ascend sierra tower with raal or Focal Aria 936

The factory direct companies live or die by their online reputation, they have to make you as happy as they can.

I can only go by my own experience.  Paradigm is a loudspeaker company that designed and made their own parts and drivers for decades, and I owned their second from very top of the line speaker, the Signature S6, which cost over 5000.  I owned these speakers for 7 years, and ran them first with Emotiva gear, then Parasound.  In my time, I've also owned 5 other models from Paradigm, from the Monitor and Performance series.  

And I can tell you that you can get equal performance of those $5000 speakers for much less money from Ascend(I've also owned 3 different pairs of Ascend speakers).  I compared them side by side and could not believe my ears.  

Believe whatever makes you happy, and spend multiple thousands like I did.

"Ascend can't possibly be that ideal of a speaker"
- kosst_amojan

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out"
- the music label Decca, 1962, when announcing they were passing on signing the Beatles

"The earth can't possibly be round".
- Everyone, pre-6th Century BC

The Raal tweeter used in the Ascend speakers is one of the best tweeters out there that I’ve heard, to me it sounds much better than the AMT tweeters used in the Golden Ear speakers that I auditioned.

 It sounds a lot like the one used in my Infinity IRS epsilons that cost $ 16,000.00 in 95.

 The Raal is slightly faster and as dynamic as a dome tweeter but with less high frequency extension than my epsilons tweeter,   it sounds very very good.

In my opinion no dome tweeter can match the sound quality of the Raal tweeter no matter what material they’re made out of, including diamond and beryllium, not even close.

 Everyone should go audition a good pair speaker that incorporates the Raal tweeter to see what I'm talking about, once you hear the difference there’s no turning back, just my opinion.