Very interesting speaker, not sure thant nobody is interested, however the issue is that klipsch is way out of their element with these, fit, finish, etc.. This is new ground of price bracket and hi end status to crack in their case. A 15 k pair of speakers unfortunatley needs to come with more than just great specs and overall sound.. I can tell you these are probably pretty amazing up to about 10,000 class, but 15 is pushing it..
Now if they had way better finish on the cabinets, and a Far more realistic components used in the crossovers vs. the bennic OEM type pieces they seem to be using they would have something that would maybe make more of the big horn guys jump on them..
But in this price range you are talking competition from Avantgarde with mundorf crossovers, and several other nose bleed horns that are 99 to 110 db efficient. At 8,000 a pair I could see these being a real deal, but that would put them in direct price line competition with their former flagship for 50 years the K-Horns...
I will say I bet these models would fair much better for a larger variety of music tastes, and be far easier to get dialed in for most rooms over K-horns however due to the more conventional design, and bass output from these I am sure will walk all over anything klipsch has produced for the most part.
I would however if seriously considering these, minus the good design on the "boat shaped" low standing wave and resonance enclousure on these pretty much say I could take a pair of the RF 83's put some killer outboard crossovers and for about 2500 to 3000 street price have 95% of the performance of the palladiums. I am not sure how much of the performance accounted for of the palladium is in fact the cabinet however.
One thing I would be cautious about although they seem to claim 8 ohm nominal impedance on like every speaker they ever produced, these have 3 woofers which seems that would definately make this a little tougher load on some amps dipping pretty low, like 3 ohm or even 2 ohm at some frequencys, unless by some miracle they produced a 12 ohm or 16 ohm driver(very doubtful). |
I have no idea why somebody thinks klipsch is not gunning to be "Horns".. Okay I will play along, bottom line is that most speakers in that price range of "Horns" or conventional speakers make no difference accept yes, klipsch has entered a world of criticism and new level of speakers- being foreign, custom, fancy, or just BIG names in super hi cost audio, the klipsch do seem slightly out of place regardless what their marketing approach is.
By the way mostly these Palladiums will probably sell 10 pairs in the U.S. and like 90 pairs overseas, I am sure the Asian and maybe european market is much stronger and thats why they did it, and those are teh markets and speakers they are actually competing with... Not Joe blow walking down the street thru the 100 Audio video stores that carry B&W speakers. |
Tigerwoodkhorns
I can tell you they will definitely not take a 100 or 200 watter even :-)
I have used several of the reference towers in the 98 & 99db range with 20 watt amps and excelled beyond the 110 db output mark including more bass power than even their own monster subwoofer models.. So I don't see that as an issue at all..
Hmm, B&W well I guess for the upper midline and going into the costly brands I can see that B&W and Klipsch probably have no equal in name recognition across the board, meaning normal people, and the freaks on audio sites! So I can see where they might base the comparison, other than that, neither product is remotley close in my opinion. |
Tigerwoodkhorns,
Where did I give the impression I was against your comments, your system, or klipsch? As a matter of fact I think klipsch is very good, and from all my comments above say the palladiums I bet are pretty great, but a little out of their element price wise I am sure? Sorry you feel your system is junk. |
Tigerwoodkhorns
Sorry, I was misunderstood.. I was illustrating no doubt B&W and Klipsch both start out at lower and mid levels, and the name of both is in all stores(almost as bose is)and yes compared to each other all the time sitting on the floor next to each other in many retail environments.. I do realize the nautilus series etc.. Go up to a much higher cost which is where the palladiums kick in...
Obviously both companies do make some stuff considered mid-fi, however they both go up substantially from there as well. .
I use to sell both in a store about 10 years ago, honestly the B&W 600 series I think were the ones, they sounded really nice in a few models, the bookshelfs were better than the klipsch offerings at the time as well, I have no problem with B&W at all. For the right price they can do well...
But are not really what I consider a product coming from a sound perspective related to Klipsch at all, 2 totally different things was my only point, so having a price scheme to compete with B&W is one thing, but I have no idea where anybody would relate the actual products as they both present a sound and product on 2 different ends of the spectrum.
