Ascend Acoustics Sierra-LX vs. Sierra-2EX Comparison

Warning: This is long. I try to be thorough.

Goal

The goal of this was not to declare a winner; I did not go in with the assumption that one speaker would be universally better. My goal was to identify how these two speakers are different.

Background

This is where I stand on the things I least like to have compromised, and the places where I’m most willing to cut speakers some slack.

Things I’m looking for:

  • The standard metrics like flat response and wide dispersion. If a speaker is going to miss a little on flatness, I prefer bright to dark, but still prefer neutral to either.
  • Detail retrieval and handling of transients
  • Bass response, both extension and clarity. I’m a bassist, so of course this is on my list, but let’s be clear: for music, I don’t need 20Hz of bass extension. A standard 4-string bass guitar in drop D goes down to about 37 Hz, and a five-string (the low B) is around 31Hz and I’d like to be able to actually hear the fundamental, so the F3 should ideally be in the mid 30s. It wasn’t that long ago that was basically considered impossible for bookshelf speaker, but it’s not crazy anymore.
  • No listener fatigue. Silk domes have always been fine on this, but metal domes can be hit-or-miss. The aluminum domes on my old PSB Image speakers were fine, but I originally bought my first Ascend Sierra-1 in part because the titanium domes on the Paradigms I was also looking at gave me some fatigue.
  • The hard things to get right: violins, female vocals. These are the Achilles heel of many speakers.

Things I care less about (at least for this comparison):

  • HT performance. This is two-channel music only.
  • How well the speakers integrate with a sub. This is a 2.0 setup.
  • Sensitivity. My room is small, and I don’t listen at reference level anyway. Frankly, I’m often baffled when people complain about this in speakers. Preserving your hearing long-terms is good, and even if you don’t care about that, watts are cheap these days.
  • How it’s done. I don’t care actually care about things like domes vs. ribbons or cone materials or sealed vs. ported or any of that stuff, what I care about is how the resulting speaker sounds. Those things can affect how speakers sound, of course, but I would never rule out (or in) any speaker just because it used a particular kind of tweeter or construction.

Oh, and a word on measurement: thanks to a bunch of people now having Klippels, we are currently awash in measurements. I think this is a net positive. Measurements are important, even if our understanding of how measurements relate to human perception is imperfect. It’s also far from zero, though, so I think measurements are a useful tool. They may not be the final word, but they are a key part of understanding what’s going on.

Finally, for those who are not already vested in the Ascend community, when I say “Dave” I’m referring to Dave Fabrikant, the head honcho at Ascend Acoustics.

Music

It’s hard to read reviews of audio gear if the reviewer is just naming music you’re not familiar with. “Wow, the vocals on track X are amazing” is an utterly useless piece of information if I have never even heard of track X. (This is a pet peeve of mine.) I can’t possibly listen to everything so I just have my own particular list, which won’t match yours. However, I will try to (mostly) stay away from naming particular tracks and try to focus on what’s in the music that differentiates the speakers. Full track list in the Appendix—yes, there’s an appendix. I warned you this is long.

I will talk about genres a bit, though, because it’ll help set context. My two main genres are rock (and things that are rock-adjacent) and classical. There’s a smattering of other things: EDM, soundtracks, some world, some acoustic guitar and piano, some new age, little bits of blues and jazz. Not much metal (outside of Tool). Zero country. The classical does not include opera. The rock includes almost no soft rock. My taste in classical runs more toward quartets and chambers, but there’s still symphonies in there.

I listen to music essentially all the time that I can possibly get away with it. At home and at work, my real-world two-channel listening has four primary use cases:

  • As background to work that involves reading or technical writing. This will be almost entirely instrumental, mostly classical.
  • As a backdrop to work involving things like programming or statistics. Punk, industrial, EDM kinds of things preferred here.
  • As a backdrop to “sort of”” working or just plain goofing off. You know, answering emails, doing administrative stuff. Full music library for this.
  • Serious listening. Again, full music library here but less instrumental/classical.

