RayGarrison
11-22-2010, 10:13 PM
Hi there.
A bit of background. I've been an audioholic since the late 70's. I'm one of those guys who constantly reads reviews, goes to audition stuff, likes what he hears, buys it, listens to it happily for a while, then starts to notice shortcomings in one aspect of the music or another, gets frustrated, sells what he has and starts over again. Sometimes this works out okay (financial impact aside), sometimes I kick myself pretty hard 'cause what I get doesn't match up to what I had. Just to give you an idea, over the years I've had everything from Acoustic Energy AE-1's (original series, little bitty boxes) to VMPS SuperTower II A/R Special Edition towers (6'4" 300 pound monsters with 3 15" woofers, 15" mass loaded passive radiator, 4 midrange, 4 inverted dome tweeters, 1 Phillips ribbon supertweeter) and all sorts of stuff in between. Amps ranged from little Rotel 30 watt integrated to a pair of bridged Adcom GFA-555 (also original series), 600 some odd watts into 8 ohms. Up 'till today I've been listening to a pair of Klipsch La Scalas with an REL sub in our rec room with a Jolida integrated amp (2 X 6550 tubes per channel, class A/B not single ended.) Wanted to set up a system in the living room, wife doesn't like the rec room (converted basement, kind of uncomfortable). La Scalas didn't have a prayer of fitting in living room, so I was forced to go looking for an entirely new system. Rats. ;)
Obviously, given the fact that I'm posting here and the post says "New Sierra Owner", that's what I am. Spent a *LOT* of time researching smaller speakers, reading reviews, reading forums, etc. etc. etc. and decided to give Dave's speakers a try. Just got them today (recert naturals). I'm driving them with a Cambridge Audio 640A rev 2 integrated (75 watts per, demo unit from Audio Advisor) and using a Cambridge DVD89 as source (CD/DVD/SACD/DVD-Audio, also demo from AA), Blue Jeans cables and interconnects, Sanus wooden stands. Whole system cost less than my sub did. I went into this kind of skeptical, I have after all had the pleasure of owning a bunch of different Audiophile-Approved® speakers from companies like B&W and Theil over the years, and up until a few weeks ago I'd never heard of Ascend Acoustics. However, everything I read sounded promising, and given th 30 day option how could you lose?
When the speakers landed today, my first reaction was Wow, this is the best packaging I've ever seen. Don't listen to the shipping carton, of course, but the care and thought that went into this was obvious and quite encouraging. Second thought was the speakers are magnificently constructed. Seriously. I have no idea how he can sell the *cabinets* for this price, let alone a complete speaker. So, let's set 'em up and see how they sound. Now, my room is not large (14 X 20 or so as I recall, had a couple glasses of wine last time I measured it, but that's probably close) and it's full of wifely furniture. To give the Sierras a fair shake, I moved a few chairs out of the way, and positioned the speakers where experience tells me they ought to sound the best - few feet out from the front wall, couple feet away from the side walls, on the short wall firing down the longer length of the room, listening position about 2/3rds back, speakers making about a 80 degree angle from listening position, slightly toed in, tweeters at ear height. Started with a CD my wife and I enjoy, one that we've heard many, many times on every system we've owned. Michael Bolton, Said I Love You, But I Lied (okay, okay, but I like it, so shoot me.) Well, uh, hummm... color me underwhelmed. Speakers sound okay, I guess, but Michaels nose seems to have grown a couple sizes since the last time I heard him. Don't know what to call the opposite of "nasal" - it literally sounds like he's singing through his nose. Imaging is good, bass is better than I expected... but there's no depth - everything is sort of 2D stretched from left to right. Maybe they're not broken in? But these were recerts, one of the reasons I got them was so I wouldn't have to worry about a break in period. Maybe I just had too high an expectation. Fiddled with positioning a little, moved and inch or so this way and that way, tried different toe in, didn't seem to make any real difference. Wife thought they sounded "nice", which isn't really condemning with faint praise, she's not as nutty as I am about this stuff. She did have a real problem with the fact that I'd screwed up the living room furniture to position these, though. I promised her I'd only pull them out into the room like this when we were doing "serious listening" - most of the time, I've have the chairs and stuff back where they belong and move the speakers back against the wall out of the way.
Spent a couple hours listening, trying to convince myself I was happier with the sound than I was, eventually decided to call it quits for the day and try again tomorrow. Moved the speakers into the "idle not in use" position, put the furniture back, went to fix dinner. Just for the heck of it, put a CD on (Elton John 2nd album, SACD version), queued up Border Song, started to head into the kitchen.
