Gliderguy3

UPDATE: It does appear to be a varistor or an inrush limiter. I was able to get it unsoldered from the board and can read SCK, 104, 947. It was very faint, and part of the markings were damaged with the meltdown. I did some digging around and found that these are sized by diameter, and mine is about 13mm. I think I also learned that the 104 means 10 ohm nominal resistance and rated for 4 amps. That makes sense with the protective fuse rated at 3.15 A (weird size, but it is on both the fuse and the holder) I don't know about the 947, I couldn't find any reference to that. So if I find any 250 volt, 10 ohm, 4 amp (or greater, looks like 5 and 6 are available) varistor I should be good to go, or are there other critical specifications? I see that there is a secondary ohm spec for once you have reached the breakdown voltage, but it is like 250 milliohms, and different tolerance ratings. It seems these are designed to be sacrificial to protect the rest of the components, so I am feeling better about my chances of reviving the sub. I also figured out that the lead spacing was either 7 or 7.5 mm, and appears to be 0.8mm diameter, (some higher rated leads are 1.0mm diameter) Now I just need to find a source that will let me buy just one or two (in case I somehow screw up the first one) Most of the websites I found while researching want to sell in batches of 50 or more.

I have a pair of Klipsch SW-112 subs, and one started blowing fuses upon plugging in. I did some digging around and found what looks like a blown ceramic or tantalum cap. It has some kind of green shrink wrap over it, so I don't know the capacity or size in order to replace it. Can anyone figure it out from these images? The label on the circuit board says TH3, and there is a TH4 elsewhere on the board slightly larger, and again wrapped with some kind of shrink wrap so I cannot see any color codes or specifications on the component.

I have a pair of SW 112s, (one I am trying to get fixed for an amp issue) the other is hiding in my coat closet and is bass reinforcement for my 6 and 8 inch ceiling speakers, which it does well for a large chunk of a 3000 square foot house. The SW-112 has a slot loaded port, and what looks to be a fiberglass or carbon fiber woofer cone (no dust cap, the voice coil is vented through the center of the magnet assembly.) Other than the amp problem that I am trying to resolve on one (and it was bought used, don't know if abused, and ran for two years without issue). If you want to stay with Klipsch, I think it is right there. I have an SW-115 with my main home theater system that I bought new that has run fine for the seven years or so I have had it. Unless you are gonna spend way more than $350 or so, I think you are on the right track with the R-112SW which was what came out after the SW 112, with similar specs.

Has anyone had a chance to aquire one of these yet? For 1/4 the price of a Stadium I am wondering how these would stack up head-to-head. I suspect they would blow just about any other Bluetooth speaker out of the water. Especially if you spent another $500 on a subwoofer and you could still come out at half the price of the Stadium. I wish they had incorporated the WA-2 Transmitter internally and included the receiver dongle. I would have paid a little more for that and Apple Airplay capability. Even a ruggedized "pro" version for office and small auditorium P.A. use would be pretty interesting. I would be interested to hear any thoughts on this product. Thinking about this as a relatively portable high performance all in one system just using a phone or Ipod as a source.

Heh, digging a little deeper, the album causing the problem- Crosby, Stills & Nash "Daylight Again", had the album art saved at - get this - 2400 x 2400! That is not a typo, it would have to be downsampled to fit vertically on a 4k quad HD screen. Almost a 6Mb file. The Norah Jones album that plays with no problem was saved at 1200 x 1200. Don't think I have a problem because all my other ripped. FLAC files are 500 x 500 or smaller. Technology is wonderful - when it works!

The discontinued X-5's are my favorite Klipsch headphone. When I saw that the X-7i used the same balanced arature driver it really got my attention... BUT - I am an Android user. I am really hoping to see the release of an X-7A version. Any other forumites out there holding out hope for these?

Does anyone know what the maximum album art file size allowed embedded in a FLAC file? I recently found that I can stream hi rez (DVD-A, 96kHz/24bit) FLAC directly to my Denon 3311 through Songbird. Some files would not play until I stripped out the embedded album artwork. Niether DLNA or FLAC seem to specify a maximum file size for album art metadata, any Denon experts here know what that limit might be? During troubleshooting I converted the files to ALAC 48/16 to stream through iTunes and it also failed until i stripped the artwork from the individual files. In all cases, the unmodified files would play to the computer speakers thru either Songbird or iTunes. Thanks in advance!

