Hello Everyone!

I'm not one to post on forums or do the facebook thing but felt compelled to write back and maybe help someone trying to decide as I was about buying Ascend speakers. I did a lot of research and invested in a lot of time listening to speakers in the 2K a pair price range. I found myself in information overload and started to suffer from analysis paralysis with all the different speaker choices and lingo out there! So I shifted gears and just purchased a pair of CMT – 340SE last week. I have been closely listening since Friday night and the speakers are very impressive for the price point they play in. So far I couldn’t be happier about pulling the trigger and here’s why!

I have 3 points of reference to compare the new speakers; 1. I'm replacing a set of Infinity towers and the Ascends blow them away to say the least (that was expected). 2. My best friend has some higher dollar B&Wcm8 as mains, not sure what B&W model for the surrounds, running on one of the higher end Denon’s not sure of the model, in a dedicated theater room in his 6K sq. ft. house. Lucky guy, he has a bit more coin to spend on toys then I do. Anyway, his system does sound better and a little more detailed as you could imagine but the true shock to me is I don’t hear $4,000.00 worth of better sound from his setup vs. mine. After hearing my setup he now agrees! Think he may be buying a pair of Sierras for his bedroom after listening to my 340’S (Upsell for Ascend). 3. My ears. I primarily listen to 2-3 bands so I know just about every note, which to me is the best way to make a comparison.

My setup –Denon 1911, CMT340’s, Infinity center & surrounds, Polk 250 subwoofer and PS3 for music, yes the PS3 for music. I have a Denon CD player DCM-390 but hear no noticeable difference running music off the PS3 via a CD or music copied to the hard drive so I saved some cabinet space and now its collecting dust under my bed. I do get some serious verbal abuse from my audiophile buddies about the PS3 but hey, it is what it is! They say the PS3 is crap for audio but I honestly can’t hear a difference between PS3 and the Denon CD player, I just can’t! I would like to hear if anyone uses the PS3 as a music source and what their take is? Plan on upgrading the surrounds but in no real hurry since I listen to music 80/20 more than movies and the Infinities don’t sound bad at all for movies, besides most movies flat out suck and it seems Hollywood can only crank out one or two decent movies a year! That's my two cents!