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Ascend CBM-170 vs GR AV-1 vs IA 5.25 PSM (very long)

Posted by chuck55 (A) on March 18, 2003 at 21:18:37

I home auditioned the IA 5.25 point source monitor signature ($750), Ascend Acoustics CBM-170 ($328), GR-Research AV-1 ($780 in Oak). My room is 13’ x 15’ and highly reflective.
Appearances:
The IA 5.25 is a tiny 6”x6”x9” cube in black non resonant material. Fit and finish was not the best as even the pebble finish did not cover imperfections. The single driver is a treated cloth material with a plastic whizzer cone bonded to the cloth cone. Unported.
CBM-170 is a plain black plastic cube. It’s functional but some of the seems aren’t a perfect match. Drivers are Aerogel mid and a soft dome tweeter. Has a static dispersion cone – not attached to the driver. Rear ported. Crossover is 2nd order acoustical 4th order electrical and I think the mid was 3rd / 5th if I remember what Ascend told me correctly.
AV-1 is a fine piece of furniture that looks good in my living room. The veneer wraps around the cabinet and meets in a fine seam along the back of the cabinet. Drivers are a paper mid and soft dome tweeter. Rear ported.

The IA 5.25 has a clear sound but measures somewhat bright in the upper mids. Dynamics are limited and bass was rolling off around 100-125 hz when placed 5’ from the front wall. This speaker brought a whole new dimension to acoustical vocal / guitar music. The sound was just very together and coherent. Most music is so out of phase that this feature doesn’t matter most of the time. Sound-wise there was some distortion and a very strange reverb-echo that sometimes felt like it was in my head, not the speakers. So it is pricey and limited soundwise to what the competition offers.

The CBM’s are extremely transparent. You just hear so much more of what is on the recording than the AV-1. Vocals are more understandable and reverb, etc is more obvious. Music is more involving and dynamic. The CBM’s play louder and seem more dynamic at 70dB than even my Nautilus 804’s, not counting bass. They are similar in sound to the new Thiel 1.6 or Von Schweikert’s which use the aerogel material. They do jump 3-5 dB at 4-6.3 kHz but I think this is my room as all speakers have a bump here. Soundstaging is excellent due to their small size and clarity.
I would like to sound smart like JA who found a “nasal” quality to voices and boomy bass with the Epos ES12 but I can’t hear any problems with these speakers. They measure +/-1.5 dB from 100-2,000 Hz, and +/-2.5dB for most of the rest. The biggest problem is there was slight audible distortion than became apparent after 1 week of listening. I could fault them because I personally think aerogel is fatiguing and doesn’t develop the full harmonics of guitar like AV-1’s paper driver. While the clarity is addictive, I kept thinking “movie dialogue” and “rifle shots” while listening to these speakers. I didn’t think “music” as much. They are definitely “leading edge” speakers compared to “trailing edge” Reynaud speakers. While maybe not the most musical, vocals are so clear, I could understand words more easily than ever.

The AV-1 has a much more attractive cabinet shape to me. Narow and deep, it looks better from the front although I couldn’t hear much dispersion improvement from the narrower cabinet. They are a straight 8 ohms I am told so are an easier load to drive. Compared to the CBM’s? Throw a veil over the music. But this is not as bad as I first thought. Prolonged listening made the CBM’s clarity sometimes annoying. The AV-1 reminded me of Dunlavy SC-IV’s when I played pipe organ music. Better timbral accuracy than the CBM’s. Bright recordings were more listenable and musical. Something like this comes down to taste. The AV-1 may have less distortion than the CBM but it’s hard to tell because they were also not as transparent. Danny told me to listen for a more natural tone, I think, than B&W kevlar. With CBM, AV-1, and my Nautilus 804 having pretty flat F-R and low distortion, I found vocals to be a good way to evaluate these speakers. I think the AV-1 paper cone had more lifelike vocals compared to B&W kevlar and CBM aerogel. Maybe somewhat muted and not as fun but this would be a preference not a realism issue.
I will fault the AV-1 because of a 50hZ bump. I could hear it and then measured it. My room has a 40hz bump so I know it’s not the room and the CBM’s didn’t “bump” like the AV-1 at 50 hz. This was annoying to me on certain songs but a lot of people like warm bass. The CBM rolled off more smoothly making it easier to integrate with a sub – which is necessary on both these speakers. The AV-1 bump wasn’t as bad as the Epos M12 I heard at HiFi 2002 so I thought it was a minor issue. But I later played Air’s “Sexy Boy” and Jungle Brothers “Jungle Brother” and was casually listening from another room.
At first I was impressed by AV-1 bass. Then I started getting annoyed. So much so that I put my N804 in. Even though they measure flat to 25 (maybe even 20 Hz) they had much less bass. This reaffirms the AV-1 bass is underdamped and was an annoyance to me on these recordings.
I would also caution people that AV-1 start to compress at, in my estimate about 92 dB average levels. This is only a rough estimate but the point is, they don’t play crazy loud as Sam Tellig said about Triangles. The CBMs played much louder – maybe 96-100 dB and even then didn’t seem to be unhappy. They just didn’t get louder when I turned the volume up more.

These impression were with my Marantz CDB, Adcom GFP-750 pre and Musical Fidelity A3.2cr amp which I have issues with because it is glaring to me. Some people like Silverline sound. Others like Von Schweikert. I think both CBM and AV-1 are top quality, well engineered speakers with very minor faults. To improve significantly on either takes ribbons, or esotar tweeters or Skaaning drivers IMHO. Or planars if that’s your bag. With so many people complaining about Triangle Titus being bright, it seems downright crazy to deal with such a problem when either of these two speakers are better and cost less in the plain finish. My point is system matching would make either speaker very good.

Here are my impressions using the 60 wpc 8 ohm rated Marantz 4120 receiver:
Both speakers sounded like a boombox. This was very disappointing but after listening for about 10 minutes the sound was flat. Mushy is a popluar term. Deep, tight bass is not expected on a cheap receiver but overall sound was not crisp. Also, I never realized how much amps control soundstage but now I do. Funny thing is the Marantz measures well and I agree there is little distortion because instruments sound true to themselves. They also sounded pretty lifeless and dead. I guess power (current) and higher feedback kills the life in the music. The other main problem was on Stereophile’s test CD piano recordings, the Marantz’s high level of grain was noticeable. Especially putting my ear right up to the bass driver.
The Harman Kardon 3470 is a 100 wpc high current receiver. The grain I heard in the piano was virtually gone. Dynamics were a little better. But instruments had a peaky character, violins had a sythesized sheen to them, and vocals got a little edgy. So while my initial preference was for the CBM-170 with an amp to tone them down, ear-assault with the Harman / CBM-170 got to be too annoying. The Harman / AV-1 turned out to be a nice match with music.
The slight veiling and natural tone of the paper woofer offset the Harman quite well. Also considering the type of amps most people would use, the AV-1 would not be as revealing of all the problems up the line. But I think the CBM-170 would be the better movie speaker with its clarity and bigger dynamic range.

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