If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

Good point about cost benefit ratio but a bit to the side of my point. It's not that the Ascend speakers had cheap parts and Danny is swapping them out; rather, it's that he's making fairly radical changes to the design which is (for reasons already mentioned and too detailed to get into) makes the speaker worse. 

Let's say Danny gives you a kit to replace "cheesy" crossover components; well, of course it would be nice to know that they would sound better from those parts. But what if the changes altered how they sounded or put the tweeter into higher distortion? That lacks sufficient respect and deference to the fine engineers at KEF that released the speaker onto the market, at whatever price point and cost/benefit that might be guiding the product's placement in their overall lineup.

Would it also be disrespectful to the fine engineers at Subaru to put a larger aftermarket turbo charger on the car? It will likely destroy the engine faster and change the performance characteristics. What if I put a lift kit and oversized tires on my truck? I know it'll torque the driveline and u joints a lot more and kill my already bad gas mileage, but I'd get better clearance in the mud and snow.

What if I salted a dish at the restaurant in plain sight of the kitchen... Awww, shock, gasp!

@hilde45, you had a point with addressing the objective performance of the first gen mod to the speakers in question. That was addressed by the gen2 mod to better appease Dave @ Ascend while still working to clean up the phase response and impedance. Now that you're debating whether it's rude to provide aftermarket mods as an insult to the "fine engineers" is watering down your initially valid argument. Stop while you're ahead.

@nlitworld you're making a good case against modding

@devinplombier  Actually I view quite the opposite, mod everything. It's my equipment and I knowingly take any risks associated in pursuit of higher fidelity and increased emotional response. For me, I can't throw down for $10,000 speakers or $5,000 amp. So I tend to buy the best I can and upgrade what's feasible, or build DIY from the start to maximize budget. And along the way, if something works as an upgrade, I keep it in. If it doesn't work, I cut my losses and revert or double down and find what would be better. My point is that I'm a grownup and I can make my own choices whether an item is worth upgrading or not, with or without OEM approval.

@nlitworld — The car analogies are entertaining but they slip past the key distinction. If you put a lift kit on your truck, you're accepting known tradeoffs for your own purposes. Nobody is selling you that kit by claiming the Subaru engineers got the suspension wrong and that this is objectively better for all drivers. That's what Danny does — he makes public claims of deficiency and improvement, backed by measurements the evidence suggests weren't adequate to support them. That's a meaningfully different kind of intervention.

The salt analogy fails for the same reason — seasoning your own food affects nobody else. Danny has a platform and a commercial operation. His public claims about the Sierra 2EX have real consequences for Ascend's reputation.

As for stopping while I'm ahead — I'd push back on that framing. The engineering respect point isn't a retreat from the original argument, it's the same argument. The reason Danny's inadequate measurements matter is precisely because the speaker was carefully engineered by someone using far better tools. Those two points aren't separate — one explains why the other is worth taking seriously.