Initial Impressions

I posted this already to the Ascend forum but want to keep everything complete, so here that bit is again:

First thing: if you’re standing such that your ears are noticeably above the plane of the tweeters, it’s no contest—the LXs are clearly better. The difference in vertical dispersion is quite pronounced. When my son first came into the room he immediately liked the LXs much better. I had him sit down and he decided maybe he jumped to conclusions. If you’re putting these in your HT and you care what it sounds like when you stand up, you’ll want the LXs. (This is my current minor annoyance with my HT, which uses Duos. Sounds great when you’re sitting, but when you stand up, you really notice the dropoff.)

So far—but let’s note that it’s really, really early—I don’t universally prefer one over the other one. Some tracks it’s a wash (in fact, frankly, for some tracks it’s hard to hear much difference at all), some tracks sound better on the LXs, and some sound better on the EXs. Note that “better” in many cases is hair-splitting. There were also some where a difference was apparent, but preference wasn’t.

I think treble detail retrieval and transients are indeed still better on the EX. It’s not dramatic but if you listen in the right places it’s there. Cymbals are just a teensy bit crisper, stuff like that. Part of it might be that the EXs seem a just a little bit brighter. Not a lot, but I can tell it’s what I’m used to. LXs are probably more neutral overall. (What really needs to be broken in here are my ears; I’m just used to the EX sound.)

I concur with everybody else who’s said anything about the bass on the LXs. When I first heard the EXs, I declared that Dave had broken physics getting that much bass out of a bookshelf speaker with a 6″ woofer. Well, I guess he merely bent physics with the EXs, because the LXs are another notch (or two) past that. Absolutely bananas for a bookshelf speaker. If you went to an audio show 20 years ago and put these behind a screen, nobody—including probably Dave himself—would guess how small they are.

So, what held up over more extensive testing?

Testing

Since I kind of need to have the house to myself to really do this properly, and my wife is still mostly working from home, it took me a while to get through the enormous playlist I used to test. In between the more serious listening, I had the LX’s on for all my “listening while working” time. This was to get me more used to the LX sound, since I had so much experience with the EX sound.

For the actual testing, I typically listened at around 80dB continuous. First, that’s loud enough that the Fletcher-Munson curve is pretty flat so I’m really hearing the full range. Second, it’s not loud enough to have hearing damage be a concern. It’s a little quieter than reference level, which is fine because I rarely listen that loud anyway.

I listened to every track in its entirety, switching back and forth between the speakers every so often. I often went back and listened to specific passages multiple times when I wanted to get a better sense of a specific difference. I took notes on every single track, but that’s way to long for this.

Results

Overall, the first thing that needs to be said is that in a lot of cases, the differences between the two were pretty small. More than once when I switched between the two speakers, I had to re-check to make sure I had actually switched, so sometimes this was a bit of a hair-splitting exercise. Sometimes, however, it was not. I’m going to focus more on the places where it was not, but keep in mind that depending on what you listen to, the differences may not be particularly large. With that, a small disclaimer: these are both excellent speakers, so please take anything that sounds negative here with a grain of salt—this is negative relative to another excellent speaker, not in an absolute sense.

The differences that I came to think of as “the big three” were these:

Flat Response

Honestly, you can pretty much get this off the spins for the respective speakers. The LX measures incredibly flat, and that’s what you hear. It’s just more neutral than the EX. Switching from LX to EX was often most noticeable in the bump to the treble the EX has relative to the LX—it sometimes sounded almost like an EQ was turned on. The EXs measure brighter, and they most definitely sound brighter. This relative equality of mids and treble often makes the LX sound like they have a fuller midrange, but there were instances when the brightness was subjectively pleasing to my ears. Most times the neutrality of the LX was a clear advantage. If you have a negative response to a little brightness, the LX will be much more up your alley.

