Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Whenever you move from one well designed speaker to another well designed speaker, you gain something and lose something, IMO.
Klipschorns excel in dynamics, and certain kinds of "presence." In a large room, with a good SACD, Bluray disk, analog open reel tape, or with an especially good CD, DVD, or vinyl Lp, they produce an enormous sound that really does sound like a live orchestra. As J. Gordon Holt (the founder of Stereophile magazine) once said, "they trigger the musical Gestalt" for many listeners who are musicians. That triggering is far more important than the few individual variables we can measure. In terms of the conventional measurements Klipshorns have very low intermodulation distortion and very low harmonic distortion. Some
expensive speakers have flatter frequency response, but flatness of frequency response is less important than other variables we can hear, but haven't developed ways to measure, IMO.
As to "power," with the most conservative ratings, it would take an 800 watt amplifier into a typical speaker (one rated at 90 dB at 2.83 volts at 1 meter) to equal the output from Khorns with an 120 watt amp........ with ratings based on the Khorn pushed all the way back in a room corner or an artificial corner (where they must be) a typical speaker would need over 3,000 watts to produce sound as loud as a Khorn with a 120 watt amp (these are figures I just happened to have -- in practice, you wouldn't want to put a steady signal of either 800 watts or 3,000 watts into a typical speaker, nor would you want to put a steady 120 watts into a Khorn).
What Khorns can't do is cover up (mush over) a bad recording. Some other speakers obscure some details (like a singer's rattling necklace that I heard on Klipschorns but missed on all other speakers I tried), and may contribute some harmonically pleasant distortion that will make a bad recording sound "richer." Khorns (and many other horn loaded speakers) are not very "forgiving," and are quite revealing of both music and defects in a subjectively different way than other revealing speakers (such as electrostatics and ribbons).
I once knew a musician who had one set of speakers (all paper cones) to listen to most recordings and FM radio with because they were "forgiving," and a set of horn loaded speakers to listen to recordings of his own acoustical guitar work, because the forgiving speakers could not reproduce the immediacy and "thereness," as he put it, of his guitar.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Klipsch Klipschorn Three-Way Speaker System with Klipsch's Legendary Folded Horn Driver (Walnut, Single Speaker)
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