saurabhiitd

Congratulations !!!!![Y] Let us know when you get it hooked up...[]

You are being conservative. Lol!!! ROTFL (sucks that forums does not have the right emoticon for it)

I am not sure but I guess efficiency/sensitivity of Woofer drivers in the subwoofers should also matter. So just the amp power may not be the most important indicator of power. Considering that the Klipsch drivers are the most efficient, I think you can also try XW-500d ($500 at Vanns) and if you like it get another one, that will be a combination of 1000W for $1000 and you can have independent left and right subwoofers.[] So even if the power output will be half, higher efficiency of klipsch woofers will make up for it. A sealed sub means no boom at all. Having identical twins will not cause any phase adjustment problems too and XW-500d can be controlled by universal remotes. I think XW-500d design is the one Klipsch considers the best as the new upcoming subwoofers are similar to XW-500d. Check out this: http://www.sounddistributors.com/Reference%20Mk%20II%20and%20Subwoofer%20Changes.pdf

The Name your price offer comes every 3-6 months and it is random, they start it whenever they feel like. Try sounddistributors and see if they have anything for you, but you cannot ask for a discount from SDs. The best they do is give you a coupon (which is not really a good deal) or price match policy. The $200 coupon with RB-81s is a nice deal but then you have to spend 200 at the same site. I really have no idea about ED subs so cannot comment at all, but PC-12 NSD seems to be a good choice. PC-ultra will have similar quality of sound like dynamics and frequency response to PC-12 NSD but will have more power and will dig deeper. Sure 1699 Vs 650 is a huge price difference. I am not a big fan of subs with Port and driver on the same surface (like SVS Box subs) as port noise (which is out of phase with the driver) will cancel some of power from the woofer and also front firing port (not driver) muddies the sound. I had an energy sub ESW-10 with a front firing port and Energy S10.3 with 4 downfiring ports. The sound from S10.3 is much clearer because the port doesnot face you. If you have 1000 bucks to spend, I would recommend one mirage prestige S10 and one PC-12 NSD. You can always ask SVS for a 5-10% discount. Mirage prestige S10 is very musical, the bass speed is almost like RB-81s and has absolutely no distortion or no Boominess at all. PC-12 NSD has a frequency response to 17Hz. Velodyne makes good subs but I donot have any personal experience with them. I will be happy if I can keep you away from the supercubes.[]

Also to consider, the supercube has a class D amplifier vs. Mirage/Klipsch/SVS all have BASH amplifier which is better than Class D.

About surrounds, if you can wait for 6ave's Name your price promotion, you can get most klipsch speakers for 30-50% discounts. I got a pair of RS-42 for 50% discounts last year and once they also offered me a pair of RB-81s for a 50% discount but when I finally bought them after six months, at that their lowest price was $277 for 1 RB-81 and $327 for a pair of RB-61, still killer deals. I guess you can pick a pair of RS's for around 50% discount and may call them now to see if they have the REF IV speakers on sale. At the moment (from Sound distributors) you can buy a pair of RB-81 for $600 (using their $200 coupon) or a pair of RB-81 for $800 with $400 to spend on any other Klipschs at full price [like a pair of RB1s and a pair of RS-42s for $900 total (using the coupon twice in two different deals)]. I bought a pair of RB-81s, a pair of XB-10s and a pair of WB-14 for $900 total. I sold the XB-10s for $200 on the CL. So in all, I got a pair of RB-81s and a pair of WB-14s for $700.

