Hello everyone, I have to admit my understanding of acoustics an speakers is rather limited, I mean I have owned may speaker sets over the years, ,many well known brands, JBL/Harmon Kardon-Yamaha-Advent/Jensen-Polk Audio-KLH-JVC-Pioneer-definitive technologies-Cerwin Vega-Bowers+Wilkins-Energy and now these Klipsch and I have to say this, these might be the worst sounding speakers coming from a major company have ever purchased.
I read review after review praising this model, I am dumbfounded as I dont hear it at all the specs are note worthy
MDF first order vented system(front ports)
2-6 and 1/2 inch Injection molded Graphite woofers
1-1 inch aluminum diaphragm compression driven horn loaded tweeter
rated 25-100 watts rms with brief 400 watt peaks
8 ohm impedance
Rated frequency range-38hz to 21khz -/+3db
crossover is at 2000khz
sensitivity 97db at 2,83v-1m
these were a black friday big box store sale so I purchases them, good price and Klipsch makes a good product right? They simply dont sound good, not a lot of complexity, highs are harsh and fatiguing , unless its specific high frequencies the tweeters scream in the mid-range, I would blame this on the aluminum diaphragm on the tweeters as the source of the harshness, but Definitive Technologies Promonitor 1000 seems to be able to get decent sound from aluminum domes and the fluid cooled alloy dome tweeters in my bowers+Wilkins DM601 S2, DM 602 S2 and the CC6 S2 speakers seem to sound more subdued but with rich detailed layers.
along with seeming to live in the mid-range, I am baffled by the engineers choice to not have a tuned port, instead its basically an oval hole at bottom front of cabinet, the only bass notes are produced are series of boom and echoes, without a subwoofer to compliment these towers they basically have complete bass roll off in the 50-60hertz area, far from the 38hz promised from this set, to be fair I have compared these Klipsch to several other speakers, and even a set of 20 year old Bose 301 series2 out performed them, the other glaring issue was stereo imaging, there simply is none, no wide sound stage to speak of, bottom line, for the price point and reputation these fall far from the mark and I would not recommend then to anyone,I still cant imagine Klipsch would make a product so under-whelming,
Just wanted to add, Klipsch has redesigned the reference R-26 f, into the "new reference R-62f, same drivers same cabinet but all new tuned port, got a chance to hear the new reference R-82f, moving up to 8 inch woofers same copper spun? injection molded graphite woofers and 1 inch aluminum diaphragm horn loaded tweeter, this was at big box store the other day, they played hiphop source material and the tell tale booming was still there regardless of new porting and also sounded tinny and in the mid-range area, now I do have to add these are the entry level klipsch products but that doesnt speak true with other companies entry level products, I cant speak of Klipsch's other high end speakers but if this was "trickle down technology" from the higher end products that is sad indeed