New: Sierra-2EX V2!!!

[hometheater]

I understand your point. A well designed speaker would likely be better than some secondary equalization technique especially for the frequencies you mentioned.

I'm going to tinker with this in my setup but in my experience, the Audyssey results have been fairly consistent for me.

[SunByrne]

Sierra-2 EX V2 upgrade

OK, so I'm a huge fan of the Sierra-LX and have judged it to generally be a superior speaker to the EX—I wrote an enormously long review comparing the two, which is here.

That was a comparison with the original version of the EX, though.

Dave's really been putting the Klippel through its paces of late, which is part of the magic behind the LX. And as much as I love the LX, the other thing the Klippel got us was the V2 version of the Duo. This was a pretty striking upgrade given that there weren't any new drivers, just new crossovers and damping material. As much as I hate to admit it, the Duos were my least favorite of my many Ascend speakers and the first ones where I didn't go "wow" when I first tried them out. They were good, yes, but I wasn't wowed. First Ascend product I didn't write a long review for and first one I actually considered sending back. I need something wall-mounted that doesn't stick out too far for my living room HT, though, and I just didn't see there being better options at that price point. When the V2 upgrades were announced, I jumped on them, and there it was, the "wow" I had been hoping for with the Duos—it was a really dramatic difference. So glad I kept them.

So that puts the bar pretty high for the V2 upgrade on the EXs. Again, no new drivers, but it's still Dave with the Klippel and the Duo upgrade was such a huge home run, how could I not? Also, I have a long track record of ordering pretty much every possible upgrade for the Sierra bookshelves, so why break with tradition?

Had the house to myself today so that means loudspeaker day. This won't be anything close to the scale of my LX vs. EX review: no side-by-side hours of switching back and forth. Just listened to the EX V1s for a while, the switched them over to the V2s and listened again. Much less precise, but hopefully still valuable.

Spent a good solid hour doing critical listening with the pre-upgrade EXs. This is a 2.1 setup with an RSL Speedwoofer Mk2 handling bass duties, crossed over at 60Hz. The EXs are mounted on the wall so not a lot of breathing room for the port so I wasn't going to run the V2s full-range, so this is all with a sub. The Mk2 Speedwoofer is not a Rhythmik but it's pretty close. No room correction here, either—I'll save that for when I convert it to a 3.1.

Did the upgrade, no worries there. Bummer you have to go through the whole procedure just to replace the crossovers, but still not a big deal. As noted elsewhere, I'd be willing to put up money that outside of Ascend employees, I've done this more than anyone else. Anyway, set 'em up and let 'em rip. Did another hour or so of critical listening.

Immediately obvious positive difference on two fronts:

* The V2s are more neutral than the V1s. The V1s are a bit on the bright side, which was really obvious when running them side-by-side with the more neutral LXs. Without another side-by-side, I'm not 100% sure how the V2s compare with the LXs. My guess is that they're still a teensy bit brighter than the LXs, but only by a very small amount. Definitely better balanced now. The added warmth to the V2s brings out the detail in the mids in a particularly pleasing way. It's not dramatic but it's definitely audible and an improvement.
* The V2s are more spacious than the V1s. The EXs have always been a nice open-sounding speaker, but now they're even better. I found the soundstage between the original EXs and the LXs to be pretty similar, but I suspect (again, this is a bit speculative since I didn't listen to them head-to-head) that the EXs now take the crown here. Really excellent width and depth to the soundstage. This is the more noticeable of the two changes, and is especially evident on classical music.

Yes, this is pretty much what everyone else has said. Somebody on the thread commented on improved bass extensions, but since I'm crossed over at 60Hz, I didn't hear any of that. YMMV.

Is it a sizable improvement? Yes. Is it as big a step up as the V2 upgrade was for the Duos? No. At the risk of Dave's wrath, I think the EX was a better speaker than the Duo before the V2 upgrade, so there wasn't as much room for improvement. Still a really nice step up for a very reasonable price.

Huge shoutout to Dave for this kind of thing. While lots of companies are also striving to make their products better, I think it's safe to say that nobody else is working so hard to make it possible to upgrade existing products. Pretty much whenever anyone else releases a new speaker, you have to just buy entirely new speakers. These opportunities to upgrade existing speakers are just amazing—what an incredible service to your customers, Dave.