After doing due dilligence research, it looks like the main difference is Klipsch has been steadily lowering the crossover point with each new generation. The RB35s cross over at 2350hz, the RB81(ii) has it down to 1400 ! slight bump in power handling after the 35's. Slight sensitiy increase starting with the 75. Getting the crossover down almost an octave has to be the biggie though. Seems that would make the sweet spot bigger, i seem to recall woofers get "beamy" as the wavelength approaches the size of the driver.

Bill, you hit my quandary right on the head. I can get the pair of RB-35's for about 1/4 the price of new RB-81's and I also had the concern about finding a matching center. The fact that the RC-62 (ii) seems to be so well regarded may tip me that direction. I can almost afford to get the rb-35's as temporary surrounds and maybe move them to the bedroom as primary speakers later. I think I could live with a slight timbre mismatch on the surrounds as long as the front three were well matched.

Have a chance to pick up some local used RB 35's, but have heard reviews that the RB 81 (II) has considerably improved voicing. Would use these as mains for a home theater, Have been holding off on getting the SW-115 for a few more weeks, If I decide on new RB-81's would want to try to get a package price. Could probably swing the RC 62 (II) at the same time, but the surrounds would have to wait a bit. Anyone who has heard both care to comment? Will probably be used 75% home theater and 25% music. Will be driven by a Denon 3311CI. Add on amplification like Emotiva or such not out of the question but would be down the road a while. Not sure if additional power would be a huge upgrade given the sub should more than keep up with speakers of this class. I keep wondering about the RB 75 with that relatively ginormous 1.75 inch tweeter horn vs the 1 inch drivers in the other above speakers. Did Klipsch get away from those strictly to maintain a price point or are they considered superior to the others? Have yet to see a used set of RB 75's come up for sale anywhere near me.

I am looking to buy a RB 81 based home theater system. I am dealing with a bit of WAF resistance so would like to find somewhere in Arizona or Las Vegas that actually has a showroom with speakers set up to demo. The Klipsch dealers links are pretty far out of date, I get a lot of custom installers with no inventory or "Yea, we had that brand 5 years ago but don't actively carry it anymore. I would like to see and hear some RB 81's RC 62, and maybe RS 52 speakers. I would love to find somewhere that carries Heritage as well, would like to A/B the RB 81's with maybe some Heresy's. Heresy's are at the absolute max of my new purchase size and price range for mains. I am personally somewhat opposed to the Gallery series, but would like to be able to compare them to the above as well. For $500 each I want a little bit more capability than I suspect they posses. LA, Albuquerque or Santa Fe are not totally out of the question, either. If I can keep it less than an 8 hour drive one way from Prescott, Arizona where it is just possible to do a round trip in one long day.

IIIIImmmm BAAAAAAAACCCCCK! been crawling around my attic trying to fix a cat 5 wiring problem, finally got the problem solved. Haven't been browsing many sites except speedtest.net and speakeasy. I am leaning hard toward the SW 115, Seems like a good value for a new sub with warranty. I am liking the wireless add-on capability and would probably use that to let me stealth the sub a bit. as far as something like a RSW-15 I am a little shy about buying a used sub unless the price is a steal. There is no good way that I know of to tell how hard it has been pounded on. I like the lil'mike design F20 and the Fitzmaurice THT, but I am not ready to commit 30 or 40 hours of shop time to make something furniture grade that my wife would actually let in the house. I also fear for the sliding glass door that sits near one corner behind the listening area if I go that capable (If I have it, it WILL get cranked occasionally when the house is SANS spouse.) I have just about squirrelled away a second $1000 to try to get an RB81 / RC 62 / RS 52 set to complete it all. (or at least pretty close to having the purchase price as cash in hand.) The sub should be 3-6 dB more capable than the mains which means I just won't really run out of steam. I would go a small step up in size to Heresy, but am unsure about a center speaker. This is also the point where the WAF resistance starts to look like an open circuit. This thread has really taken off, I do appreciate all the thoughtful replies. I may eventually go lil'mike or BFM, but I have a feeling that the project would run months before I could complete, and I want to do something a little more turnkey for my first real go at it.

