Thoughts on the Titan Horizon
I guess technically the V2, but there wasn't a V1 with the Titan so that still seems weird.
I received it a while ago (back in February) and I've now had it long enough and done enough movie/TV watching and even some 5.1/Atmos audio listening that I feel like I have a pretty good sense of where the differences are between the Horizon and what it replaced.
This is the center channel in my main HT setup in my living room, which is a 5.1.2 setup. Fronts are Luna Duos (also V2), surrounds are the old RAAL-based Mini Philharmonitors, Rythmik L22 sub, and QAcoustics 3020i for front heights (needed to be white for SAF reasons). This is probably 85/15 or maybe even 90/10 HT vs. music. (For my wife it's 100% HT.) The center that I replaced was also a Luna Duo V2, so it's not like I replaced a speaker that wasn't already good. The V2 upgrade to the Duo was quite substantial and I went from being OK with them to really liking them. But the center just does so much work in HT that any quality bump there is worth it, right?
Plus, ultimately I always have upgrade-itis. Furthermore, my Duos are in black bamboo, a domestic-only finish, and those were discontinued for the Horizon. Again for SAF reasons it is important that my speakers match, so I pulled the trigger on the last of the B-stock black bamboo cabinets. It wasn't like I was unhappy with the Duo center but I couldn't let the chance to get a matching Horizon pass me by.
So how's the Titan Horizon different than the Luna Duo?
First, the obvious: the Horizon is bigger. Not just a little bit bigger, but massively bigger. The Duo is this cute thing that you can easily mount on the wall whereas the Horizon is a monster. I mean, yes, I had read the size measurements and I knew that it'd be larger and by how much, but until you've unboxed the Horizon and lifted it, it's hard to really appreciate how much bigger it is. It's a seriously beefy speaker. When I bought a new TV last summer I wall-mounted it so I could get a stand that could accommodate a Horizon—the Horizon is big enough that it's hard to fit in most stands that have space for a center. I got a stand that's basically just a low table so I could put the Horizon on top of it rather than in it.
The black bamboo perfectly matches my existing Duos so that's great. And, as usual, Ascend's B-stock is terrific. There's a really small scuff near the back of the speaker that is so minor you'd have to know to look for to see it, and because of how I have the speaker positioned you can't see it anyway. So thumbs up on the aesthetics.
Yeah, yeah, but how does it SOUND? I know that's what people really want to know. I'm going mostly to compare it to the Duo V2 it replaced. First, it is, as is the LX and all the other V2 speakers, a really neutral speaker, and I mean that in the best possible way. There's a small loss of "air" going from the RAAL to the Titan, but just like with my extended LX vs. EX comparison, this is pretty minor—the Titan is an amazingly capable dome. And since most of my application here is HT, it's hard to notice at all unless you're really straining to hear it on multichannel music.
The two other main differences are in the Horizon's favor and they are _much_ more obvious. The first difference is the mids, particularly the upper mids. There's just an extra clarity to it that I think is the result of having a dedicated midrange driver. Might also be the Titan itself, since I found this to be true for the LX relative to the EX as well. Particularly noticeable for female voices. Nice upgrade there.
The other difference, and this one is even more substantial, is that the dispersion characteristics of the Horizon are just bananas, particularly vertically. My only real beef with the Duo after the V2 upgrade was the vertical dispersion. Look, if you're always sitting exactly in the listening position this is no big deal, but for me the TV, and therefore the HT, is on a fair proportion of the time when I'm home and have down time. Honestly I'm not always really watching it and sometimes I get up to do other things for a bit, and I could always tell that I noticeably lost treble whenever I stood up. The Horizon just totally solves this. I can be pretty much anywhere in the room, standing, sitting, on the floor playing with the dog, whatever, and it always sounds great. The Duo is a high-quality speaker but it just does not fill a room quite the same way the Horizon does. The Horizon is not only much physically bigger than the the Duo but it _sounds_ much bigger.
I guess the other potential concern is that my mains are RAALs and my center is a dome, which could affect how well the three front speakers blend. The good news here is that I haven't really noticed any change in this. My guess is that with the V2/LX updates all the Sierras (other than maybe the original Sierra-1) are now similar enough that they play well together when mixed.
The one exception here is again vertical dispersion. When I stand up, I can hear the treble drop from the mains but not the center. I guess this is sometimes a little bit of a thing, but really where the drop used to bother me in particular was losing female dialog, and since most of the dialog runs through the center this is still an improvement. However, if Dave comes up with a Titan version of the Duos I'll probably switch to those just for the better vertical dispersion anyway, Horizon or not. Then I'll probably have to get LXs for surrounds. This just never ends, does it? I should get some kind of frequent-flier discount. "Your tenth pair/upgrade is free" or something. I'm kidding, Dave, I'm happy to support your business. (But let's not get crazy here, if you actually offered this I would totally take it!)
So, anyway, the TLDR version: the Titan Horizon is great. Neutral, detailed, super clear, room-filling.
But of course it's great—basically post-Klippel has been one home run after another for Ascend. However, for the Horizon you have to have the space for it, which I know is an issue for a lot of folks. It's definitely not a small speaker and does not fit a lot of AV furniture. But if you do have the space, you can't go wrong with it. I'm really looking forward to the upcoming re-release of _Stop Making Sense_, maybe this time they'll master in something even better than DTS. Atmos?
I can't even imagine how good the full ELX version sounds. Curtis, what's the forum over/under on the time for me to do this upgrade? Maybe for once I'll be able to hold off for the over.
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Originally Posted by SunByrne