There’s also something volume-dependent about this, as one might expect. In general, the quieter you listen, the more the highs and lows are de-emphasized (this is the Fletcher-Munson curve in action). Every once in a while I turned the volume down, and when I did that, the (relative) treble boost in the EX became less apparent. The louder you listen (up to a point), the larger the advantage is for the LX.

And, of course, some people like a little V-shaped EQ in their audio world. In general, if that’s something you want, I wouldn’t be trying to get it out of the speakers, I’d just EQ it in. This is what the loudness control is for. But I can certainly see how, if that V is your thing, especially in a short listening session, you might see less advantage for the LX. There were a few tracks that I did think sounded a bit better with the extra brightness.

Vertical dispersion

I didn’t actually move around much during testing and sat mostly with the tweeters exactly at ear level, so I mostly didn’t hear it… but when I did stand, well, my initial impression in this regard held. The LX just wipes the floor with the EX here. I didn’t do any really near-field testing, but I bet the LXs are better in that context because of this.

Bass Response

Not only is the bass extension better, but the LX is just a more visceral speaker, even when level-matched. The LX is the window-rattler that really hits you in the chest. When the kick drum and bass are slamming, when the timpani are thundering, you want the LX. They really do sound much bigger than the EXs. The EX is a great bookshelf speaker, no doubt, and it actually delivers really impressive bass for a modest-sized bookshelf speaker. I was not previously unhappy with the bass from the EX, and always thought the bass was the biggest improvement of the EX over the regular Sierra-2. But the LX just sounds like something else entirely. I kind of want the rest of the family to go out of town for a day or two so I can set up the LXs in my living room and crank them up, just to hear them in a bigger space. I have never had this urge with the EXs.

One has to be careful with this, though. I mean, it’s not like they go down to 20Hz or something so don’t let your expectations get too carried away here, but they really do handle bass in a way the EXs simply do not. It’s quite something. If you don’t have the space for towers or a sub, these are a great way to go.

Then the “small two” differences:

Detail Retrieval, Transients, and Imaging

This is the one place where I think the EX has an edge, though it’s a small one. The fact that Dave (and my other favorite speaker designer, Dennis Murphy) have been using RAAL tweeters for a long time is not accidental. The new Titan dome is, however, really impressive. But the RAAL still has some advantages, and here’s where those are.

As a result, the EX (narrowly) carries this category. For example, in one of the classical pieces that’s primarily a string quartet, there’s occasionally a harpsichord quietly in the background. This sounded better and clearer on the EX. Cymbals are a little crisper on the EX. (Interestingly, I only found this to be true for real cymbals. This was much less apparent with the EDM/soundtrack stuff that clearly uses a drum machine.) Violins, acoustic guitars, and the upper range on electric guitars all sound just a little bit more pleasing on the EX. I found overall slightly better separation between instruments with the EX. The EXs also have more airiness. There is something lovely about the RAALs that the LXs don’t quite always get. But, to be clear, they are very close. There is a difference, to be sure, but not a large difference.

I think a very substantial fraction of the perceived difference is also a phantom. It took me a while to realize what was going on here. Part of the reason the top end on the EXs sounds clearer because is because it is louder relative to the midrange. That is, the relative brightness of the EX makes the high end seem even better, simply by virtue of less masking by the midrange. The more I listened, and listened closely, to the LX, the more I realized that most of the time it really is just as good at most of this, it’s simply not as bright. There is something real about the RAAL, but I think the actual advantage here is perceptually inflated by the brightness. Still an edge to the EX, but it’s a small advantage indeed.

Midrange

I wasn’t planning on writing a section on this but it’s enough of a difference between the two speakers that it’s worth talking about. First, let me say that I’ve heard both the EXs and the Ascend RAAL Towers side-by-side in the Ascend listening room. The Towers have slightly better bass (not by as much as I had expected), but for me the real separator between those two speakers to my ears is the midrange. Mids are more clear and open-sounding on the Towers. A lot of the early commenters on the Ascend forum commented that the LXs are more “tower-like” than the EXs. I think that’s true, and it’s not just in the bass.