Symmetrical box with identical drivers on each face, doesnt matter if it is 3,4,5, or 50,000 drivers. it will be balanced as long as everything is wired up in phase. There are way too many helicopters flying around with 2,3,4,5, or even 8 bladed rotors for me to believe an odd number of drivers has any inherent difficulty, except for making the box symmetrical. Triangular is easy with 30 degree miter cuts. Anyone such as yourself who has cut 7 degree miter angles for a TT could probably do 30 degree miter cuts while drunk, during a 7.5 earthquake with a cop shootout going on next door. Amp load, yea, maybe, but I am not sure if that doubling of distortion comes from the new voltage swing requred or if it more slaved to power. If you ran a mono amp rated for 500 watts at rated power you get rated distortion, but if you bridge it to 1000 watts and throttle back down to 500 are you still saying you get double distortion or only when you run it maxed out? Ohm ratings on a loudspeaker driver are all over the map anyway, and the fixed number is just an average. some drivers and amp combinations might be a natural born nightmare and some might play very well together depending on where the impedance min and max are. My attic has standard 2 ft spacing on trusses, couldn't get a box up much wider than 20 or 21 inches. LOTS of vertical space and headroom to take a low profile style TT or THT vertically up through the opening and keeping it vertically oriented all the way to the installation location, only about 15 feet away from the attic access point. One of the real plusses in my home's layout!

I just noticed that the new SW-11x line all "go to 11." That is almst worth the money just for the Spinal Tap reference! Wonder if the model numbers were a clue and if I should wait for the SW-12X series of subs...

Three drivers would balance fine in a triangular box. The amp load would be o.k. if they were 8 ohm drivers and you had an amp stable at two ohm loads. Before i go that route, I would build a THT in the attic space and hide its mouth behind a fake air return grille. My only reservation about Heresy as HT is WAF for the center speaker. I am not aware of anything lower profile thatwould be timbre matched to the heritage line.

Thanks for your reply. In a perfect world I would have a 9.4 system with 9 Jubilee's and 4 (or maybe eight) BFM THT's filling an acoutically perfect barn somewhere with seating for 50 people and 10 kilowatts. In my reality, I am pushing the limits of the WAF at the RB81's, but I have liked all the Heritage line I have heard, (Late 80's Khorns and La Scalas, as well as a set of Forte's. Have not actually heard the Heresy's but if they are even close to the rest of the Heritage line I almost don't have to. If I were building a 2.1 system I woulld base it off of either Heresy or Forte II's. Hence my main question. I know it is mostly subjective but I am trying to figure out by how much the Heresy could outpace an RB81. On paper it doesn't look like a huge margin. My other wife-friendly options are smaller and less capable. I am sure the RB81's would blow the Gallery series out of the water on output by something like 6 or 8 decibels on peak output. Probably do it at lower distortion levels too. My smaller fantasy is to do a really good job stealth hiding the subs, and having a somewhat largeish bookshelf speaker that is seemingly pumping out almost inconceivable full range sound at concert levels. I want the mains to be just big enough that my guests don't look too hard to find the subwoofers. A/B testing is a great idea, but I have yet to find anyone in the Phoenix area that actually STOCKS an RB81 much less has one wired up for a demo. If I ever did find that place, somehow I think if they carried Heritage gear it wouldn't usually include the Heresy's Maybe my next post should be a shout out for owners of either line willing to invite an internet stranger over to listen to expensive audio gear. (Toronto is a bit out of my way, I could be in either Hope or Indianapolis much easier, but for Jubilee's it would be worth the trip!)

I am seriously considering building my home theater system with RB81's as main speakers, with generous subwoofer support (thinking SW115 or if I find an extra thousand dollars laying somewhere, maybe an SVS ultra... I have considered the BFM designs Table Tuba and THT, but don't really have anywhere to put something quite that large. I know specs don't quite tell the whole story, but I noticed that the RB81's are rated at 150 continuous watts vs the Heresy at 100. The new Heresey's are spec'd at 99 dB/ 2.84v vs 97 dB/2.84v for the RB81's. 1.5 times the power handling buys about 1.76 dB gain in a perfect world with no compression losses. If you compare max peak power they are still the same ratio. Have no idea what kind of crazy impedance loads either might have that would factor in to a real world amp's ability to drive them (using a Denon 3311 CI, if it matters. technically I am limited to about 125 watts anyway, ) If I take the heaviest bass loads off both speakers (don't know if that means all material from 50 hz, 80hz or 120 hz and below, yet) How comparable would the two speakers be? Am I getting lots more distortion to drive the RB's to that level if I do something to keep the woofer excursion a little more controlled? I am thinking I would have to compare the Heresy crossed over at 60 hz to maybe the RB81's crossed over above 90hz to get comparable excursion on the different sized drivers. The Heritage line all specifies a max acoustic output (and I have no idea at what THD percentage that would be). The Reference line does not. Does anyone know any max outputs at some reasonable distortion level for the Reference line?