Holy Moses.
This sounded *FANTASTIC*. I turned around with my jaw dragging on the floor. The whole front end of the room was gone, there was just this music filling the space where the wall used to be. I mean, for real, I felt like the chorus was someplace 15 or 20 feet on the other side of where my house used to end, stretched from side to side, with Elton standing way forward of them, and he sounded like, well, like Elton John singing in my living room. Forget airyness and transparency and imaging and soundstaging and fleshiness and every other adjective I can think of except for one - human. I stood there and listened to the rest of the album, then noticed my wife had come back into the room and was standing there with her eyes closed kind of swaying back and forth. I'll shorten this up a bit and just way we spent the next couple hours playing favorite cuts from a lot of different groups - Ronnie Milsap, the Stones, Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Judy Garland, and they all sounded more real than I remember hearing on any other system I've had (except maybe the B&W 801f's, but they're, like, $8K these days).
And the thing is THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING. I've attached a few pictures of the way the speakers are set up. Here's looking at the left speaker from our couch:
http://www.deedcast.net/RaysStuff/Images/LeftSide.png
Here's the right speaker:
http://www.deedcast.net/RaysStuff/Images/RightSide.png
and here's the straight ahead view:
http://www.deedcast.net/RaysStuff/Images/StraightOn.png
There are so many things wrong with this setup I hardly know where to begin. The left speaker is right beside a 35" TV, which will reflect right into the room. Both speakers are flanking a big china cabinet with glass sides and front. There's a *CHAIR* in front of the right speaker (well, the tweeter is well above the arm, and the woofer is just clear of it, but still :eek: ). Both speakers are shoved as close to the wall as I can get them, given the banana plugs on the speaker posts. They're not centered on the wall - closer to the left side than they are to the right side. The left speaker is way too close to another glass china cabinet.
But - this setup sounds FANTASTIC!
I have absolutely no idea why. If anyone has a clue I'm all ears. I'll try to write more about the way this sounds over the next few days after I've had more time. For now, all I can say is I'm loving the music these play, I'm really glad I happened to play something after I'd "moved them out of the way", and I am seriously wondering if I know anything what so ever about stereos.
If you have a pair of Sierras, I can't encourage you strongly enough to experiment with placement. You might get a big surprise.
Color me baffled,
Ray Garrison
A bit of background. I've been an audioholic since the late 70's. I'm one of those guys who constantly reads reviews, goes to audition stuff, likes what he hears, buys it, listens to it happily for a while, then starts to notice shortcomings in one aspect of the music or another, gets frustrated, sells what he has and starts over again. Sometimes this works out okay (financial impact aside), sometimes I kick myself pretty hard 'cause what I get doesn't match up to what I had. Just to give you an idea, over the years I've had everything from Acoustic Energy AE-1's (original series, little bitty boxes) to VMPS SuperTower II A/R Special Edition towers (6'4" 300 pound monsters with 3 15" woofers, 15" mass loaded passive radiator, 4 midrange, 4 inverted dome tweeters, 1 Phillips ribbon supertweeter) and all sorts of stuff in between. Amps ranged from little Rotel 30 watt integrated to a pair of bridged Adcom GFA-555 (also original series), 600 some odd watts into 8 ohms. Up 'till today I've been listening to a pair of Klipsch La Scalas with an REL sub in our rec room with a Jolida integrated amp (2 X 6550 tubes per channel, class A/B not single ended.) Wanted to set up a system in the living room, wife doesn't like the rec room (converted basement, kind of uncomfortable). La Scalas didn't have a prayer of fitting in living room, so I was forced to go looking for an entirely new system. Rats. ;)
Obviously, given the fact that I'm posting here and the post says "New Sierra Owner", that's what I am. Spent a *LOT* of time researching smaller speakers, reading reviews, reading forums, etc. etc. etc. and decided to give Dave's speakers a try. Just got them today (recert naturals). I'm driving them with a Cambridge Audio 640A rev 2 integrated (75 watts per, demo unit from Audio Advisor) and using a Cambridge DVD89 as source (CD/DVD/SACD/DVD-Audio, also demo from AA), Blue Jeans cables and interconnects, Sanus wooden stands. Whole system cost less than my sub did. I went into this kind of skeptical, I have after all had the pleasure of owning a bunch of different Audiophile-Approved® speakers from companies like B&W and Theil over the years, and up until a few weeks ago I'd never heard of Ascend Acoustics. However, everything I read sounded promising, and given th 30 day option how could you lose?
