Reviewers are experts at dressing up flaws on a speaker, while still trying to say it is a flaw. They also use either too technical of a language to keep happy the techies out there, or they use language that sounds like a wonderful story to say that the speaker is not that good; and no one understands.
On another forum I once said that if you see a review with three or four faults "iffy" comments about the speaker being reviewed to be careful of buying that speaker, even if the reviewer in its conclusion says that the speakers is good. Needless to say, most people jumped at me saying that I didn't know what I was talking about, and how was it possible for a reviewer to hide between the lines such info. Well, I still have to see a reviewer that says: "This speaker sucks". BTW, most of the ones that jumped at the fact that reviewers tend not to be clear about flaws in a speaker had titles in their nicks like "Senior Forum Audio Guru", "Grand Master Audio Expert", "Professor in Audio Mastery", etc.
Would be nice to see a real review. For example, a Klipsch RVX-42:
It is a nice on-wall speaker that comes well packed on a carton box, and you will only spend 2 minutes unpacking it. Construction is average, but good enough for your family room. Installation is a breeze with keyholes provided for on-wall mounting. If you prefer to mount them on a stand, you should buy something better and built for that purpose, like Klipsch's RB Series. It will probably be less expensive anyways. But, if you still insist in doing something as stupid as using an on-wall speaker as bookshelves/towers, then a convenient on-wall/stand switch is provided to adjust the sound according to the mount.
A 10" sub is included with this system, and very much needed. But, we will not talk anymore about the sub as it is a below average piece of equipment. Our advise is to give it away to the needy, and get a real sub within your budget. There are at least 50 options, so do your research as there is nothing more boring than doing sub reviews.
Hook up is easy using a 14/2 AWG cable, you have done this many times so explaining further will just take up advertisement space. We used three $20,000.00 ea. McIntosh Amps with a $10,000.00 AV Pre-Amp/Processor, and a $1,000.00 surge protector/signal conditioner. But, who cares as we know you guys are using an Onkyo TX-605, Marantz SR-4001, Denon AVR-888, HK AVR-247, or something similar in the $300.00 - $500.00 range.
The typical buyer for these speaker is a blue collar hard working person that his wife grabbed him by the balls and made him buy on-walls because of decoration issues. His equipment is good, but modest, probably anchored by one of the above receivers and uses a Made in China DVD/CD player. To keep within that we used a Shanling T-100 CD player, Made in China and sold in the USA for only $2,000.00. For movies we chose a $3,000.00 BluRay Marantz player that we were able to get free from Marantz to review. Let me say this DVD player is the best one out there, and at $3K it is a bargain. If Marantz keeps sending free stuff we need to patrocinate their products.
For our music test I played some demo CD's with excellent music that you can only find in this tiny specialty CD store in a basement in Juno, AK. For DVD we used The Incredibles remastered edition with super enhanced surround; only two copies available, ours and the one the audio engineered who edited it has. Basic stuff.
Won't get into music details, but the RVX-42's were loud, clear and detailed, but loud. The horn was just too much for my ears. Only heard two tracks and my ears wanted to pop. As for movies it was a diffrent story, if felt like if you were there. Explosions sounded real, transitions from one speaker to the other were seamless, and dialogue was very clear and precise. These speakers had a good image, but not so much could be said about their soundstage. Bass had to be handled by the sub, which we already said is a POS and couldn't handle booms, explosions, and rumbles very well.
In conclusion I wouldn't recommend these speakers, as there are better options for the same price or less. As an example, Paradigm Cinema 330, and Monitor Audio R225.
For our next issue we will have extra pages available as Klipsch will pull their multi page advertisement from our magazine.
