Best Klipsch Speakers

Sound excellence at an affordable price – Decided to upgrade my existing surround speakers from a collection of different brands ( Dali, Jensen, Sony).After reading many reviews, in-store… Read more

demos and deciding on a budget I chose the Klipsch reference premier series for a number of reasons. - well priced for this premium level of audio. - amazing clarity in upper and mid range. - clean deep bass. - these look and sound fantastic and put you right in the action. - well known brand. Along with the rp 5000f towers I also purchased matching center rp500c, atmos modules rp500sa and bipole surrounds rp402s. Got a great deal and excellent service from Clef hi fi South Melbourne. I mainly use these for 80% movies and 20% music. Are these great for music? You betcha! Are these great for home theatre? Absolutely!! My only concern now is that I’ll have to watch every movie I’ve ever watched again.

Big, Beautiful and Refined – Background: Over the period of a year I worked on building a 7.2 surround sound theatre set of speakers. After a great deal of research, I settled… Read more

on the Klipsch brand. I first got the centre and two side speakers. I then got the two rear speakers and then the front two floor standing speakers.

Once I had them all tuned in via my Onkyo AV receiver I could detect the two Yahama 10 inch sub woofers were not in sync with the Klipsch speakers. They just sounded too buzzy/boomy. I needed something more refined, could go the distance and would not need replacing for a long time, if ever.

I read about the Klipsch Reference sub woofers and compared to specs on the varying sizes, 10 inch, 12 inch and 15 inch. Everything about the 15 inch R-115SW said coverage, class and quality of sound.

Two R-115SW's in Opposing Corners

I got two R-115 SWs and positioned them in the front left and rear right corners and then re-tuned all my speakers again. Result - Totally unbelievable:

- Gone is the constant hum - Gone is the pitchy booming sound - Gone is the disjointed soundstage

Here is:

- Perfect harmonisation with all the other Klipsch speakers - Perfect, tight and clear base delivery - Perfect impact only and when required - Total lack of unnecessary base levels (silent when not required)

Hearing and Feeling:

The bass that is delivered goes from sudden environmental pressures of a gunshot, to perfectly clear and concise hum and rumble of a car engine or future jet engine of a Star Wars cruiser, to sound you can only feel but not actually hear.

This sub woofer has the range of 18 Hz to 125 Hz, with a maximum output of 122dB. The sub woofer is capable of 400 watts continuous power output or 800 watts peak power output.

Big Does Not Always Mean Loud:

The Klipsch R-115SW is capable of heart pound, wall-shaking sound but the funny thing about this misconception: is that this speaker delivers the right frequency of base only when it is required. loud sound is mostly covered in all the other speakers, especially the centre, followed by the two front speakers.

The sub woofers deliver the lower end frequencies when they are called for and not before. Once the sub woofer is correctly tuned in: it simply blends in with all the other speakers, delivering a much more rounded, grounded and anchored sound stage.

These speakers act like feather weights, gracefully filling the air with that orchestrated sound and then punch you on the chin like a monstrous heavy weight. This speaker is nimble and exactly refined, with thin, fine streams of sound and in an instant can hit you with so much throughput; it leaves you feeling as if you were really next to John Wick, when he fired the machine gun at the bad guys.

Summary:

The Klipsch R-115 SW is a very big, heavy unit (34.2 Kg) that sits imposingly in the corner.

It doesn't say much unless it is supposed to. When it speaks; you know it, you hear it and the message of that sound is loud and clear. If you don't hear it call: you will certainly feel it.

If I were to rate it out of 100. I could only give it 100. I cannot find a fault.

Final Word:

Way beyond all expectations.

Movie dialogue is very clear – This review is for the ** Mark II ** version of the Klipsch centre speaker. The first thing you notice is the cerametallic copper coloured woofers… Read more

which are a work of art in themselves. We can go into all sorts of discussion about sound pressure levels, frequency responses and contour plots, but, at the end of the day, it just sounds great. The uplift in sound quality from my previous centre speaker is really noticeable. Dialogue is clearer and it handles bass quite nicely thanks to Klipsch's rear firing Tractrix port (the way it directs air in the cabinet to the outside). The speaker does a good job of dispersing the sound horizontally, meaning you can sit to the side of the speaker a little (let's say at a distance of 2 metres) without losing too much quality in the dialogue. One of the biggest problems with cheap centre speakers is that sound deteriorates rapidly if you are sitting off centre only a little. At $1349 its a hefty price to pay for a centre, but it performs really well in its price range. It is reasonably heavy and larger than many would expect a centre speaker to be, but when you consider that most of the sound in a movie is comes through the centre speaker it is worth the price and space. I wasn't disappointed.