When the speakers landed today, my first reaction was Wow, this is the best packaging I've ever seen. Don't listen to the shipping carton, of course, but the care and thought that went into this was obvious and quite encouraging. Second thought was the speakers are magnificently constructed. Seriously. I have no idea how he can sell the *cabinets* for this price, let alone a complete speaker. So, let's set 'em up and see how they sound. Now, my room is not large (14 X 20 or so as I recall, had a couple glasses of wine last time I measured it, but that's probably close) and it's full of wifely furniture. To give the Sierras a fair shake, I moved a few chairs out of the way, and positioned the speakers where experience tells me they ought to sound the best - few feet out from the front wall, couple feet away from the side walls, on the short wall firing down the longer length of the room, listening position about 2/3rds back, speakers making about a 80 degree angle from listening position, slightly toed in, tweeters at ear height. Started with a CD my wife and I enjoy, one that we've heard many, many times on every system we've owned. Michael Bolton, Said I Love You, But I Lied (okay, okay, but I like it, so shoot me.) Well, uh, hummm... color me underwhelmed. Speakers sound okay, I guess, but Michaels nose seems to have grown a couple sizes since the last time I heard him. Don't know what to call the opposite of "nasal" - it literally sounds like he's singing through his nose. Imaging is good, bass is better than I expected... but there's no depth - everything is sort of 2D stretched from left to right. Maybe they're not broken in? But these were recerts, one of the reasons I got them was so I wouldn't have to worry about a break in period. Maybe I just had too high an expectation. Fiddled with positioning a little, moved and inch or so this way and that way, tried different toe in, didn't seem to make any real difference. Wife thought they sounded "nice", which isn't really condemning with faint praise, she's not as nutty as I am about this stuff. She did have a real problem with the fact that I'd screwed up the living room furniture to position these, though. I promised her I'd only pull them out into the room like this when we were doing "serious listening" - most of the time, I've have the chairs and stuff back where they belong and move the speakers back against the wall out of the way.
Spent a couple hours listening, trying to convince myself I was happier with the sound than I was, eventually decided to call it quits for the day and try again tomorrow. Moved the speakers into the "idle not in use" position, put the furniture back, went to fix dinner. Just for the heck of it, put a CD on (Elton John 2nd album, SACD version), queued up Border Song, started to head into the kitchen.
Holy Moses.
This sounded *FANTASTIC*. I turned around with my jaw dragging on the floor. The whole front end of the room was gone, there was just this music filling the space where the wall used to be. I mean, for real, I felt like the chorus was someplace 15 or 20 feet on the other side of where my house used to end, stretched from side to side, with Elton standing way forward of them, and he sounded like, well, like Elton John singing in my living room. Forget airyness and transparency and imaging and soundstaging and fleshiness and every other adjective I can think of except for one - human. I stood there and listened to the rest of the album, then noticed my wife had come back into the room and was standing there with her eyes closed kind of swaying back and forth. I'll shorten this up a bit and just way we spent the next couple hours playing favorite cuts from a lot of different groups - Ronnie Milsap, the Stones, Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Judy Garland, and they all sounded more real than I remember hearing on any other system I've had (except maybe the B&W 801f's, but they're, like, $8K these days).
And the thing is THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING. I've attached a few pictures of the way the speakers are set up. Here's looking at the left speaker from our couch:
http://www.deedcast.net/RaysStuff/Images/LeftSide.png
Here's the right speaker:
http://www.deedcast.net/RaysStuff/Images/RightSide.png
and here's the straight ahead view:
http://www.deedcast.net/RaysStuff/Images/StraightOn.png
There are so many things wrong with this setup I hardly know where to begin. The left speaker is right beside a 35" TV, which will reflect right into the room. Both speakers are flanking a big china cabinet with glass sides and front. There's a *CHAIR* in front of the right speaker (well, the tweeter is well above the arm, and the woofer is just clear of it, but still :eek: ). Both speakers are shoved as close to the wall as I can get them, given the banana plugs on the speaker posts. They're not centered on the wall - closer to the left side than they are to the right side. The left speaker is way too close to another glass china cabinet.
But - this setup sounds FANTASTIC!
I have absolutely no idea why. If anyone has a clue I'm all ears. I'll try to write more about the way this sounds over the next few days after I've had more time. For now, all I can say is I'm loving the music these play, I'm really glad I happened to play something after I'd "moved them out of the way", and I am seriously wondering if I know anything what so ever about stereos.
If you have a pair of Sierras, I can't encourage you strongly enough to experiment with placement. You might get a big surprise.
Color me baffled,
Ray Garrison