Hey Elements, Congratulations for your new Klipsch System... It was a great choice of speakers. For the sub, have you considered SVS New PC-12 NSD for around 600+50 shipping. Its a great sub for HT (I guess best in that price range) and will look great in your house next year. I have never heard of Def Tech making a great sub. The supercube specs are shown very optimistically and I cannot imagine a 10" Woofer going down to 13Hz. Even Klipsch RSW-10d with a similar design(PRs) goes down to only 24Hz and remember It cannot be a good comparison but the Deftech speakers drivers pale in comparison to Klipschs.The deftech frequency response may be off and not within 3db. Also, the woofer is made of polymer which I suspect may be polypropylene at best. I have heard Klipsch polymer cones and even they distort a lot, so even though you will be getting a 1500W amp, I believe you will be getting a lot of distortion. So in a way you are not getting a great deal at $450 even if its MSRP is $1199.Not to mention I believe it is only a 375W RMS and not 1500W RMS. 1500W is I guess peak power.I saw the Prosub 800 data which is stated to have a frequency response of 20Hz but its -3db point was actually 34Hz and it did not even touch 22Hz at -50db. So seems like Deftech specs are meant only for general public. but you have to also consider that that sub was only $399 and meant for general public. On the other hand, SVS PC-12 is a 12" Woofer made of aluminium, a great enclosure and will look awesome between your TV and RF-82's. It goes down to 18Hz (within 3db) and SVS ratings are not done in-room so in room you may get the actual 13Hz. My room is too small for a 16" cylinder but I guess you may have the space. It has a 325W RMS Amp.SVS also has an in-home trial if you pay the shipping both ways which is around $50 each way. Another choices may be Klipsch XW-500d for $500 which is an equivalent of RSW-10d(better in my opinion), which will go lower than RSW-10d but will have less acoustic output (around half) and XW-500d is a great sub if you consider the 500W RMS amp. The third choice would be Mirage Prestige S10 with a 300W RMS(1200W Peak)namp. It is a great sub for , absolutely no distortion at all and remember Mirage Subwoofers are really worth twice their MSRP and if you get a deal like I got, a prestige S10 for 350, it is way better than supercube for $450. If running low on money, I would have bought Mirage Prestige S10 or XW-500d now and/or would have added SVS the next year.

Hi Where did you get those foam plugs for your F1s/F2s? I want to use them on my RB-81s. Saurabh

Its called timbre matching. Imagine a scene in a movie, where a guy is facing a road and a car goes by from Right to left. If the speakers are not timber matched, the sound of the car will be slightly different when it appears in the right speaker and then it will be different when it is in the scene(in the center of the screen)when the cound is produced by the center speaker and then again it will sound different in the left speaker when it leaves the scene. This visual effect is called panning and a mismatched speaker will cause the discontinuity. Tweeters (both size and their construction material) are more important for timber matching and thats why it is important to stick with the line. Different horn shapes are second factor as they have different dispersion patterns and the woofers are the last as all Klipsch woofers are pretty much similar (by similar I mean all are really high quality). Our human brain detects the difference (or say is more sensitive to) more at the high end of our audible range and so tweeters are most important whereas woofers do not matter that much. Tweeters of different construction material (Titanium/Aluminium/polymer/mineralized polymer etc.) have very different harmonics reporduction and thats why they sound different. Titanium has a higher specific strength so can produce much higher frequencies for eg. a titanium tweeter can go upto 23Hz whereas polymer dome can go only upto 15-16Hz keeping the size the same. Also a material with a higher specific strength sounds tighter with lower distortion and thats why Titanium is used in all klipsch upper range. Other materials like Beryllium and Kevlar have higher specific strength and may be better but I am not sure as nobody has ever made a kevlar tweeter. Tweeters of different sizes produce different frequencies at different levels. The general rule (which also applied to any driver) is that smaller the size the higher frequencies they can produce and vice-versa. This is also important for the woofer sizes in the LCR for example a 6.5" LCR would be perfect, next would be 6.5" LRs with 5.25"center which is also acceptable but a 6.5" LRs with a 4" center would not be a good match even if all the tweeters are the same. Thats the reason why RF-82/RB-81 go with RC-62, RF-62/RB-61 can go with RC-62 or RC-52 and RF-52/RB-51 can go with RC-52/RC-42 and so on. People now also match their surrounds (tweeters) with the fronts for a better front-rear panning effects but this is not completely necessary as the movie soundtracks even at this stage do not involve much of rear-front or front-rear panning.They might be used in the near future with 7.1 or 9.1 surround tracks used more and more on the blu-rays. I have now matched my fronts and rear but till last year, they were not and they still sounded perfect. SUBWOOFER'S Do not need to be timber-matched at all (same principle of sensitivity of human mind)except that it should go lower than the biggest speakers you have and should sound tighter. Synergy series subwoofers (The Synergy series speakers are good) are really bad and The ICON series subwoofers are a little better than the reference series subwoofers as they are sealed and so tighter. The same idea of Specific strength comes into play as polymer subwoofers will distort more than the aluminium subwoofers especially at that size. Cerametallication improves the stiffness but it is hard to say by how much or if fiber-glass cones are better than cerametallic cones but definitely fiber-glass cones are 6X times stiffer than aluminium cones.

