My Ascends 340's are not the most attractive speaker in the world, but take a look inside and you will see where the money was spent, cabs are well braced and damped, well thought and designed Xover, very good drivers, easy to drive with plenty of output and they sound good to me. Asthetics are secondary to me ( I may be in the minority) performance to price is primary. Ascend and ARX do not come out with new models every six months to fill gaps in their product line like so many other companies, ie: Dave at Ascends decided that he could not design and build a subwoofer as good as or less expensive than the Rthymiks so he partnered with them. Dave finds what works and stays with that philosophy, he has improved on the model of his speakers over the years but has not introduced new speaker models, the ST's are an all out assault of the Sierra 1's technology. I believe Jon Lane of ARX shares this philosophy along with others like Dennis murphy and Jim Salk.