ASCENDO's on-wall claims 180-degree dispersion to 20kHz, and I want the polars

yodathekid

New member
The worst seat in my room is the far left one, because the side surround on that wall ends up roughly an arm's length from somebody's ear. That listener gets a hot, bright, obviously-a-box-on-the-wall version of the surround mix while everyone else gets something sane. Every fix I have tried has been a compromise: toe the speaker away, pad it down, live with it.

So the pitch behind ASCENDO's new Panoramic Surface On-Wall is aimed straight at a problem that genuinely exists. They have dropped the usual cone-and-dome arrangement for what they call a full-range composite radiating surface, and claim a radiation pattern approaching 180 degrees held all the way up to 20 kHz. If that holds, tonal balance stops collapsing as you move off axis and the near-seat problem gets a lot smaller. They also make a point about running the thing very close to the boundary to cut front-wall SBIR, which is fair, though a shallow on-wall was always going to be closer to the wall than a box on a bracket.

My scepticism is about what you give up. Large flat radiating surfaces have historically traded away dynamics and low-end control for that wide pattern, and an ultra-shallow enclosure has very little internal volume, so the crossover to subs is presumably sitting high. None of that is published. No price either, and no polar plots, which for a speaker whose entire argument is dispersion is a strange thing to leave out.

It goes into a 9.8.4 demo at CEDIA in SR10, driven by a StormAudio ISR Fusion 20. If anyone here gets into that room, sit somewhere terrible on purpose and report back.
 

Wwalmarts

New member
Wide dispersion in a treated room is one thing. In a normal room you are just throwing more energy at side walls that were already causing you problems.
 

Mia

Member
That is the trade nobody mentions. Controlled directivity exists for a reason and half this hobby spent a decade learning that lesson.
 

Linsesa

Member
No price on a CEDIA debut means dealer only and probably four figures a channel. For a 9.8.4 that is a number I do not want to work out.
 

vivian334

Member
Near seat level difference is a real problem and delay plus level trim only gets you so far. Interested to see if this actually helps or just moves it around.
 

TomasM

Member
Bass on shallow on-walls is always the catch. If it crosses at 150 or 200 you need a lot of sub and good placement to hide the handoff.
 

Ping

Member
Genuinely curious what the sensitivity is. Fusion 20 gives 150 watts a channel into 8 ohms and that is either loads or barely enough depending on what these are.
 
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