Why we love Ascendo Immersive Audio
Why this matters
I'd like to give you as much performance and immersion as possible for your money, at a range of budgets and room sizes. Ascendo Immersive Audio (AIA) is a speaker, subwoofer and amplifier make from Germany that lets me do just that.
12" Wedge speaker - useful for Left, Right, front wide, surrounds and overheads
Honest performance
A key thing about AIA is, they publish every drop of data about all their products - so I can work out what we'll get at every seat, at every frequency, from every speaker. Such transparency is extremely rare in home cinema.
From there I can fine-tune placement, do the various calculations and get a great result for everyone.
Too many makes hide behind a cloud of brand mythology, flowery language, and subjective claims to excellence - worse, many have the data in-house, but don't publish it.
What are they hiding?
RP22-friendly - from before RP22 existed
The CEDIA / CTA RP-22 guidelines are a massive step forward - they give us various benchmarks and performance targets about what ‘good’ really means.
Some of the greatest minds in the industry - from content creation, format owners, the better manufacturers, and home cinema designer/installers - all agreed by peer-reviewed consensus what ‘really good’ looks like.
Then they wrote it all down for us to use when designing.
AIA are pretty much the benchmark for designing to RP22 recommendations - they were publishing all the data, long before the guidelines were released, as they have a deep, full understanding of what's needed.
Scalable
I can design you a small, RP22 Level 1 cinema using AIA 6 and 5 speakers, for a very reasonable cost - I often do.
I can also scale things up - all the way to huge rooms at Levels 3 and 4. And all points in between.
6" Passive Wedge 30º speakers
Ascendo genuinely have a very good answer for (almost) every room size and budget - better, bigger, and both.
'Black Swan Active Beryllium' at the top of the AIA range
Practical
Ascendo's designers also understand exactly what we need to build these rooms.
The 6" and 12" angled wedge speakers are a brilliant example - pre-angled, with very flexible mounting. Depending on the design, we can use them at Left/Right, Front Wide, Surround, and overhead channels.
Almost no other makes give us this option, which lets us put more listeners in the best-sounding area of the speakers, quickly and easily.
Perfect Timing
Coaxial designs - with the tweeter inside the bass/mid unit - have excellent time accuracy between treble and bass/mid frequencies.
Simply, sounds seem to be coming from exactly the same place - that’s because they are. You're more easily convinced that an audio event is all coming from one place, which enhances the illusion, with no timing errors confusing the spatial cues.
Subliminally, your brain relaxes, and you focus on the drama.
Sub-bass and infra-bass, with authority
Ascendo subs move more air than competing products at the same size and cost. That’s why they publish the air movement, for every sub in the lineup.
Crucially, the subs also respond far higher - the low frequency channel rolls off at 120Hz, which means information as high as 480Hz. AIA subs all go easily to 600Hz and higher, making them faster, more transparent, and more agile - as AIA's cinema specialist Geoffrey Heinzel says, 'they kick like a mule'.
16" Pro-Passive Subwoofer
Every subwoofer on the market needs more power as the notes get lower, especially below 20Hz into the infrasonic (that's the very low ’sub-sub-bass’ - you feel it rather than hear it).
AIA are almost unique in publishing exactly how output response varies with frequency - so I can calculate exactly how much power to push to subs at every note. I can then design the EQ curve I need in advance, which speeds up the installation and calibration.
This data tells me exactly how much power the AIA 28" sub needs.
Note extended frequency response up to 600Hz.
I can also make very sure the system has enough power in total - so it can go good and loud, and very low, whenever the soundtrack does. In plenty of films - like Black Hawk Down, Blade Runner 2049, even Top Gun Maverick - some sections go very low indeed, as far down as 6Hz (for that, we'll need a very high performance system).
Competing subwoofers keep you guessing. Often, they can go low, or loud, but not both.
Many installers are guessing too - but it’s not completely their fault, if all suppliers were similarly open with performance data, things would be much clearer, louder, and deeper.
32" infrasonic - fills in the very lowest frequencies, below regular 'kick' subs
Extreme performance, exceptional value
There are plenty of very good products we can use for a cinema room.
If we compare like for like - driver size, real output levels, frequency response, and so on, then AIA almost certainly offers better value.
Cinema rooms are luxury, indulgent things, but it’s still really important that we give you as much bang, sparkle and boom as we can for your hard-earned money.
If you’d like to use Ascendo Immersive Audio in your home cinema room,