OK, let's wrap up with Q&A time!
* Should I upgrade my EXs to V2? At $135 per speaker, this is a no-brainer—yes, do it now before the price goes up.
* Do I think the LX is still the better speaker? Yes, but less so overall and much more dependent on context. With the V1 I would say the vast majority of people should probably get the LX over the EX. Now? Still probably a majority, but a smaller one. I mean, it's a good news story either way. The LX still does some things better, now it's just that for some of those things the LX isn't much better, and now the EX has overtaken, at least on soundstage.
* So who should get the LX? If you care about bass slam or about performance vertically off-axis, you still want the LX—that would be my preference for HT and/or without a sub.
* So, who should get the EX? If you primarily listen to classical/acoustic music and either don't feel like you need a sub or already have one, I'd get the EX.

[rifmon]

Thanks for your outstanding detailed review SunByrne.

You confirmed what I suspected which is it gets closer to the LX in some aspects (flat response, less bright) but also exceeds the LX in aspects for those who listen to acoustic orchestral music. I might add to those genres big bands such as Sinatra, Maynard Ferguson, etc ...that are still in the acoustic category but often missed. I listen to all types of music and even with the EX v1, I do not miss much bass. It might be my room but I'm often astounded by the response which may or may not be typical. And my speakers are placed 2 1/2 feet from a half wall which is lower than the port on the backs.

I decided I will do my own upgrade as I did going from the Sierra 2 to the EX. I am lucky enough to have the domestic cabinets which are no more.

[Mag_Neato]

Yes, thanks SunByrne for your thoughts!

I have the V2 crossovers on order so the waiting game is on

[MDinno]

Sierra-2 EX V2 upgrade

OK, so I'm a huge fan of the Sierra-LX and have judged it to generally be a superior speaker to the EX—I wrote an enormously long review comparing the two, which is here.

That was a comparison with the original version of the EX, though.

Dave's really been putting the Klippel through its paces of late, which is part of the magic behind the LX. And as much as I love the LX, the other thing the Klippel got us was the V2 version of the Duo. This was a pretty striking upgrade given that there weren't any new drivers, just new crossovers and damping material. As much as I hate to admit it, the Duos were my least favorite of my many Ascend speakers and the first ones where I didn't go "wow" when I first tried them out. They were good, yes, but I wasn't wowed. First Ascend product I didn't write a long review for and first one I actually considered sending back. I need something wall-mounted that doesn't stick out too far for my living room HT, though, and I just didn't see there being better options at that price point. When the V2 upgrades were announced, I jumped on them, and there it was, the "wow" I had been hoping for with the Duos—it was a really dramatic difference. So glad I kept them.

So that puts the bar pretty high for the V2 upgrade on the EXs. Again, no new drivers, but it's still Dave with the Klippel and the Duo upgrade was such a huge home run, how could I not? Also, I have a long track record of ordering pretty much every possible upgrade for the Sierra bookshelves, so why break with tradition?

Had the house to myself today so that means loudspeaker day. This won't be anything close to the scale of my LX vs. EX review: no side-by-side hours of switching back and forth. Just listened to the EX V1s for a while, the switched them over to the V2s and listened again. Much less precise, but hopefully still valuable.

Spent a good solid hour doing critical listening with the pre-upgrade EXs. This is a 2.1 setup with an RSL Speedwoofer Mk2 handling bass duties, crossed over at 60Hz. The EXs are mounted on the wall so not a lot of breathing room for the port so I wasn't going to run the V2s full-range, so this is all with a sub. The Mk2 Speedwoofer is not a Rhythmik but it's pretty close. No room correction here, either—I'll save that for when I convert it to a 3.1.

Did the upgrade, no worries there. Bummer you have to go through the whole procedure just to replace the crossovers, but still not a big deal. As noted elsewhere, I'd be willing to put up money that outside of Ascend employees, I've done this more than anyone else. Anyway, set 'em up and let 'em rip. Did another hour or so of critical listening.