That is, the LXs have not only more midrange relative to the highs, but I think the mids are again more clear and open-sounding on the LXs. (I’d have to listen to them side-by-side with the Towers to comment meaningfully on how they compare there.) I would say the difference here is again pretty small, but it’s there. (Humorously, I just looked back at my review of the S2EXs after upgrading from the base S2s, and I said almost exactly the same thing there about the change in midrange with that upgrade. I guess this really is just the next step for the Sierras.)

This led to some interesting results. I like the EX slightly better for violins, and if there were pieces that were just violins I’d probably take the EX—but once the cellos come in, the advantage for the EX vanishes, because the LX midrange is better. Flute solo? EX. Full orchestra? LX. Acoustic piano pieces are be better on the EX when just working the high keys, but once the left hand gets in there, the advantage generally flipped to the LXs.

A few other areas worth commenting on:

The Tough Stuff: Female Vocals and Violins

As I noted above, I found the EXs to be very slightly better with violins. I think this was generally true for most instruments where the bulk of what you care about is at the high end. Flutes, too, are challenging instruments and marginally better on the EXs.

I went hard into listening closely to female vocals kind of late in testing when I had a pretty clear sense of how the two speakers compared, and even then I was a little surprised on this one. The extra air in the EXs didn’t really do all that much for female vocals, and even with high-pitched singers (e.g., Kate Bush)—the stronger midrange of the LXs compensated. I have to call this one a draw.

Soundstage

Overall both speakers do this really well, with soundstages that are both wide and deep. Since the EXs have the slightly clearer high end, I kept expecting the soundstaging to be better on the EX. Even when I was looking for it, I couldn’t find it. Now, I know it’s weird say instrument separation on the EX is marginally better but not the soundstaging. It’s hard to explain. The EX did a better job of making two instruments sound distinct, even if both speakers put those instruments in the same place. I have to call this a tie.

Fatigue

I’ve owned the EXs for years with no fatigue ever. The good news here is I didn’t have any with the LXs, either. Whew.

Horizontal Dispersion

Horizontal dispersion is pretty much a wash. There may be some difference between the speakers on that score, but the combination of my room and my ears was not precise enough to distinguish them. I can’t vouch for a bigger room being further away, though.

Fun

Dave and has commented several times that the LXs are designed to be “fun,” and folks on the forum seem to generally agree. First, I think it’s awesome that someone who’s spent countless hours fiddling with a Klippel still has that perspective—good on you, Dave. More important, though, is the question of whether the LXs are, indeed, more “fun” and if so, what is it that makes them fun?

Honestly, I was a little skeptical about this because I’ve never had a problem with the “fun” level of the EXs, but I have to agree that the LXs are more fun. I think that can be attributed to a couple things.

First, the better vertical dispersion. You can move around more without feeling like the treble has gone AWOL. There’s a certain freedom to that, which is fun.

The other one is the better bass performance. There’s just more slam, more of that bass thump that you can feel as much as hear. It’s not just bass extension (though that’s improved, too)—the LXs just feel like they hit you harder even when not pushing the lowest of the low end (and again, I worked to make this comparison level-matched). Like I said before, they’re just more visceral. And as a bassist, I think I’m contractually obligated to believe that’s more fun.

Also, I have to say, there’s something fun about watching the LX woofers do their thing when the bass is loud. All woofers move, but not all woofers move like these do. The EX woofer looks better with that cool shiny phase plug and all, but when the LXs are cranking you it’s fun to see the crazy high excursion.

Power handling might be part of it, too, for some people. Since I’m in a small room I can easily hit over 100dB with the amp turned barely past noon, I can’t really comment directly on that.

The Final Verdict

As I expected, neither speaker was universally better than the other—but it was a near thing. The LX is almost always better. I wasn’t going to crown a winner but honestly I do think overall that the LX is a superior speaker. The LX is better at more things, and for some of those things, the difference is pretty large. Where the LX it’s worse, it’s not much worse. (Someone on the Ascend forum said that when the ES is better, it’s 20% better and when the LX is better, it’s 80% better. It’s hard to argue with that.) The fact that the LX is cheaper is the deal-sealer. If you don’t already own Sierras and are in the market, go buy the LXs now, before Dave raises the price!

