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Ascend Acoustics Sierra 2s

1K views 12 replies 10 participants last post by  gtgray 
#1 ·
I ordered these a while back and finally came. I gotta say, I have heard many speakers including the Golden Ears.

Musicality, for 2.0 listening, these are far the best and most musical I have heard at a significantly low price point (considering all the other ones I have heard that are 10x more)

Sierra 2s are outstanding!
 
#9 ·
#4 ·
Because they're clearly both excellent speakers (maybe best-bang-for-the-buck at their price point) and I don't have time to order and compare them myself!
 
#8 ·
Sierra 2s come with raal tweeter I believe, I don't think they come with anything else.


For HT, I have JTR 212s, hard to beat those for HT imho.

My ears can't believe what they are hearing. I'm not even using crazy amps either. I paired them up with peachtree audio nova 125SE and they sound fantastic.

I'm using Mac book pro use to peachtree and flac format and the music detail just oozes out of these speakers.

I might order a Rythmik sub (subs that Ascend recommends and resell) later for 2.1 action


I can't say enough good things about these speakers. Btw, I heard the Sierra towers at the ascend demo room and they sound fantastic for music. I got to demo the towers with the horizon raal enabled for all 5 speakers (including the Sierra 2s for surround)

I must say, the clarity and depth the speakers project are incredible. Not quite the JTRs in terms of dynamics for movies but nothing beats it for music
 
#11 ·
Fit and finish is top notch. Bamboo natural looks great and Ascend's other finishes done to perfection. Not many speaker makers use bamboo due to cost, Salk offers it but charges extra. Speakers look great with or without the grills. If you can get it, you'll be happy with what Dave calls b stock, I bought another Sierra 1 about 6 months ago to give me a pair for surrounds (had a leftover center after upgrading to 2s). Still trying to find the imperfection.

All of the speakers that use bamboo are solid. When I bought my Horizon center it felt like I was handling a sub - how many centers weigh in at 50 lbs.?
 
#13 ·
My brother has the Sierra 2 with the natural bamboo finish. Taken as a whole with Sierra, you are not getting a speaker that announces its price point on looks. I have a dark pair arriving today.. The ML Motion 15, 20 and 40 scream build quality or at least fit and finish quality.

I am not a fan boy for ML quite the contrary. A month ago my brother had his Sierra 2s here for an evening and I found the Sierra2s to sound much better than the ML 40s. The Sierra 2s have a nicely stiff and dead cabinent. I find the MLs fatiguing but I did not notice that with the Sierras.

I only heard the Sierras for a few hours in my living room so I could feel differently after and extended test.

Just for grins I picked up a somewhat ragged pair of early ESS AMT1s off Craigslist. They use the original and sensational Heil Air Motion Transformers which is the underlying technology behind the Marten and Sierra 2 tweeters. I listened to them for several hours last night and while the woofer surrounds are ragged and one of the tweeter is from a later and less expensive model they had the magic clairity in the highs that can make you shake your head in disbelief.

I look forward to some more head to head comparisons between the three speaker designs. I have a couple hundred bucks in these raggedy old ESS AMTs and I may rehab them. One thing the old ESS was a two way design with a large woofer that is a poor match for the magnificent ESS tweeters. The one thing I forgot about was the dipole aspect of the ESS AMTs, which creates and ambiance that the MLs clearly don't have and I don't remember the Sierra having that either. I do expect that the Sierra 2 is a vastly more polished speaker.
 
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