I appreciate everyone’s patience regarding this matter. As some of you know, I suffered a serious E-Bike injury on July 4th requiring several nights stay at the trauma center at my local hospital. My injuries were/are serious (7 broken ribs, 2 lung punctures, broken scapula, mild head trauma). I was very lucky as I cracked my bike helmet in 3 places and even luckier as I managed to somehow avoid surgery.

As I am sure some of you know, recovering from injuries like this takes quite a bit of time, patience and assistance. I am at the 6-week mark now and while I feel my lung has healed and I am finally able to breath normally and I have more mobility, I still have high levels of pain every now and then and my mobility is maybe back to 50%. I am hoping 4 more weeks and I will be back to 100%. Obviously, this is has presented me with a major setback on the timing of a few items. Of most importance is this discussion regarding the Luna and Duo. Most of this was worked out prior to my injury and the final touches were finally taken care of this weekend.

There is much to post so I will break this up into sections, with the goal of posting one section each day until everything is covered.

Part 1.

With the tests of our Luna and Duo, measured by Amir at Audio Science Review – the results were poor. Their measurements did not match up well with our measurements and horrible accusations were thrown our way. I have been open, honest and as transparent as possible about Ascend and we have always and will always manufacture exceptional products with the highest levels of integrity.

Seeing those measurements (and some of the comments) threw me for a loop, I did not even recognize what I saw. I had to ask myself, “how could it be possible for a speaker to measure that way yet have such a high customer satisfaction rate?” (Sales of our Lunas eclipsed our forecasts)

Could this customer’s speakers have a problem? I didn’t think so since Amir measured a Luna and a Duo, and both showed pronounced port resonances that negatively influenced and changed the overall frequency response. As such, it became critical for me to get back this customer’s speakers and I am thankful he reached out.

During that waiting period, I set out on endless computer modeling and took detailed measurements of more than a dozen Luna’s. While I was able to measure some port resonance, it was not even close to what Amir’s measurements showed. The differences in our measurements were so dramatic that I broke out my reference CBM-170 that was measured at the NRC in an anechoic chamber, and then compared those measurements with measurements I took. My measurements were within +/- 0.5dB from about 200Hz and up (no reason for me to spend the time and accurately measure the low end) I was really puzzled, I could not replicate Amir’s measurements.

Since the measured port resonance exhibited a very high Q behavior (extremely narrow bandwidth) I assumed this must be an issue using gated measurements (a method to remove the influence of a room / reflections). Gated measurements are common and have been universally accepted. This method does reduce frequency to frequency resolution with the smaller the gate time the greater the reduction. With larger gate times, reflections get included in the measurement which then throws everything off. Our testing procedures and gating times have been the standard for decades now, something I used from my days developing THX certified speakers, which had to meet very stringent measurement standards. I further enhanced these over many decades of use and in designing 40+ commercially successful loudspeakers.

For many decades, the common thoughts on what we hear is that, at best, we hear at 1/6th octave. Meaning all the frequencies within an individual octave are averaged into 6 points. Some argue we hear at 1/12th, but I personally don’t believe this, other engineers will say we hear at 1/3rd octave. A decent article on this can be found here: https://www.prosoundtraining.com/201...-octave-bands/

With the gate times we use, resolution is typically about 1/12th octave, fully covering what human hearing can detect. However, the port resonances measured by the Klippel NFS are so narrow that these would typically not be picked up with standard gated measurements and are also not audible to human hearing. After evaluating a half dozen other front ported speakers measured by Amir and comparing the NFS measurements with other published measurements, I can confirm this issue is not isolated to our Luna and Duo. Some of these other speakers displayed even worse port resonance, but other published measurements do not show this and like our Luna, these speakers have been widely praised and have sold well.

The Klippel NFS changes things, it is capable of measuring at resolutions previously not possible, resolutions far greater than what the human ear can hear. I like to use the comparison of looking at Jessica Alba’s face at 3 feet away, compared to looking at it with magnifying glass. Near perfection at 3 feet vs nothing but flaws close up under magnification. What do we see / hear that actually matters to our senses? I have discussed this issue in depth with a well published audiologist and his thoughts echoed my own.

Still, the results of the NFS measurements were not acceptable to me so it was time to move to the next phase.