I mean, I guess I can imagine cases where the EX would be the preferred choice over the LX. First, you know you will have your ear level with the tweeter; going vertically off-axis wipes out the EX (in a relative sense). Second, you really prioritize high-range clarity. For me, it would be if I listened primarily to sparse acoustic music, e.g., solo acoustic guitar. (I preferred the EXs for Michael Hedges and Rodrigo y Gabriela, for example.) Third, you either don’t care as much about bass extension or have a well-integrated sub to handle that. Fourth, you listen a low to moderate volume levels. It’s kind of a weird set of things all together, so I’m not sure how many people are in that situation. For most folks I’d say if you have to choose between them, get the LXs.

The LXs are also cheaper, which is bananas. What I really don’t understand is Dave’s strategy from a marketing perspective—I cannot imagine the LXs won’t wildly cannibalize sales of the EX. That’s Dave’s problem, though, not mine.

The much more tricky one for me would be “if you already own EXs, should you upgrade to LXs?” As of this writing I haven’t seen pricing on the upgrade, but I’m going to guess it’ll be around $900 for a pair of speakers. The LXs are mostly better, but are they that much better? Assuming I’m in the ballbark, I’d probably only recommend that you do it if you really care about the bass or if you find yourself listening vertically off-axis. If my HT mains were EXs, I would definitely upgrade them to LXs just to get the better vertical dispersion—the other advantages are just freebies. In particular bass extension is less of a concern for HT because that’s with a sub anyway. (Side note: I have to wonder if Dave is going to produce Duos with the Titan tweeter. This would probably also mean new woofers for the Duos, but I would almost certainly make that upgrade.)

So, for my small room where I sit perfectly tweeter-level pretty much all the time and only rarely listen loud? I would probably not spend the money to do the EX to LX upgrade. The EXs are still great speakers and I would be perfectly happy just keeping those in my study, despite having heard and preferring the LXs. If someone forced the issue and said in my study I could only keep the EXs or the LXs, but it would cost me $900 to keep the LXs, I’d probably stick with the EXs. Fortunately I’m not in that situation.

So, there you have it.

Appendices

Musings on Engineering

I’ll just quote myself from my review of the S2 (coming from the S1 NrT):

I was originally trained as an engineer and while I’m not one now (nor was my training in speakers or acoustics), I do enjoy a bit of wild speculating from an engineering perspective. I’ll be the fist to admit I’m not really qualified here, but when has that ever stopped anyone on the internet?

When, indeed. So here goes. I’ve been thinking about the design of the EX vs the LX and the idea of compromises, or maybe trade-offs. Dave has said several times on the Ascend forum why he likes the RAAL tweeters: low moving mass, wide and linear horizontal dispersion, no break-up modes, and essentially zero stored energy. These are all highly desirable properties, to be sure.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t come without some downsides, too. The RAALs are expensive, don’t have great vertical dispersion, and generally need to be crossed over higher than domes. That last one in particular leads to other compromises. To really get the midrange, you either have to ask an awful lot from the woofer (the 2EX approach), or you just have to grit your teeth and go with a three-way design (the approach taken with the Towers and the Philharmonic BMR). Of course, if you’re locked into cabinets with only two openings—and bless Dave for sticking with that, giving us all the chance to upgrade, which I personally have done many times, thank you—you’re stuck with a two-way design (unless you want to go to concentric drivers, which is another set of tradeoffs). The EX woofer is great and handles this really well, but it’s a big ask. I think the EX woofer is amazing given how wide a frequency range it has to cover and how well it does so. I have to think part of the motivation for the LX was to not ask the woofer to go so high.