Immediately obvious positive difference on two fronts:

* The V2s are more neutral than the V1s. The V1s are a bit on the bright side, which was really obvious when running them side-by-side with the more neutral LXs. Without another side-by-side, I'm not 100% sure how the V2s compare with the LXs. My guess is that they're still a teensy bit brighter than the LXs, but only by a very small amount. Definitely better balanced now. The added warmth to the V2s brings out the detail in the mids in a particularly pleasing way. It's not dramatic but it's definitely audible and an improvement.
* The V2s are more spacious than the V1s. The EXs have always been a nice open-sounding speaker, but now they're even better. I found the soundstage between the original EXs and the LXs to be pretty similar, but I suspect (again, this is a bit speculative since I didn't listen to them head-to-head) that the EXs now take the crown here. Really excellent width and depth to the soundstage. This is the more noticeable of the two changes, and is especially evident on classical music.

Yes, this is pretty much what everyone else has said. Somebody on the thread commented on improved bass extensions, but since I'm crossed over at 60Hz, I didn't hear any of that. YMMV.

Is it a sizable improvement? Yes. Is it as big a step up as the V2 upgrade was for the Duos? No. At the risk of Dave's wrath, I think the EX was a better speaker than the Duo before the V2 upgrade, so there wasn't as much room for improvement. Still a really nice step up for a very reasonable price.

Huge shoutout to Dave for this kind of thing. While lots of companies are also striving to make their products better, I think it's safe to say that nobody else is working so hard to make it possible to upgrade existing products. Pretty much whenever anyone else releases a new speaker, you have to just buy entirely new speakers. These opportunities to upgrade existing speakers are just amazing—what an incredible service to your customers, Dave.

OK, let's wrap up with Q&A time!
* Should I upgrade my EXs to V2? At $135 per speaker, this is a no-brainer—yes, do it now before the price goes up.
* Do I think the LX is still the better speaker? Yes, but less so overall and much more dependent on context. With the V1 I would say the vast majority of people should probably get the LX over the EX. Now? Still probably a majority, but a smaller one. I mean, it's a good news story either way. The LX still does some things better, now it's just that for some of those things the LX isn't much better, and now the EX has overtaken, at least on soundstage.
* So who should get the LX? If you care about bass slam or about performance vertically off-axis, you still want the LX—that would be my preference for HT and/or without a sub.
* So, who should get the EX? If you primarily listen to classical/acoustic music and either don't feel like you need a sub or already have one, I'd get the EX.

Ok, so which speaker makes the better center?? Would getting LX mains and the EX V2 for center make sense??

[N Boros]

Ok, so which speaker makes the better center?? Would getting LX mains and the EX V2 for center make sense??

If the center will be placed horizontally, I think the Duo might be better with the EX V2 mains, as you have the ribbon tweeter to match and you will have symmetrical dispersion left and right.

I could be wrong, but I thought there were talks of the Duo getting the LX tweeter down the line, maybe mentioned in the LX development thread. If that is the case then again the Duo might be a better choice.

Obviously if you can fit the Horizon, then that would be the best center with the matching tweeter, but if you have space for the Horizon, you might also be able to fit a vertically oriented LX or EX V2 as the center, which would be a great option.

[SunByrne]

Ok, so which speaker makes the better center?? Would getting LX mains and the EX V2 for center make sense??

I wouldn’t mix LX and EX. If you want the EX sound, then get EXs all the way across. If you want the LX sound, get LXs all the way across.

[MDinno]

I wouldn’t mix LX and EX. If you want the EX sound, then get EXs all the way across. If you want the LX sound, get LXs all the way across.

I know; I only ask because of the detail the EX brings which is ideal for center channel duties. Having said that will the Horizon go with either one?

[diesel79]

I know; I only ask because of the detail the EX brings which is ideal for center channel duties. Having said that will the Horizon go with either one?

You can get the Horizon with a RAAL or the LX (Titan) tweeter. From what I understand the tweeters play nice together. If you were buying all three at once you might as well match them though. If the Horizon is in the cards, it’s always a yes to buy. It’s awesome and I have the old version ( updating to the ELX version after Christmas though). I have the RAAL Horizon and Sierra 2EXv2’s for L/R.

[davef]

Ok, so which speaker makes the better center?? Would getting LX mains and the EX V2 for center make sense??

Yes, they actually perform extremely well together (LX for left/right and EX for center). The EX center has a bit better directivity and a slight edge in dialogue clarity compared to using the LX center. However, if you aren't using a subwoofer, then go with the LX center. You really can't go wrong with either.