Hello Guys,
I thought I will share my experience in setting up a 2.0 HiFi audio setup to
listen to music with my Klipsch RB52 II. I am not an expert, this is just the
experience of a wannabe audiophile .
For Guys who don't want to read the entire post, here is the Synopsis.
This opinion is is just mine and only mine.
(some other people on the net also share the same).
1) Klipsch is for Rock, Metal , Electronic and other loud music and not for
soft Instumental, AR-Rehman, Classical and Soft Desi music.
2) Klipsch make hi-frequency sounds - sound louder (lay-man's term for Hi's are Bright, sharp , harsh etc.)
3) They use horn tweeters which is very very sharp and harsh sounding.
4) Only way to get Klipsch sound bearable for long listening hours is to
disable any Equalizer functions on the amp or reduce treble considerably.
5) Klipsch is supposed to be great in HT 5.1/7.1 setup.
6) On Onkyo, Bi-amping Klipsch with Surround for Tweeter and Equalizer Disabled and increasing the Surround gain by +5 to +7 DB makes the
speakers bearable for playing long hours of music (Details on how to do
this follows).
So for the adventure:
I already had an Elac FS 58.2 with Onkyo TX-NR609 they sound Great . I listen to AR Rehman, Soft Rock, Jazz and instrumentals and they fill the room
with warm sound and I can listen for hours on end with highs-crisp, lows-warm and mids-clear.
I bought a Klipsch RB 52 II from Cinebels in Chennai and they sounded good when I auditioned them. Long time back I was blown away by klipsch in a HT setup, so I always wanted to buy them.
Problem:
I put the Klipsch next to my Elac and connected the speaker cables to the Klipsch and played some AR Rehman Flac files.
It was Un-belivable , I felt it was much clearer than the Elac I could make out small details in the songs were much more louder and clearer. This was for the first 30 seconds, then I could see all the Hi Frequency from the Horn Tweeter getting to me. All I could hear was this Hi Freq stuff overwhelming the mids and lows.
About 3 mins into the song I felt I could not take it any more. Maybe it was me or the music so I tried this with Jazz, Instrumentals, and many other genres. The results were same it sounded too harsh.
Then I got my Wife to listen to this and she also got a headache after 10 mins of listening. I was not comfortable at all with all this Hi Freq. The speakers never felt warm, just sharp and harsh like our old Horn Loud Speakers.
I assumed that may be the music I was listening to does not match the Target audience of Klipsch. I could never stand Hard Rock or Heavy Metal may be Klipsch was designed for them and not me.
Well I found out later that there are two classes of speakers -
1) American & Canadian ones (Klipsch, Energy) and
2) UK & Europe ones (Warfdale, Elac etc).
American Speakers are built for big houses with Dry wall (Gypsum Board walls) that absorb sound more so they have to be loud and sharp.
they are also more efficient (Loudness per watt). Plus the music they listen
to is loud.
UK Speakers are generally designed for small rooms that have Brick walls.
They sound more warm and are less efficient.
Its not the products fault its just mine for not researching the subject well before spending a lot of money for two speakers.
So I tried to salvage the situation and went online to research on how I can get my klipsch to sound softer and bearable.
Solution 1:
The obvious solution here was to reduce treble to 0 or negative, when I did that, the speakers lost all clarity and were sounding like someone was singing with a pillow over their face. They sounded 100 times worse than my Altec Lansing PC speakers.
Solution 2:
Change the Amp. A lot of guys online said that that the issue was
with Onkyo Amp so I connected the speakers to my Valve Amp that I had.
The results were the same 5 min into the songs I had Ear-pain and Headache.
My Elacs Sound great on the Valve Amp, Valve Amps run very Hot so I use them only when I need to listen to something special.
Solution 3:
Bi-Amping. I did not know what Bi-Amping was till recently. Both my Elac and Klipch Speakers had four terminals , I always wondered what they were for. They also had a metal bridge connecting them.
Well the reason for the two terminals is that one set of terminals connect to the tweeter and the other to the woofer. So in effect you can have two amps for each speaker. Just run 4 wires to the speaker and remove the bridge so one amp will be for Tweeter and the other for Woofer.
if you have a 5.1 system, you actually have 6 Discrete Amps. So you can have the Front Left and Right drive the woofer and Surround Left and Right Drive the Tweeters with the AV receiver in All Channel Stereo Mode.
The Idea with Bi-Amping for me was to Reduce the Harshness of the Tweeters by connecting them to a different amp and reduce the volume.
So I ran two extra pairs of wires to the speaker and connected them to the surround channel. The Idea was to reduce the volume on the Surround channel so that the Tweters don't sound loud. Well with this also I had the same issue as with Treble Control. If I crank up the Surround Volume to increase the clarity , It was too harsh, when I reduced the Surround volume
the clarity was lost.
So back to square one.
Solution 4:
Frustrated with not being able to make any headway, I called the Klipsch Showroom guy who sold me this, He told me that Onkyo boosts the Treble
by default and I have to reduce the treble. I had already tried that and it made the audio sound horrible, But this put me in the right path that I had to do something with Onkyo so I located the Equalizer setting and set it to
NONE from Audyssey. This again removed all hi freq clarity on the sound.
So now I went back to my Bi-Amping and increased the Surround volume
to +7DB and this did the trick. This brought back the Hi-freq clarity without
the harshness.
Now I am able to listen to music on my Klipsch without getting Headache or
ear pain.
Please let me know if others have had similar issues with Klipsch and how you were able to solve it. if you need more details or Pics of the setup I can post them.
Thanks,
Ravi Kiran.