I mean B&W sound would much more be comprable to what Wilson or the more conventional hifi designs are doing in my opinion, thats the actual competition. |
No sorry I worked in high school so I was not even 10 years old in 85 or 87'! I am sure any speakers with some good crossovers will be pretty close to the performance of most today however. |
The palladium is most definitely now a product designed simply to see how far they can push the hifi money spenders with their brand, its not a ground breaking speaker or design, as a matter of fact the only real advancment for klipsch personally(but already done by many others) is the cabinet design taking into account the shape and pushing it as far as possible to eliminate the basic acoustic issues with your run of the mill rectangle design.
They are now well over double what they should cost, at 15 k you figure street could get you a pair for 11,500 to 12,500. Used I would be shocked to see much more than 7500 bucks made back on them.. However in the U.S. you will likely see very few pairs used if any because nobody is going to pay that retail price or near it for these. Whatever, I mean they have the money to experiment and toy around with the industry to see what they can pull off and thats exactly why they decided to try this. And don't worry as with all klipsch product you will see these in 18 to 24 months getting blown out on dealers floors for very low street prices probably when they don't sell.. |
Ha, I can take any Klipsch speaker and essentially make it sound better than "Thiel or Wilson"
However Stock form some klipsch are just horribly imbalanced. Focal drivers are OK, but never found them much better than most decent paper drivers for far less money, maybe some of the exotic tweeters and or really huge subwoofers they make. Anyway Klipsch does make some killer drivers far better than many of the "Exotic" companies, most of their reference series woofers are far better, far more efficient, and reasonably priced over many of the big brand names. They are just that much more efficient, and their woofers play some true wide frequencies down low with ease, you would find it incredibly difficult to overdrive a klipsch speaker without some really crappy or really ridiculous power. I have scrapped and bottomed out just about all exotic drivers from Focal, and dynaudio, several others, but mostly based on not the greatest crossovers and points used.
Its simple, for the most part klipsch especially in some of the lines over the years produced subpar cabinets, cheap wire, and really CHEAP crossover components. You can take a pair of klipsch, Raspy horns and all, put a 300 to 1000 dollar worth of real crossover parts on it and easily make some 15,000 to 50,000 dollar pairs of standard dynamic drive speakers sound mediocre in comparison, Trust me I have heard it many times in many different iterations of the idea! Anyway Klipsch has improved a LOT in the Palladium cabinets, thats most of the difference, as they always made great drivers, however they also went up from 5 dollar computer crossovers to at least 50 dollar Bennic crossovers, Yes they are bennic crossovers and still WAY cheap and semi-crappy OEM parts even in the 20,000 dollar Palladiums.
They should have at least stepped up to the Mundorf and or Clarity cap levels of parts for these speakers, because the palladiums although far better than many still barely broke above the "Skimp" level on crossovers, and crossovers in this case and most speakers are 90% of the design and final sound you get.. Cabinets about 7% and drivers about 3%. Thats my argument, the palladiums are nice no doubt, but for about 8000 to 10,000 per pair MAYBE on the big ones... Not 20,000. The drivers in the pair are worth about 600 to 1000 bucks, the cabinets are probably about 2500.00 and the crossovers if lucky have about 100 bucks in them. Again this is true in many or most speakers, so thats just the industry as a whole and the greed especially with the highest markups in electronics are on cables and speakers, cables being the worst when they cost 15 bucks to make and sell to you for 600 to 1000 a pair. But again who can blame them when their 20 k speaker that cost them 3000 to make can beat out a 30 k pair that cost a designer 5000 to make, they are simply creating in that market. Good for them if they actually sell any! It might be tuff however as the name in this game is a stigma much like Bose. |
Macallan7
No offense I think you missed the point.. Actually NOT 90% of the cost so to speak should be put into a crossover at all.. But 90% of your FINAL sound is gonna rely heavily on how good the crossover is was the point. By the way you would be shocked at how many speakers in the big money range have crossovers that are worth as much as your 80 dollar DVD player from Target :-) Interestingly don't get me wrong with some crossover parts you can easily be 90% of the cost, most good capacitors these days cost more or double the cost of a good woofer! But not the bennic's used in these klipsch worth about 3 bucks each, and at their discount probably 80 cents.
