Speaker math: 5+2=7 (Figuring out which speakers to buy for my new Ascend system)

[Kufat]

Hi all! After seeing many recommendations online, I decided to buy a set of 7 Sierra-1s for the home theater system I'm putting together. Then...I looked online and saw someone in my area selling LCR Sierra-1s with a pair of CBM-170 SEs plus a pair of Dolby Atmos add-on speakers for an incredibly low price. So I went with that. They're sitting in my living room right now; I don't have a receiver yet and I'll need to repaint my den before I can begin setting up in there. The receiver I'll be getting is a Marantz SR6013.

Anyway, now I've got 5.1.2. (Existing sub, might replace it at some point but it's not my highest priority.) I'd like to have 7.1.2. I figure I've got three main options:


Buy 2 more CBM-170 SEs. Cheap, especially with B-stock, plus my surround and surround back speakers will match. Leaves more money for other home theater essentials, like furniture, echo reduction, and Sour Patch Kids.
Buy two more Sierra-1s. Moderately priced, and the main 5 speakers will match. (The -170s will be demoted to surround back.) The difference from the above is that the surround speakers will be Sierra-1s; all other channels will be the same.
Buy two Sierra-2EXs and an upgade kit for the center speaker. Quite expensive and it'll mean I'll have three different speakers (LCR -2EX, surround -1, and surround back CBM-170 SE.) This one would be a bit of a stretch for my budget, but I'd seriously consider it if some B-stock -2EXes became available.
Bonus option: buy two Sierra Towers (with ribbon tweeter upgrade, naturally) and a -2EX upgade kit for the center speaker. Only difficulty with that is that I'd need to strike oil in my backyard to pay for it. ;)


Any thoughts? I don't have the system yet so I can't give precise usage profile information, but I listen to a lot of music, some of it in multichannel, and I enjoy a pretty wide variety of movies and TV shows, some better equipped to take advantage of modern surround sound systems than others. The SR6013 has Audyssey MultEQ XT32, which from what I'm told is good enough to go a long way toward mitigating mismatches in frequency response from mixed speaker sets.

Thanks, everyone.

[natetg57]

I wouldn't worry too much about mixing different speakers together, all Ascend speakers are voiced similarly. I would consider either HTM-200s or Lunas as surrounds. Without a port in the back they can be mounted directly on a wall. This means they can be located in ideal locations more easily.

[Kufat]

If my budget was a good deal bigger, I'd have gone for 2 Towers (with ribbon), a Horizon, and 4 Lunas. As it is, a pair of Lunas would cost more than I spent on the other 5 main speakers and 2 Atmos speakers combined, and allocating that percentage of my speaker budget to surrounds rather than LCR seems like a less than ideal use of resources.

HTM-200 seems worth considering, though. Your point about the ports is a good one; I'm not sure if that'll be an issue for me, but it's definitely worth figuring out exactly how and where I would want to mount them and then considering whether the lack of a port will make that easier.

For comparison, how far from a wall would the CBM-170s need to be, ideally?

[natetg57]

If my budget was a good deal bigger, I'd have gone for 2 Towers (with ribbon), a Horizon, and 4 Lunas. As it is, a pair of Lunas would cost more than I spent on the other 5 main speakers and 2 Atmos speakers combined, and allocating that percentage of my speaker budget to surrounds rather than LCR seems like a less than ideal use of resources.

HTM-200 seems worth considering, though. Your point about the ports is a good one; I'm not sure if that'll be an issue for me, but it's definitely worth figuring out exactly how and where I would want to mount them and then considering whether the lack of a port will make that easier.

For comparison, how far from a wall would the CBM-170s need to be, ideally?

Check out this thread: http://forum.ascendacoustics.com/showthread.php?5288-Rear-ported-speaker-to-wall-distance

[Kufat]

Check out this thread: http://forum.ascendacoustics.com/showthread.php?5288-Rear-ported-speaker-to-wall-distance

Thanks! Dave says that 2.5" from the wall is plenty for the 170s, so for my setup that won't be a concern. (Which is a relief, seeing as I've already got two of them.)