I have recently assembled my first home theater system. I have a Denon 4310 AV receiver driving Klipsch RF 83s, All the other speakers are also Klipsch.
The very first CD I played on my Sony DVD was a Maynard Fergurson recording of Maria. Maynard reaches the stratosphere on this recording and I suspect that the recording mike may not have been capable of fully capturing the live spectrum.
Anyway, I turned the volumn up on my Denon 4310 and the FR-83 tweeter just could not produce the very high frequency sound. The speaker basically went blaaaaaaa.
I got in my car and drove to the closest high end Audio retailer and asked if they would let me listen to the DC track on one of their systems to see if the 'problem' was the CD recording, and not my RF-83s.
The system they used had $4.000.00 ea FOCAL towers with probably $15,000.00 in McIntosh CD, preamp and amp electronics. This rig reporduced the very high frequencies almost perfectly. ( Again, I suspect the Maria chart on the CD does not faithfly capture the actual very high trumpet performance.)
I told the salesman that if I gave my RF 83s a zero rating for their inability to reporduce the very high notes, then I would have to give their system a 7 with a question as to if the distortion that their system displayed was due to the quality of the CD....or....simply the inability of their system to reproduce the very high notes. (On the FOCALS you could still hear some distortion, however, the FOCALs were able to at least render most of the very high trumpet notes.)
Yes, I know, my electronics, Denon AVR 4310 is not the same quality as $15.000.00 worth of McIntosih electronics. However, I am greatly disapointed that dear old Maynard's screeching is out of my reach using my 'new' RF 83s.
This same dealer had an RF 82 which was fed by a sparate integrated amp which had a small tube in it's output stage. Yes, the RF 82s exhibited the same inability to reproduce the very high trumpet notes. The conclusion is that the tweeters on my RF 83 just cannot reporduce Maynard's screeching trumpet.
I played some Buddy Rich big band charts on my 'new system' and this charts seemed to sound A-OK.
The salesman at the high end Audio store said that he doubted, if I upgraded to the Cornwalls, that they could faithfully reproduce Maynards very high trumpet notes either. His opinion is that the Klipsch tweeters just cannnot reproduce this part of the audio spectrum.
I don't listen to Maynard very often, for his upper trumpet notes are just way too high for prolonged listenting, in my opinion. However, it is very disappointing to spend my limited budget on the RF 83s and then find out they simply cannot reporduce these very high notes. I guess they cannot produce the 1, 2nd and 3rd harmonics of lower frequencies.