Clarity, accuracy, price, no middle man, tons of positive reviews to sift through

I don't consider the low end response to be a weakness as much as a limitation; ugly, small logo on the grill

My main interest is listening to music and for that purpose these speakers are fab. People have commented on the lack of bass and while there is certainly something to be desired on the low end there is no reason to think you'll absolutely need a sub. I have the cheapo-but-completely-kicka** Acoustic Research AR108PS and to tell the truth, bass reproduction really depends upon the music's production. Electronic music doesn't need a sub with these speakers; older un-remastered rock recordings, however, do. I'd say, being a serious hater of too much low end (as both a listener and apartment building dweller), as long as you can place them well in a small room a sub is truly optional. As for the upper register, it's alarmingly clear as a bell compared to my old Bose 4.2 which I now hate. I'd say after about 12 hours of "burn" in time there was a noticable difference and the sound opened up a bit. Everything sounds different and better. Can't offer much of an opinion on home theater as I bought these for music for the most part. If you love music in a small room, buy these. Worry about a sub later.

Similar Products Used:

Yamaha, Bose, Acoustic Research, Cerwin-Vega, small rooms

Clarity is just amazing.

The low of course; but what does one expect from monitor types speakers. Easily address with an addition of a sub.

Ooh, how I was deprived… I could not believe the sounds I’ve been missing or even cheated all this time. I’ve had the Bose AM7 for about 7 years and just recently decided to update my system. What can I say, I was young and naïve. After days upon days of reading and researching the Ascends via web, I finally decided to take the plung. Got them with a couple weeks of delay due to back orders. After hooking them up to the capable Onkyo TXDS898 and performing some audio calibration, these things are phenonmenal. As some have mentioned, it did sound bright initially. But after some “burn” in time, the sound produced by the speaker set is simply amazing. I’m not much of an audiophile; but I have to say, the difference of upgrading from Bose to Ascends is immeasurable. I’m hearing things I’ve haven’t heard before in the AM7. In fact, I'm actually able to distinguish the difference in audio quality between various CDs. I’ve sold the AM7 to my in law whose been dying to have them for quite some time. I find myself listening to more music now and enoying every minute.

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Bose AM7 and auditioned other various products in the local stores.

Text book accuracy. Small. Cheap. Comes surprisingly close to the BIG GUYS(With a good sub and stands($)Fine home theater speakers.

Smallish soundstage and a feeling of slight compression. Need stands. Looks? Plain. So find a new wife.

First, let me say this is a terrific "little speaker". Most of what you've read below and above about this speaker is, from MY observation, true. Truth means alot to me so, forgive me, while I try to put this speaker into "MY perspective" with what else is out there not only in this price catagory but what is considered the BEST. (OK, now before you say, "Hey, we're talking about El Cheapos here and not those SUPER guys that belong in a totally different price class.)(I KNOW THAAAAAT!) Now, being retired and a life long audio addict,(I) just wanted to know how far the "art of sound" has come in small box speakers since the Celestion 6s and Spicas (Which I thought were "terrific speakers" in their day and I grew up on.)I'm retired, sort of, and so lucky I can't believe it. I now own BOTH the Magnepan 3.6s AND the Martin Logan Odysseys. These are two technologies I admire because I love what they each do SO WELL.) Granted, these are not the top,top, echelon of speakers but they are very highly regarded as HIGHEND for dipolar delivery.(MY favorite type of speaker after 40 years of selecting.)(Don't ask me why, ok?) (For you BOXTYPEs, you'll have to look elsewhere.)(Yes, I have all the requisite connections and amplification so cool it.) Having said all of THAT, let me give you my impressions. I'm perverse, I suppose, in that I like to keep up with the "little guys" who are trying their damndest to give us the most "BANG FOR THE BUCK". Remember, I'm retired and I have the TIME to "check'em out." To make it short and sweet, of all the contenders,(No, I haven't checked them ALL out but there were TOO many to mention)I feel THESE guys (ASCEND) are on the right track along with OHM MICROs(but they are much more expensive ($700-1000 but an incredible speaker for it's size.) Ok, MY pick for the best bang for the buck speaker, Ta-Da!....the MMG by Magnepan at $550 No, they don't have the detail of the CBM-170 nor the layering or transparency even, but the MMGs' sound like real people, places, and REAL Things and they don't need stands. Go figure. Happy Listening!

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You Name It.

The clarity, the clarity, the clarity! Great balance. From the recordings I've listened to so far, there is an absolutely incredible amount of detail for orchestral strings, woodwinds, harps, harpsichords, and as you all must know my now, vocals. If I didn't have my receipt in front of me right now, I'd be thinking that I must have payed over 1,200.00 dollars for these speakers. But wait! They can be used as monitors too! Excellent for all of us DAW composers/sound enginiers!