Crossovers don't sell a speaker, well in this case, not a lot of sex appeal in that, especially for those that don't understand specs. etc... Looks for the most part do sell these days.. No doubt Klipsch is using some high grade parts, again not my point. Yes any speaker manufacture or Book will tell you 90% importance of the design is how well the crossover is designed, Klipsch DID in fact design I am sure a perfect crossover by SPECS and theory, but did still use rather cheap parts which equates to not as good of sound or tolerance as higher grade parts.
So your correct Klipsch did a perfect job on the crossover with basic parts doing the duty, However you take the exact crossover, same value parts etc... And up them to better parts which would cost nearly 50 times what some of the parts they used do, now you are putting it into a class of this kinda money. But problem is that they would have to build them in outboard Boxes, NO WAY would higher grade crossover parts fit in their original design, it would be nearly 10 times the size with the crossover parts I am talking about, and basically be a box the size of a good sized amplifier on the floor next to floorstander itself, so SEX appeal, and simplicity to the standard owner are now lost having to contend with another large box to run their speakers, and only true hardcore guys would buy this, not the Doctor with his wife allowing him to buy some new pretty home theater speakers sitting in the middle of the living room :-)
Again the palladium is a great speaker, and yes paper spec. and Parts used are definitely within the upper crust of design, however not enough money in quality parts to justify such a cheap crossover in my opinion. They are in the market where most people have never heard of wilson or Avantgarde, so they gear this product again for the hollywood guy with some money that just wants a cool speaker, but it could be much more. Its a big company and all about business, funny thing is they were at one point marketing Monster cable inside the speakers, it sounded worse than the old versions without it!! But then again when you took it apart it was literally the .25 cent a foot 18 and 16 gauge cheap crap that monster gave some chinese company the right to stamp their name on the roll. |
Macallan7,
NOT MANY!!! But most speakers use simpler crossovers, however there are several using outboard large ones, some only take about 1 inductor and 1 capacitor for example, but still is the size of a shoe box. Its not about the part QUANTITY, the Quality parts are far larger. For example you take 1 cap, like a 10 uF cap in a standard Klipsch speaker, its about the size of a half roll of pennies for example.
That same CAP from Clarity or Mundorf, or someone similar and its literally almost the Size of a soda can. So it is definitely not easy or cost effective for most mass produced speakers to implement this for sure. That was not my argument either. Hey I would definitely take a pair of palladiums don't get me wrong, but knowing for 1000 bucks more with such a huge investment already Yes I would build outboard far better crossovers and they would be about the size of a 12" X 16" X 7" amplifier each. And the Palladiums issue with crossover is they are Very complex from what I saw, they are a 3 way meaning a section for tweeter, woofers, and mids, and have about 10 to 15 parts per board. If you use some good ribbon inductors and some Mudorf or clarity caps in that crossover not only will they be that large, but also about 10 to 15 lbs each in weight.
Here is a quick link I came up with on the klipsch website actually
The woofer and tweeter boards alone next to each other although not easily seen in perspective because nothing is next to them as a reference would barely fit next to each other like that on the table in a basic preamp chassis you have on your rack. see link its a cool project to which you can read and check out. Oh and looking back at the link now I do see its the crossover shown next to large Mono block tube amps! Almost the same size. Don't get me wrong the crossovers pictured here are probably 5 times the cost of the palladiums, and they can get much more expensive than even this.
http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/t/103108.aspx
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Again Palladiums which is what this is about are a very cool speaker, the main change and very refined part of this speaker is the "Boat tail" cabinet eliminating the box noise issues and damping of your standard rectangle boxes. They simply put a little more money into crossovers not what I consider a 20,000 dollar speaker to have
. But again its un-realistic to think that Klipsch of all companies would even entertain an outboard crossover with 1000 dollar worth of parts in it for several reasons, they are not really targeting audiophiles that can live with this, they are not really trying to make the best of the best, but simply show that even their more efficient design can compete at that price level. In the end you would have to TRI wire the speaker which is a BIG hassle to run a better crossover outside the cabinet, and have another box on the floor, but if I owned them and wanted the ultimate performance from them thats what I would do! Great attempt on a speaker, at 8,000 bucks used I can see it being a nice buy! |
