Sierra Tower NrT - Phantom Center

[neveralone777]

Hello, I plan on purchasing Sierra Tower NrT's soon and was tossing around the idea of using them to create a phantom center. I have never set up speakers this way before and I am wondering how well the towers will create this illusion? I know what some will say, why do this when there is a matching center that is phenomenal. It's really a matter of cost and is something that I could add later. However if it sounded good it wouldn't be the first upgrade I would make. I am starting from scratch. I need speakers and subs. This will be powered by a Pioneer 1522K.

I am 50% music, 25% movies and 25% casual shows and various content we put on for my baby daughter. So with music 2.0 or 2.1 is perfect. With casual content perfect sound quality isn't a concern. But the times when I do have friends and family over to watch a blockbuster movie, I do want the full experience.

I don't have my room locked in yet because I am moving soon. This will be in a living room and most of the ones we have looked at have vaulted ceilings and open to the kitchen. I am most likely going to get a lv12r and purchase a dual down the road if this will be enough.

Any thoughts on the phantom center with sierra towers would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[curtis]

One of Ascend's hallmark characteristics is excellent imaging. The Tower exemplifies this and using them to create a phantom center should work fine.

[FirstReflect]

Yes, indeed!

If you have a wide or an offset seating area, what you might find is that particular seating positions that are physically closer to one speaker vs. the other, for those particular seats, the phantom center image might "collapse" to that physically closest speaker. That was pretty much the point of why the Center channel was invented in the first place: to keep dialogue locked to the screen, even for people sitting far to either side.

But so long as you are seated in between the two speakers, you should be treated to a very nice and convincing phantom Center! Ascend's speakers have very wide and even dispersion, so they create a nice, wide "sweet spot" with excellent imaging.

I like the phantom Center setup. I've heard plenty of systems that actually sound better with a phantom Center than when the actual Center speaker is turned on! Center speakers can be tricky, and there are plenty of them that aren't up to snuff. Thankfully, Ascend's Horizon is more than up to the task if and when you add one in the future :) But for now, running a phantom Center is a fine, fine choice. Frankly, it's something I think more people ought to consider ;)

[neveralone777]

Thank you for the responses. I will definitely try the phantom center. I was pretty set on the sierra towers but now am also considering the sierra-2. Would they work equally well or better for a phantom center? Also in a medium-large size room do the sierras have enough sound to fill it correctly? This is me not understanding fully how speakers work. Do the towers just use the mid and extra driver to create a better sound or does it create a more room filling sound? If the sierra-2 would work then I would be very interested. Also the lower price is a plus.

[gln2]

I've been running a 4.1 system in my media room using the RAAL towers for the L/R mains for the past year. Room is used 95% for movies, and I have been very happy with it. Dialogue comes from the screen. I'm the particular one in the family, and I always sit dead center and have generally felt a center wouldn't add much. Though I do wonder what I may be missing by not having the center speaker. I haven't been able to decide if the cost to add a center is worth it. Wish I could demo a matching center to hear the difference!

I've been a long time audiophile running a high end 2.1 music only system in my L/R for many years (all gone now after house remodel :( .) Top rate speakers and electronics in a stereo configuration does totally fill the center. That is what stereo does! (Assuming you and the speakers are setup in a "triangle" layout.) So, for music, no center is needed.

But, when playing Blu-ray movies (and given I sit dead center) would an added center give me a better audio experience? I'd like to know the answer to that question also. I would hate to spend $800+ or so to add a good center only to find not much changed.

Glenn

[FirstReflect]

The Sierra-2 would work equally well in terms of the phantom center image. They have very wide dispersion (which is actually unusual for a ribbon driver, but a TON of engineering and design has gone into the RAAL ribbon tweeters that Ascend uses in order to make sure that they do have wide dispersion). Just listening, I got out as far as 35 degrees to either side before the change in their off-axis sound was notable. So that is very wide and uniform, and you can definitely get a great phantom center effect - provided, of course, that you're sitting in between the two speakers and not way off to one side or the other, just as described above ;)

The Towers can play louder, and they can play lower in the bass than the Sierra-2. Comparing the overall sound quality of the standard Towers and the Sierra-2 is very, very tough, and it's the source of plenty of debate and decision-making around this forum -- haha. The ribbon tweeter in the Sierra-2 does give that speaker a little bit of a different tone and timbre vs. the standard Tower. They do not sound like a smaller and a bigger version of the same speaker. Don't get me wrong, there's no "night and day" type of difference. But if you're switching back and forth, you'd be able to tell that they are two different speakers.