None, at this price. Except...This is mainly a problem with the stands available for purchase at the ascend website--Though they are sleek, stylish, and compliment the CBM-170's nicely, they aren't really capable of keeping the speaker from falling down. All that's holding them on to the stands is some velcro that comes packaged with the stands.

I have already posted a review, but I just needed to come back and say more about this product! Here is my original review... "Summary: Wow, what a change from the Bose 901's. With the Bose speakers, I really had to strain myself to be able to hear finer details in the music, such as dynamic contrast and timbre. The 901's were decent at higher volume levels, but lower volumes were incapable of rendering an enjoyable musical experience. That and the sound was too muddled. (Ahem) What product was I supposed to be reviewing now? Oh yeah, the CBM-170's. The 170's are, in my opinion, highly worthy of the praise that's been given to them so far. As mentioned earlier, the amount of detail one can hear is simply amazing. Home audio entertainment gets as close to a live performance as possible; Wind instrumentalists can be heard taking breaths between phrases ,for the sake of Peter! Being a wind instrumentalist myself (clarinetist, saxophonist), I found that I was able to hear small quirks that are particular to my instruments--For example, a mid Bb, on a clarinet, will tend to sound a little "Airy", while other notes sound "fuller". Mind you, this is not a flaw in the speakers, but a problem native to the instrument itself. The fact that I was able to hear this "throat tone", as it is called, so clearly, almost brought tears to this clarinetists eyes! Being able to hear the clicking of keys against the pads was also very satisfying. (I was listening to Eddie Daniels "The Five Seasons", a classical/jazz arrangement of Vivaldi's orignal "Four Seasons". The speakers provide a modest ammount of bass; A Hsu VF2 compliments them really well. But, really, who has ever heard of a speaker that provides THE perfect balance between Treble, Mid-range, and Bass? The Mid-range and Treble are the best that I have yet to hear on a speake-pair under two thousand dollars. And, no, Ascend isn't paying me to advertise for them. I bought the speakers in the same fashion everyone else on this board did. I read teh reviews, was intrigued by them, and decided to try the product out. By the way, I must take my hat of and give three cheers to Larry, over at Ascend's customer service. What a great guy. If in doubt, e-mail Larry for questions! Hail to Larry! If anyone here has any questions for me, as well, feel fere to e-mail me. I am using: Harmon Kardon 3370 Cambridge Audio D300 CD player Monster Cable Interconnects. Strengths: The clarity, the clarity, the clarity! Great balance. From the recordings I've listened to so far, there is an absolutely incredible amount of detail for orchestral strings, woodwinds, harps, harpsichords, and as you all must know my now, vocals. If I didn't have my receipt in front of me right now, I'd be thinking that I must have payed over 1,200.00 dollars for these speakers." Here's the new thing I needed to add... And for those of you who are into sound mixing--these speakers are AWESOME for monitoring! I use them for producing music cd's in my home studio. Other speakers simlpy wouldn't be capable of giving such clear, balanced sound at this price! A DAW enginier's dream come true!

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Bose 901

Don't let its diminutive size fool you. This little speaker can provding a full rich balance sound. The vocals are robust and effortless. And please don't confuse this speaker's with vinyl-clad bookshelf designs with their cheap tweeters and woofers. Order one and play with it for up to 30 days. If you don't like it return it for full refund.

little weak on bass, need a sub. IF Ascend could design a new 3-way speaker add one more woofer (midrange) and one sub-woofer to CMB-170. I will buy it for up to $1000.

I bought these speaker after read all the speaker review. Over the past 30 years I did own a few pair of great speaker. The CBM-170 is the replacement of the small satellite speraker with 5" amplified subwoofer that connected to my PC computer. The midrange and high were great after 24 hours burn in, the sound open up more. I am going to keep it. Ascend CBM-170 is on back order 4 weeks now. Don't wait holiday coming.

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Focus, AR-3a, Polk, Klpsch, and Cambridge soundwork.

Very balanced. Crisp, detailed highs, full, rich mids, tight bass. Easy to try these speakers out at your home with your equipment.

appearence- not the prettiest speaker on the block, but dont expect to get a fancy realwood veneer for this price without giving something else up. Don't expect to go to a store to hear these speakers, though, many owners will bb happy to let you listen at their places. Check ascendforum.com for information.

