High Efficiency Speaker Asylum: REVIEW: Klipsch klipschorn Speakers by Randy Bey

What can I say about these speakers?

For those that don't know, the Klipschorn is a fully horn loaded three-way speaker designed to fit only in "true" room corners. Thanks to PWK's ingenuous folded "W" design for the bass horn, the last portion is the wall corners themselves.

This means they won't just go anywhere, and you must have a room that is adequate for their deployment. Although a small room will be OK a larger room will allow the lower frequencies to properly propagate.

And these guys are HEAVY. Thank God they come apart or it would be impossible to lift them without a fork lift. Consider it a form of burglar proofing.

I have owned them for 22 years now and they have never been the limiting factor in my stereo. Every change in the gear further up the chain is reflected in the resultant output of these little babies.

Don't believe in cables making a difference? Maybe it's your speakers masking the effect.

PWK said it himself, "If you don't like what's coming out, you wouldn't like what is going in."

This is the time to say that these speakers are revealing, ruthlessly so. You should only consider them if you are serious about music and have a passion for it's accurate reproduction.

Horn speakers have one major thing going for them, and it's a biggie: they are dynamic. The simple physics behind the horn loaded speaker allows the actual "driver" portion to be mechanically amplified by the horn, allowing the driver to work lightning-quick. Once you hear a well-done full range horn speaker, you will find that all other acoustic suspension speakers sound dull and opaque.

This quality in the speakers allows you to hear music, and not "speakers playing music". You never get the sense that the music is coming from a box in front of you.

Imaging is superb. The speakers, being corner speakers, face inward at a 45 degree angle. This minimizes room reflections and permits localization of image unlike any other speaker I've heard.

The horn loading also makes the speakers efficient. The Klipschorn is rated, accurately I believe, at 104DB/1 watt/1 meter. What this means is that at typical (90DB or so) listening volumes you will be well under 1 watt RMS. OK, peaks then to 10 watts or so.

Most people that don't like Klipschorn heard them running with a mondo 200 watt bruiser SS amplifier. The kind of amplifier that makes a 82DB efficient speaker sing is NOT RIGHT for an efficient speaker. SS amps distortion rises with lower output. You can guess where I'm going with this: get tubes, single ended triodes, and you'll be happy. Tube amps distortion decreases with lower output. You want an amp that has very low distortion at 1 watt output or less.

REVIEW: Klipsch klipschorn Speakers Review by Randy Bey at Audio Asylum