Who was talking about Bose??
Anyway...
I emailed David Fabrikant of Ascend last weekend asking about the availability of B-stock Sierra-1's in piano black. He indicated that my timing was nearly perfect as a pair had recently come off the production line with a couple of barely visible hairline scratches. I was therefore able to get a good deal on the speakers, so I jumped on them.
The Sierra-1's arrived yesterday and I've only got about 10 hours on them so far, but they are simply AMAZING speakers. Much cleaner (less congested/muffled) sounding than my pair of NHT SB3's that they'll be replacing. The NHT's were rated to 39Hz @ -3db (not sure if this is anechoic or in-room) and have a 6.5" woofer. The Sierra-1's are rated to 44Hz @ -3db (anechoic) with a typical in-room response of 39Hz @ -3db and have a 5.25" woofer. I have no idea how, but the bass is FAR better on these little Sierra-1's after a quick A/B test of the two speakers that I did yesterday. More weight and far cleaner. The reviewers who've raved about the bass of these things are not lying! I remember reading a comment from a Sierra-1 owner on the Audioholics or AVS forums that said he was constantly checking his sub to make sure it was turned off when he first got his Sierras. I'd be doing the same if I hadn't physically unplugged mine. The bass isn't even the area where they best the NHT's the most however. The Sierras sound so much more open/airy/detailed and like a true "hi-fi" speaker compared to the NHT's which sound very "mid-fi" next to them. It took me all of a few minutes cycling through a few different songs to realize that the Sierras were in a very different league than my old SB3's.
My comparisons were brief, not perfectly level matched, and were done in "direct" mode on my Denon 3311ci to disable my Audyssey settings which were set for my old NHT SB3's. I set the speakers to full range and the sub was set to "none". Both speakers were placed on sand-filled stands with the tweeter around ear level and about 1ft out from the wall. That's all I needed before I realized I didn't need a full 30 day evaluation of the Sierras to decide if it was worth upgrading.
This morning, I re-ran Audyssey with only the L/R Sierras connected (my old NHT center & surrounds and my Mirage Omni S12 sub were disconnected). I wanted to do this because I've been very impressed with what Audyssey has done in my room in the past and because I love the DynamicEQ feature which dynamically boosts the bass (among other things) the further you get from "0" on the dial due to our ears' insensitivity to bass at lower volumes. For those that are familiar with Audyssey, I actually had to decrease my reference level offset from a value of "10" that I previously used when listening to music with my NHTs to a value of "15" with the Sierras. Basically, this means I am using less of a bass boost at lower volumes, as a -10 offset was actually a bit overwhelming with the Sierras in my room.
After running Audyssey this morning, I have played a ton of songs so far and can confidently say that I don't think I'll ever feel like I'm missing anything by using the Sierra-1's without a subwoofer for music - at least not when used in conjunction with the Denon's Audyssey MultEQ XT and DynamicEQ. Note that I am not a classical music listener which I understand often mandates the use of a sub for true "full range" reproduction. If you recall, I am planning on downgrading from my 5.1 setup to a 3.0 (L/C/R) setup when I move from my townhouse into a small NYC studio apartment in the next couple of months and did not want to bring my sub with me for fear of being a bad neighbor. Problem solved. I guess I just need to get a matching center channel now!
