The Accends are very good speakers, I picked the 340s for my sisters theater system. Do they best my Axioms? No, no they don't but then again I have M80s.
Her center can't touch the VP160, that for sure. And the surrounds aren't even close to being as good as the QS series.
But they are a good speaker for the money, there's no arguing that.
The Sierra Towers are in a different league than the 340s. Ascends as do many other brands, offer different levels of performance based on price. Axiom uses the same drivers in all their products and as you go up in $$$, you get larger speakers that will play louder, but NOT better drivers or parts. The advantage to the Axiom model is it saves them $$$ by using the same drivers and building higher quantities to reduce costs while also using the same cut outs in their boxes.
BTW I have a VP150 which is NOT even listenable if I sit in the far left or right seats. I didn't understand why till I started reading about its lobing issues. How can a company of science make such a glaring mistake in a product?
I'd love to change out my VP150 to a VP160 but not after hearing how much better the Ascend Sierra towers are. Now I will just sell off my Axiom speakers but I may keep my QS8s b/c they do a good job and are wall mounted.
Looking at the Ascend Sierra Center, I'm not sure that's a good solution b/c it will suffer the same issue as my VP150.
http://www.ascendacoustics.com/pages/products/speakers/SRM1C/srm1c.htmlI think I'd rather have a VP160 in this case.
