It's an overall choice for music/ movies. Budget would be $1500 let's say.
What got me asking is a friend of mine is comparing his Sony str-dn1080 receiver with the Polks to my setup which is Yamaha rx-v1083 with klipsch.
He prefers his setup and rips on my setup.
If you are looking for a definitive statement of which speaker is better, get that out of your head!
Sure someone may make such a statement, but that would be a personal opinion.
As far as I know, these are both competent for what they are.
But don't feel your RF-82ii's are anything to be ashamed of. I have listened to a lot of speakers and felt the Klipsch's (when they were on clearance for $400/each) were the best deal going for HT. They have an immediacy and "impactfulness" that I really appreciate for an action movie and speech intelligibility is very good!
I also feel they are pretty good for music at $800/pr.
I have significantly better (and more expensive) speakers, and these better speakers do, indeed, sound better overall, but the Klipsch are especially good at targeting the things that I want from HT speakers. I think they also hit above their price point for hard charging music like Rock and Heavy Metal. Within that context, I think they are very good speakers!
They would not be my preference for light, soft, jazz, or acoustic type music. They have detail, but there is something about the way the horns cast that detail to your ears that is not ideal as compared to my better speakers.
I find I get the best sound from them if I toe them in so a line projected straight out from the mains crosses at a point 2' in front of my head in the listening position. This can look a bit weird depending on your layout, but it sounds best to my ear (and I have Earl Geddes and a couple of other audio geeks backing me up on that).
If you really want to have a "showdown", the way to do it would be to take your system to his house or have him bring his to yours. That way you are on roughly even footing for room acoustics (ideal would be to have both speakers in the exact same place in the room, but that simply is not practical). Connect both systems to a common source (most DVD players will play CD's and have an HDMI and an optical connection...or RCA's) and use the mute buttons to switch back and forth (first matching the levels - the louder speaker usually sounds better, even if it isn't). If you do this with your favorite music, you and your friend will get a much better sense of what differences exist in the sound of the two speakers. Most likely, yours will sound better to you and his will sound better to him! Bias is alive and well! But if you are honest, you will likely hear things his speakers do better and other things yours do better. It is rare for me to compare two speakers and not hear
something that the lesser speaker does better!