I thought a bit over the horn shape and I guess other people may be more right than me (I am not wrong but read on....). I realized that a bigger room means bigger possible sweet spot and smaller rooms cannot have much bigger sweet spot. It seems like people have much bigger HT rooms than what I do. In that case, a tractix horn will be much better as it will have narrower dispersion and will concentrate the sound much better for a bigger sweet spot but for smaller rooms with a narrow sweet spot, they will have a cupped hand effect as you will be OFF-AXIS pretty quickly, something which happened to me. I moved 3 ft side ways from the sweet spot which meant a 45degrees off-vertical axis (and 20 degrees below tweeter axis), so my rears RB-81 had the cupped hand effect where as the RVX-42s(with a circular horn) doesnot because it has a wider dispersion pattern. Relative to 45 degrees Off-Axis RB-81s, I moved only 45 degrees to one RVX-42 (FL) and 15 degrees to RVX-42(FR) and only 10 degrees below the tweeter axis.

Never mind, WC-24 has 90W handling which is pretty good. I was under the impression it was only 75W. I think you will love the WC-24 compared to RC-52 and RC-62 for your ICON series. 98% of the dialogues are from 80-1200 Hz and 4.5" woofers handle this range the best. The only two other extremes are "Pa..." and "Fa..." (~50Hz) sounds that anyways will come from the subwoofer and the "sssss..." which will be handled by tweeter. I was under the same impression of getting chestier male voices but they still lie between 80-300Hz so WC-24 should be able to reproduce them equally well. I wish that WC-24 could go down to 80Hz but it is still close. Most of the bass is already loaded in to the surrounds anyways. Center is meant for mostly dialogues. So you should not worry about Bass. If you watch the movies with family, the XT tractix horn has a wider dispersion pattern for a bigger sweet spot. Remember while testing keep WC-24 at +2db for WF-34 or +3-4 db for WF-35 for testing, otherwise it will sound weaker compared to the mains.

For the ICON series,RC-64 will be pushing it too far as it will not be a tone match because of the bigger tweeter and a different horn shape and it will serious overpower anything you already have, it will also overpower RF-82/RF-62.Not to forget, RC-64 is huge. I would not worry about Bass that much because WC-24 goes down to 85Hz and 85Hz is a decent cross over point (anything between 70-90Hz is good enough). WC-24 should be the best but it might be a little weak as it is only 75W. So the major problem you are facing is wattage, and it all comes down to the size of the room and the volume at which you watch the movies. RC-52 will be a decent alternative(its a great speaker), but I was in your position , I would definitely match the series. WC-24 with ICON and RC-52 for reference. I have an RVX-42 which goes down to only 92HZ(within 3db), I still crossover at 80-90Hz, I might be missing something but I cannot identify anything if I am, so you are in a much better position although I love my RVX-42s. [Have you thought about having two WC-24 or WB-14 to be added in series to increase the power output.I believe two identical speakers can be added in series one above and below the TV. The current goes by half, but total power remains the same and so total center power handling goes by double. It is similar to running a receiver at +3db from your receiver, if your receiver can handle 100-150W total/channel, I would have done it]

I know, I had seen both these figures before I bought the speakers and were the actual deciding factor to choose these instead of other klipsch bookshelf speaker. [Y] but I was curious about responses from other people.

Yes, RF-63 will sound better than RF-82 at anything. I would still love to match RF-63 with RC-64 or RC-62 with RF-82. If I were you, I would go for Option 1 RF-62, RC-62 and RS-52. Option 2 RF-63, RC-64 and RS-62 Depending on the budget, you wanna keep the three tweeters in the front to be the same so that they are timber matched. Woofer Size do matter a little but not as much as tweeters.1.25" Tweeter is better for the midrange. For the subwoofer, Vanns has XW-500d for $500 on sale which should be better than RSW-10d because XW-500d is sealed and go down to 18Hz or lower. Yes it will be 3db less output (half the volume at the same power) but then you can buy two for less than the price of one RSW-10d. Since Xw-500d is sealed it goes deeper(the roll off below 21Hz is much flatter than you can imagine) and should sound tighter because there is no port or passive radiator.

Hi Bill, To add, I think, the only problem I see with RVX-42s is that they (also RSX-4) roll off at ~92-100Hz whereas the perfect crossover with a good subwoofer is between 70-85. That leaves a good gap of ~20Hz and that was the main reason I bought RB-81 to fill that gap. Even if I X-over at 80Hz , RB-81s will fill in between 70-100 neatly. RB-51s have a loud hump around 100-150Hz (because of port noise) and a backward firing port which discouraged me from buying those. Saurabh