In fact, to me, Dave’s description of the Titan tweeter in the LX announcement thread is essentially “I wanted a dome tweeter that had as much of the positive aspects of the ribbons as possible, but being a dome, wouldn’t have those downsides.” That frees up the woofer from having to do the upper mids, so the woofer can be pushed lower.

As far as I can tell from listening, the Titan tweeters are indeed a big leap in this direction. I don’t think they quite get all of the advantages of the RAALs, but they’re pretty close, while simultaneously skirting the downsides. Still, there is a little something lost, and I can certainly hear that loss when I’m really listening for it, but there’s so much more gained. I think overall it’s the right tradeoff to make. The measurements certainly suggest that’s the case, and my ears agree.

My guess, and this is completely unsubstantiated speculation (feel free to laugh at me, Dave), is that the Titan tweeters also cost less than the RAALs. It wouldn’t surprise me if the LX woofers were also slightly less costly than the EX woofers. Both drivers being cheaper = less expensive speaker. $250 less for a pair of LXs might be the most amazing part of the whole thing.

Gear Notes

The room (one of the more important pieces of gear) is my study, which is basically a 9′ x 11′ room with ceilings that slope up to 12′ high. It is thankfully not quite rectangular, and has a mixture of different treatments in various places, from 1/2″ tiles to 4″ panels. It’s not recording-studio quiet, but if you’re having a conversation and you walk in from another room, you immediately notice a big drop in reverb.

The speakers are normally separated by a little less than six feet center-to-center and I sit about six feet away. (The speakers were a little closer together for this because I had all four speakers in the room at the same time, the EXs to the left of the LXs.) The EXs normally sit on custom 38″ high stands so that my ears are exactly level with the EX tweeters. I bought a second pair of height-adjustable stands and had one of each speaker on each stand type to even that out, all height-matched.

The source is an iMac Pro running Audirvana Origin. When I’m working and not listening carefully it’s just Apple Music playing back my library (mostly ALAC, mostly 16/44.1 but a few 24/96), but when I’m really paying attention it’s Audirvana, so that’s what I used for all testing.

I normally use two DACs which I call the subjective DAC and the objective DAC. The “subjective” DAC is a 1st-gen Schiit Bifrost that got sent in for the R2R upgrade. You might remember a bit of a kerfuffle about this DAC when ASR first reviewed it because it did not measure well—but of course a lot of people like how it sounds. I have kind of a love/hate relationship with it. Just depends on the material. The “objective” DAC is an SMSL Sanskrit 10th Mk2, which is an inexpensive DAC based on the AKM 4493 that measures amazingly well, particularly for the price. I did my main test listening here with the Sanskrit just to avoid any weird DAC interactions.

Amp is a Yamaha A-S500 integrated amp, rated at 85wpc into 8 ohms. This is more than enough in my little room—it easily hits over 100dB just past 12 o’clock on the volume knob. I don’t listen that loud hardly ever, but I did want to check. I had both the LXs and the EXs hooked up, one as the A and one as the B. No room correction or EQ, amp on Pure Direct. This was a test of the speakers, not the other electronics.

I’m not a huge believer in break-in but I do like to get things a little warmed up so when I first get new speakers or headphones I run them hot for about an hour with something that has a lot of bass, the TRON:Legacy soundtrack and a couple other bass-heavy tracks. Wow do the LX woofers move! Amazing amount of excursion.

In my room with the door open, the EXs are louder with pink noise by a little less than 3dB. For a lot of music, it was closer to to 2dB though it depended a little on the music. When I switched back and forth between A and B I also adjusted the volume in software to keep them pretty much level-matched. It’s not perfect because different material interacts with the room somewhat differently and so sometimes the LXs seemed a little louder and sometimes the EXs seemed a little louder, but it was always close and not a consistent advantage for either speaker.