I thought I will share my experience in setting up a 2.0 HiFi audio setup to
listen to music with my Klipsch RB52 II. I am not an expert, this is just the
experience of a wannabe audiophile .
For Guys who don't want to read the entire post, here is the Synopsis.
This opinion is is just mine and only mine.
(some other people on the net also share the same).
1) Klipsch is for Rock, Metal , Electronic and other loud music and not for
soft Instumental, AR-Rehman, Classical and Soft Desi music.
2) Klipsch make hi-frequency sounds - sound louder (lay-man's term for Hi's are Bright, sharp , harsh etc.)
3) They use horn tweeters which is very very sharp and harsh sounding.
4) Only way to get Klipsch sound bearable for long listening hours is to
disable any Equalizer functions on the amp or reduce treble considerably.
5) Klipsch is supposed to be great in HT 5.1/7.1 setup.
6) On Onkyo, Bi-amping Klipsch with Surround for Tweeter and Equalizer Disabled and increasing the Surround gain by +5 to +7 DB makes the
speakers bearable for playing long hours of music (Details on how to do
this follows).
So for the adventure:
I already had an Elac FS 58.2 with Onkyo TX-NR609 they sound Great . I listen to AR Rehman, Soft Rock, Jazz and instrumentals and they fill the room
with warm sound and I can listen for hours on end with highs-crisp, lows-warm and mids-clear.
I bought a Klipsch RB 52 II from Cinebels in Chennai and they sounded good when I auditioned them. Long time back I was blown away by klipsch in a HT setup, so I always wanted to buy them.
Problem:
I put the Klipsch next to my Elac and connected the speaker cables to the Klipsch and played some AR Rehman Flac files.
It was Un-belivable , I felt it was much clearer than the Elac I could make out small details in the songs were much more louder and clearer. This was for the first 30 seconds, then I could see all the Hi Frequency from the Horn Tweeter getting to me. All I could hear was this Hi Freq stuff overwhelming the mids and lows.
About 3 mins into the song I felt I could not take it any more. Maybe it was me or the music so I tried this with Jazz, Instrumentals, and many other genres. The results were same it sounded too harsh.
Then I got my Wife to listen to this and she also got a headache after 10 mins of listening. I was not comfortable at all with all this Hi Freq. The speakers never felt warm, just sharp and harsh like our old Horn Loud Speakers.
I assumed that may be the music I was listening to does not match the Target audience of Klipsch. I could never stand Hard Rock or Heavy Metal may be Klipsch was designed for them and not me.
Well I found out later that there are two classes of speakers -
1) American & Canadian ones (Klipsch, Energy) and
2) UK & Europe ones (Warfdale, Elac etc).
American Speakers are built for big houses with Dry wall (Gypsum Board walls) that absorb sound more so they have to be loud and sharp.
they are also more efficient (Loudness per watt). Plus the music they listen
to is loud.
UK Speakers are generally designed for small rooms that have Brick walls.
They sound more warm and are less efficient.
Its not the products fault its just mine for not researching the subject well before spending a lot of money for two speakers.
So I tried to salvage the situation and went online to research on how I can get my klipsch to sound softer and bearable.
Solution 1:
The obvious solution here was to reduce treble to 0 or negative, when I did that, the speakers lost all clarity and were sounding like someone was singing with a pillow over their face. They sounded 100 times worse than my Altec Lansing PC speakers.
Solution 2:
Change the Amp. A lot of guys online said that that the issue was
with Onkyo Amp so I connected the speakers to my Valve Amp that I had.
The results were the same 5 min into the songs I had Ear-pain and Headache.
My Elacs Sound great on the Valve Amp, Valve Amps run very Hot so I use them only when I need to listen to something special.
Solution 3:
Bi-Amping. I did not know what Bi-Amping was till recently. Both my Elac and Klipch Speakers had four terminals , I always wondered what they were for. They also had a metal bridge connecting them.
Well the reason for the two terminals is that one set of terminals connect to the tweeter and the other to the woofer. So in effect you can have two amps for each speaker. Just run 4 wires to the speaker and remove the bridge so one amp will be for Tweeter and the other for Woofer.
if you have a 5.1 system, you actually have 6 Discrete Amps. So you can have the Front Left and Right drive the woofer and Surround Left and Right Drive the Tweeters with the AV receiver in All Channel Stereo Mode.
The Idea with Bi-Amping for me was to Reduce the Harshness of the Tweeters by connecting them to a different amp and reduce the volume.
So I ran two extra pairs of wires to the speaker and connected them to the surround channel. The Idea was to reduce the volume on the Surround channel so that the Tweters don't sound loud. Well with this also I had the same issue as with Treble Control. If I crank up the Surround Volume to increase the clarity , It was too harsh, when I reduced the Surround volume
the clarity was lost.
So back to square one.
Solution 4:
Frustrated with not being able to make any headway, I called the Klipsch Showroom guy who sold me this, He told me that Onkyo boosts the Treble
by default and I have to reduce the treble. I had already tried that and it made the audio sound horrible, But this put me in the right path that I had to do something with Onkyo so I located the Equalizer setting and set it to
NONE from Audyssey. This again removed all hi freq clarity on the sound.
So now I went back to my Bi-Amping and increased the Surround volume
to +7DB and this did the trick. This brought back the Hi-freq clarity without
the harshness.
Now I am able to listen to music on my Klipsch without getting Headache or
ear pain.
Please let me know if others have had similar issues with Klipsch and how you were able to solve it. if you need more details or Pics of the setup I can post them.
Thanks,
Ravi Kiran.
I did multiple times setting up using Audyssey, Also called Onlyo service ppl who are very dumb & finally left it thinking I should get Denon AVR at some time in future.. :sad:
