, especially for center speakers (not unless you place the center behind a perforated screen and somehow manage to equalize it to compensate for the screen's effects without degrading sound quality in some other manner).


One more thing. As controller of a medium sized aerospace company I was real pleased to see the MADE in USA on the back of the speakers. I know how difficult it can be in today's global economy. I wish the Very best of luck and good fortune to Ascend.

While there are some foreign components (only the best for the price), I also appreciate that the speakers were designed and manufactured in the USA. It's not that I have a problem with other countries (e.g. some Canadian-made speakers were near the top of my list for upgrade options) or even globalization in general, but it's getting kind of ridiculous that every little thing has to be made somewhere else. The same would be true for virtually every country--when you start buying your toothpaste and toilet paper from China, you've got issues. ;)

Incidentally, most of my home theater consists of American-made components, not because of nationalism but mostly by accident. In addition to my Ascends, my television is a Sony that was made here (as well as my last one, although production has been moved to Mexico), and my subwoofer is from SVS. I simply bought the components that I wanted with both quality and value in mind, and ended up with a largely domestically manufactured HT. In all honesty, I didn't think this was possible in this day and age. :)

[ebh]

if you can tilt your center a bit to aim more at the listening position it might help. just drop some door stops behind it or something. i think the center channel placement is almost always a compromise, but generally worth it. i did a poor install job with my floating arm, so mine hovers about a foot or foot and a half over the top of my tv. still prefer it to no center by a large margin.

[drewface]

There is a shelf below the TV that could be used but it is too likely to draw the attention of our Manx.Does your Manx like to attack speakers or something?

[Dread Pirate Robert]

i think the center channel placement is almost always a compromise, but generally worth it. i did a poor install job with my floating arm, so mine hovers about a foot or foot and a half over the top of my tv. still prefer it to no center by a large margin.

I always suggest using a dedicated center channel speaker if for no other reason than that it is possible in Dolby Digital to specify dynamic range compression levels for the "phantom center" downmix in the soundtrack itself--seriously, it's right there in the A/52B standard (which defines DD). With some soundtracks (or many if it's the default behavior of the DD encoder), a properly implemented DD decoder will compress the dynamic range of the soundtrack regardless of whether DRC is turned off in your AVR setup menu. The only way to avoid this issue completely is to use an actual center channel speaker.

There seem to be many who favor using a phantom center, and while this may sound presumptuous, I can only guess that one or more of the following must be true: they had always used a rather poor center speaker (all too common in the early days of HT), they like their movie soundtracks compressed, few of their DD soundtracks have embedded downmix compression flags by chance (and these folks own a lot of DTS titles), or for some reason their AVRs ignore these flags. In my case, using a phantom center sucks the life right out of many of my movies for the reason I've given in this post as opposed to the more obvious ones. That said, I'd recommend using a center speaker anyway to improve off-center dialogue intelligibility and supplement the output capability of the front stage in a way that matches the monitoring setup of the mixers and the intent of the directors.