The Towers RAAL and the Sierra-2, on the other hand, their timbre and tone matches extremely well. They still do not sound EXACTLY the same, but they pretty much do sound like a bigger and a smaller version of the same speaker. The Tower RAAL is a tiny bit clearer - I describe it as sounding as though a person is in your room, speaking or singing to you from 6-10 feet away via the Sierra-2. Via the Towers RAAL, it's as though that same person moved to within 3 feet of you without getting any louder ;)

So, in my opinion (and it really is just my opinion), I actually think the Sierra-2 have just a little bit better sound quality than the standard Towers. It's really more that they're just a little bit "different" as opposed to a little bit "better". But the way in which the Sierra-2 are "different" is the way that I would personally prefer. But believe me, it's close. I would have zero problem with anyone whose preference leaned the other way. I'm just saying that I really love the timbre and tone of the Sierra-2 and the Towers RAAL, so that is the way I would personally lean :)

If you were to pair up the Sierra-2 with a nice pair of subwoofers, personally, I would declare that combo superior to the standard Towers. Obviously, the total price of that combo will depend on your choice of subwoofers, though! And you could easily end up spending more for a pair of Sierra-2 plus a pair of nice subwoofers than you would for just a pair of Towers RAAL - and certainly more than for just a pair of standard Towers. But I would be recommending to anyone that they pair either of the Towers with a nice pair of subwoofers, too! Haha. So if the pair of subwoofers remains constant, we're back to the Sierra-2 costing less :D

The Sierra-2 can play plenty loud. Not quite as loud as the Towers. But by no means should you think you'll be limited in terms of output if you opt for the Sierra-2. They'll hit a clean 105dB SPL from 12 feet away (provided you've got the clean amplifier power on tap, of course), so output is really not a concern with them. They're very robust bookshelf speakers!

As for "room filling", well, that's been a whole subject unto itself around here. It can be very difficult to determine exactly what someone means by "room filling".

"Room filling", more often than not, seems to equate to reverberation for a lot of people. They don't always identify it as that, but a lot of - I'd venture most - people have grown accustomed to speakers that actually keep producing sound long after the signal in the recording told them to stop! The cabinets of the speakers reverberate, the drivers (woofers and tweeters) of the speaker keep on moving due to inertia, all of that excess sound gets sent out into the room. And then most people's rooms have plenty of hard, flat, exposed surfaces that reflect all of that excess energy back to the listener! The end result is that there is literally a whole bunch of sound energy that was never supposed to be there! But then you hear a truly accurate, non-reverberant speaker, and you wonder, "where did all my sound go?"

There's a very fun and funny video of Stephen Fry demonstrating a recording of himself popping a balloon inside a reverberant chamber, and then popping a balloon inside a hemi-anechoic chamber. It is this notion taken to the extreme, obviously, but one of them sounds like a massive explosion, the other sounds as though a pin dropped and you'd miss it if you blinked! You can see and hear for yourself :)

http://youtu.be/D5D5ab_tSjg?t=23m20s

So if you're used to speakers that reverberated, and produced a bunch of excess sound that they weren't actually supposed to, and then you switch over to speakers like the Sierra-2, which are extremely clean and free from any residual sound, it's like a much less extreme version of that balloon pop demonstration. The Sierra-2 just won't sound as "room filling" in that sense. But it is much more accurate and true to the actual source! Once you get used to it, you'll come to realize (and cringe at) how inaccurate, reverberant, and smeared almost all other speakers really are!

The other factor in sounding "room filling" is bass. There is no debate, the Towers play lower and louder in the bass. Again, what the Sierra-2 produce is very "tight" very clean, distortion-free bass. Some folks find them to dig low enough to be completely satisfying for most music. Some folks would prefer some deeper and louder extension. It is largely going to depend on personal taste, but also largely depend on your room's acoustics!

Again, I always recommend using subwoofers. Bass reacts differently within your room than midrange or treble. Bass sound waves are physically very long. They can be longer than the dimensions of your room itself! And as a result, what you hear in the bass is always largely reflected sound as opposed to direct sound. And because the bass waves are bouncing around your room so much, they also overlap and interfere with themselves! They double back and overlap all over your room, and that leads to big dips and peaks for certain frequencies at certain locations.

What you need to know is that you don't have much of a choice in where you place your Front Left & Right speakers. They need to be positioned beside your TV screen on either side, and placed so that they produce good stereo imaging. What that means is that when it comes to the deep bass, you're completely at the mercy of your room's acoustics. It could easily turn out that playing a low 50Hz or 40Hz note from your Front Left or Front Right speaker results in a big old dip or peak right at your favourite seat! That's not the speaker's fault. It's just the way it sometimes works out because of those long, long bass sound waves, and the particular dimensions of your room.

The solution is to let subwoofers handle the deep bass. Since you do not have to worry about placing subwoofers for good stereo imaging, you can instead place them in the room where they will produce the most even, accurate bass. There will still be some dips and peaks, but you can move the subwoofers around until none of those big dips or peaks happen right at your favourite seat!

More than that, if you use two or four subwoofers, you can take advantage of math :D By having two subwoofers directly opposite one another (as in, one in the middle of the front wall and one in the middle of the back wall, or one in the middle of each side wall, or the two of them in diagonally opposite corners) you can smooth out a lot of the peaks and dips throughout your entire room. This is the way to get uniform bass from seat to seat. And it's why I pretty much always recommend using 2 subwoofers, not just 1. Although 1 subwoofer can be perfectly adequate if you really only care about 1 seat. Like I say, in that case, you can just move the 1 subwoofer around until you find a spot that creates no big peaks or dips at your favourite seat. All the other seats? They still might have dips or peaks, so that's where 2 or 4 subwoofers becomes necessary ;)

Anywho, that's my take on the Sierra-2 vs. the standard Towers. I've probably just made it even more confusing, but hopefully, if you read through all of that, you'll be able to come to a decision :)

Hope that's of some help,

Rob H.