Also possibly relevant: my first Ascend speakers were Sierra-1s which I bought in 2010. I have upgraded them to NrTs, then to 2s, then to 2EXs. I still have S1s in my office on campus (2.0), and S1 NrTs in the master bedroom (2.1 for the occasional TV or movie). My home theater setup is Ascend Luna Duos for LCR and Philharmonic Mini Philharmonitors (the RAAL ones) as surrounds, QAcoustics 3020i as front heights (needed white for WAF reasons) with a Rythmik L22 sub. I have PSB Image series speakers (circa 2001) in the upstairs home theater, Philharmonic AA monitors in the garage, and Ascend HTM-200s in the kitchen. Yes, essentially every room in the house where I spend significant time has a pair of speakers in it.

Full Song List

“Il Pleure (At the Turn of the Century)” by The Art of Noise from The Seduction of Claude Debussy
“Into the Void” by Nine Inch Nails from The Fragile (Right)
“Stinkfist” by Tool from Ænima
“Wild Flower” by The Cult from Electric
“Start of the Breakdown” by Tears for Fears from The Hurting
“Breakfast in the Field” by Michael Hedges from Live on the Double Planet
“Hanuman” by Rodrigo y Gabriela from 11:11
“Spring Creek” by George Winston from Summer
“Concerto No.2 “L’estate”, RV 315; III. Presto” by Janine Jansen from Vivaldi – The Four Seasons
“Concerto for 2 Violins, Strings and Continuo in D minor, BWV. 1043: I. Vivace” by Hahn/LA Chamber Orchestra/Kahane from Bach ・ Concertos
“Some Like It Hot” by The Power Station from The Power Station
“Little Speaker” by Underworld from A Hundred Days Off
“Root Beer” by Thomas Newman from American Beauty
“Oasis” by Shadowfax from The Odd Get Even
“Precious Things” by Tori Amos from Little Earthquakes
“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police from Ghost in the Machine
“Strength to Dream” by Propaganda from A Secret Wish
“The Happiest Days of Our Lives” by Pink Floyd from The Wall (Disc 1)
“Escape Artist” by Zoe Keating from Into the Trees
“An Dio” by Rene Lacaille & Bob Brozman from Dig Dig
“The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac from Rumours
“Homeless” by Paul Simon from Graceland
“Driven to Tears” by Sting from Bring on the Night (Disc 1)
“Came Back Haunted” by Nine Inch Nails from Hesitation Marks (Audiophile Mastered Version) (24/48)
“View From a Stairway” by Deepsky from In Silico
“Money” by Pink Floyd from Dark Side of the Moon (MFSL)
“Bodyrock” by Moby from Play
“The Pot” by Tool from 10,000 Days
“The Game Has Changed” by Daft Punk from TRON: Legacy
“Violin Concerto in D, Op.77: 3. Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace – Poco più presto” by Janine Jansen [Violin], Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia [Orchestra] & Antonio Pappano [Conductor] from Brahms: Violin Concerto; Bartók: Violin Concerto No.1 (24/96)
“Haydn: Symphony #95 In C Minor, H 1/95 – 4. Finale: Vivace” by Colin Davis; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from Haydn: The London Symphonies [Disc 1]
“Handel: Water Music Suite #1 In F, HWV 348 – Minuet For The French Horn” by Bamberg Philharmonic Orchestra from Handel: Water Music Suite, Etc.
“Saving Buckbeak” by John Williams from Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
“Helm’s Deep” by Howard Shore from The Two Towers
“Possible” by Zoe Keating from Snowmelt (EP) (24/96)
“Sat in Your Lap” by Kate Bush from The Dreaming
“Blinding” by Florence + The Machine from Lungs
“Rollercoaster” by Everything but the Girl from Like the Deserts Miss the Rain
“Super Blaster” by Curve from Cuckoo
“The Working Hour (2014 Steven Wilson Mix)” by Tears For Fears from Songs From the Big Chair (24/96)
“Pneuma” by Tool from Fear Inoculum (24/96)
“Discipline” by Nine Inch Nails from The Slip (24/96)
“Time” by Pink Floyd from The Dark Side of the Moon (Immortal Edition)
“Joy Joy” by Kinga Glyk from Feelings