When I was looking for bookshelf speakers to replace large floorstanding behemoths, I hit the internet and I combed the stores looking for highquality and reasonably priced units. I comapred paradigm, totem, energy, aperion and many others, including a number of in home comparisons. The best sound to price speaker, hands down, was the Ascend CBM-170. Now, these things arent perfect. Anyone who makes that claim is nuts or has never spent time listening to some of the truly wonderful speakers out there. What these speakers are, is a fantastic compromise: great sound, great price, small(ish) size. They are not wrapped in exotic veneers (although check out ascendforum.com for an example of a do it yourselfer who did). The highs are crips and clear, the mids and lows are full without bloat and boominess. No, they aren't going to liquify your innards on a bass heavy dvd, a sub is going to round the effects out better. They are, however, perfectly decent on their own for normal music. Finally, the customer service is very, very good. Emails are answered quickly by the people who actually put these things together. Expect to wait a couple of weeks to get these speakers sent as there is a healthy backlog due to significant demand. I ordered these speakers with full knowledge that I may use the 30 day free trial period. They were not going back when even my wife (who claims that built in television speakers are good enough) commented about how great these speakers sounded.

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Paradigm atoms, titans, mini-monitors, totem, aperion intimus, cerwin-vega (floorstanding), energy c's, athenas (very nice speakers for those who only want to go to a bestbuy)

- works well on low wattage/normal amps - works even better on heavier amps (Denon POA-1500, 2x240watt RMS @ 4 ohm, smooth...) - very balanced but also impressive speaker: good voices, good instruments, very impressive low frequencies....

sorry i think i like it too much "Hear the silence..."

Summary I wanted to upgrade my AR3a as satellite's with Cerwin Vega' for low freq's, both seperately amped. Visually not so nice but very impressive. Many audio-fans where truly impressed after listening to it. I decided to upgrade and listened to various quality speakers. I wanted to succeed in the 500-1000 euro class, and I concluded after extensive listening that none of the speakers could replace my current setup. So this got me stuck in the high-end-range, the financial region that was not really an option (Almost everything I buy is 2nd hand, no need for: "I have the latest, the best.." & so on). The Magnat Vintage 720 was the one I really liked, because of it's detail, impulse and low freq's (which are important to me). But I decided to wait and buy them if I could spot them as a bargain. At last someone tipped me for a website where demo's are being sold. I got them for a real good price (less than half) and they were practically unused. I was in heaven !

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B&W, Cerwin Vega, Magnat 10, Quadral, Genelec.......

Excellent midrange and high end. Lovely soundstage. Make good recordings sound even better.

Make bad recordings sound even worse--sometimes hearing what's there is a bad thing. Best paired with a "musical" subwoofer to handle the low end.

As most others have said, these speakers simply cannot be beat for the price. They've also made me a believer in "breakin periods" for speakers, as they really do seem to be sounding better and better as I use them. I ended up ordering a second set to use for surround.

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Auditioned Klipsh, Paradigm. Replaced Bose.

Poise, imaging, detail, punch

A little weak in the deepest bass regions.....as you'd expect.

I had to wait 10 days for these speakers to get from California to Nova Scotia and the whole time I'm thinking that I'm bound to be disappointed when they finally get here. After reading review after review ( professional and amateur ) I was worried the build-up was too much. They just can't be that good. Frankly, out of the box I was a tad underwhelmed. They were good, but didn't knock my socks off. They were replacing a pretty decent pair of speakers ( Infinity Reference 30's ) so I was listening closely for the differences. However, after a week of constant use ( TV, Movies, CD's ) they really started to distingish themselves. I've since borrowed a Polk Sub from a friend who had two. I've got the thing turned way down as it's really geared more for HT than music listening, but it fills in some weight at the very bottom end. After having them for over a month now I have to say that I'm very pleased. They really do image like crazy, and show which CD's you have are good recordings, and which ones aren't. Actually, I'm listening pretty much to only me top quality recordings lately, because I'm as interested in listening to the speakers as the music itself. A couple of real highlights are Pat Matheny's 'Map of the World' and James Taylor's 'October Road'. Both brilliant records that sound very nice. All in all, these are terrific speakers. I'm not sure I've heard better that cost any reasonable amount of money. They are very good indeed. As for some comments I've read here that they don't have any midrange, or "weight" in the midrange, that's just nonsense. Keep them for more than a day and you'll probably change your tune. Of course, everyone likes a different sound, so the guy that posted that may like a more brash sound, which I personally find annoying. There's no accounting for taste.

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Infinity, Paradigm, Energy

Sounstage,soundstage,soundstage! non-fatigueing.

Bass shy, but I use it with a sub (Adire Rava)as it should be. Other than that NOTHING.

After reading all of the hype, I really was bracing myself for being let down. Not this time! The Ascends are true gems. The speaker boxes just dissolve generating a beguiling and expansive soundstage. I was floored!

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Klipsch, KEF, Paradigm, Monitor Audio, Infinity, Polk