Got my Ascends

Ok,
Got my new Ascends yesterday at about 3:30. Considering that I had to carry them up 16 steps I found out right away just how heavy these things are! Of course, as has been mentioned before, they were extremely well packed with extra attention paid to the larger and heavier box's so they were in perfect shape but, I did have to rest for a while before I started opening them. After putting the stands together I began to place them and quickly found out that the 170's were bigger then I thought. They dont fit on the shelves I have in the rear so I will be mounting them on the walls.

I started out by choosing two discs. The first was a remastered version of Aja by Steely Dan and the second was a compilation Blood Sweat and Tears disc. I started listening to the Steely Dan and began tweaking my speaker placement and adjusting the recievrs bass and treble. By the time it was done I was ready to sit and really listen. I chose thr Blood Sweat and Tears because of the variety of instruments, the age of the recordings and the muliple solos on the song Blues Pt II. At first I lisitened in two channel. The first thing that struck me was the depth of the mid bass and mid range . My little **** sats were NEVER able to reproduce what I was hearing. Smooth, clean, rich and full are the words that describe it. I actually had to turn my sub down to about one third while keeping the bass and treble flat on the reciever. The 340's were putting out almost enough bass on their own and needed very little help from the sub. I never really appreciated the song "Sometimes in winter" and now I know why. I was missing the bass and mid bass. I swear i had goose bumps!

Just when I thought it could not get any better...it did. The horns! Wow! The brass section on the song "Spinning Wheels" was astonishing! Very clear with no distortion. I used to have to turn this down a bit on the B***. This time I turned it up. There is a lot going on in this song but the Ascends kept right up and reproduced everything perfectly. For the song "Blues Pt. II" I decided to listen in 6ch stereo. This produced a very pleasing feeling of being enveloped by the music almost as if I was sitting in the middle of the stage with the instruments all around me. There is a part of the song that plays a riff from "Sunshine Of Your Love" on the bass going down low and quiet that leads into a horn crescendo which just blew me away. I had to listen to it 3 times and then called my wife in (she could really care less about this stuff). So I go out of the room and when it comes time for the crescendo I peek in and she almost jumps out of the chair! Even she was amazed by the range of these speakers.

I know I have only spent about 2 hours with these speakers and I am no audiophile but I really can't see how anything else in this price range could sound any better. Thanks to all who recommended these and thanks to Dave and everone at Ascend for making such a great speaker at a price that regular guys like me can afford. Of course i will be doing some more audtitioning today and tonite will be doing some movie watching so I'm not done by a long shot but my guess is these babies have found a home!

Good stuff.....

I was wondering how long you were going to stay up and listen. :)

Well I would have stayed up till 2:00am but the family raised a revolt at 10:30 so I reluctantly put on my headphones ...what a let down! I did fail to mention, as has been mentioned before, that the imaging in two channel was excellent...even had my wife swearing that sound was comming from the center channel. As far as looks are concerned I think they look great..very understated which is just what I wanted as they blend in nicely and, imho, I would much rather save on looks and spend on what really matters to me which, of course, is they way they sound. I am quite certain after having auditioned the Klipcsh, Polk and Yamaha systems, that I made the right choice with the Ascends. Although I probably never would have bought the Yammies, they sure were very nice looking with that piano black finish but I think that would have caused some annoying light reflections sitting right next to my 110" screen. As it is the center channel sits about 2 inches below the screen and even with the matte finish I have a reflection. I'm going to have to cover the top with some black cloth but it's really no big deal.