I will eventually try to finish the system out with RB81 mains RC62 center, and still open for discussion on the surrounds. Meeting WAF resistance on the RB 81's but she does like the Gallery series. Wondering also how much capability I would be giving up going to the smaller drivered G28's vs the RB81's given how much sub I am wanting to start with. Guess that is really a question for another area of the board, but was relevant extra info for the original question.

I am really intrigued by the newish SW-115 sub that seems to just about match the output of the older RSW-15 sub. I have a large open concept home with the main room shaped like a slightly lopsided "T" with the listening area filling the shorter arm of the "T" The T is about 15 feet thick by roughly 40 feet long on the crossbar and the "vertical." 10 ft ceilings throughout. I am actually (laughably) using the small sub from a promedia 4.1 to provide adequately balanced bass (no obvious frequency nodes with the odd shaped room) just nothing even close to reference theater levels. I have looked at the THT and the TT Bill Fitzmaurice designs, but cannot work them into the floorplan to meet the WAF, but a normal box sub of around 2 ft on the longest side has a descreet location that already seems to be reasonably well frequency balanced when the smaller sub is placed there. This place is near the top of the T with 15 feet to the right wall, 25 feet to the left, and about 40 feet to the bottom of the T. if I can find a jpg or pdf of our floorplan I will include it if the above description is not sufficent information. Is there a better way to spend $1000 or less to get serious bass in this large a space without resorting to a much larger box such as the BFM designs?

I noticed from the speccifications that the X7i uses the KG 623x7 armature, and the older X5 uses the KG 623. I also noticed that the X7i has a little less advertised sensitivity than the X5 (110 vs 115 dB @ 1 mw) I am wondering if the character of the sound is any different than the X5, which is my current favorite Klipsch in-ear that I have tried thus far (well, I do like the Custom 3's sound a bit better, but the X5 is so much more user friendly.) The sensitivity difference has me wondering if they tweaked the driver somewhat from the X5 version. Once the android version comes out, I will be all over it as long as it is still near the X5 in tonal quality. Wonder if the android version will be available before Christmas?

I have Custom 3's, Image X-5, Image X-10, and S4's. I like the Custom 3 the best followed by the X-5's. I did have an initial problem with the Custom's getting turned in my ear such that it really blocked the high frequencies, although I was still getting the bass. The original dark tips that come with the custom series are actually a bit too soft and seem to pinch off the exit throat quite easily. The free tips you can get when your register your set seem to be a little more rigid at the exit throat and don't pinch off so easily. That was a big step in the right direction, but it still took me a little fiddling with the memory wire to get the Customs aimed right down my ear canals, and they still require just a bit of fiddling to keep right, but do seem to have the additional sound quality to make the effort worthwile. I suppose it is possible you got grey market goods, because my S4's from an authorized dealer seem to have more bass than all the others, although it isn't as tight and accurate as the balanced armature models. It seems that my Custom 3's sound a lot like the S4's if you use the reduced bass setting on a classic Ipod with the S4s (actually reduces the mid bass just a little too much, but by reducing the midbass like this it makes the deeper bass seem to extend further by comparison.) Some of the Ipod series seem to have rolled off bass below 200 hz according to some other posts, I think if one were using the S4's with one of those units everything might come out balanced (I suppose that may actually be by design!)

Just lost a long post, hopefully this doesn't duplicate the same questions: I am a longtime Klipsch fan and year long or so lurker on these forums who is finally ready to start to build a system. I want to be able to do both 2 channel and eventually a home theater. I have the opportunity locally to pick up either a $500 set of Forte II's or a $350 set of KLF-20's I have seen both speakers highly praised on this forum. If money and WAF was no factor, I am sure I would be trying to get a set of 2 way Jubilees custom built but that is currently out of the question. I don't have an appropriate room and am still somewhat nomadic as my job seems to keep moving every few years. Hit me with your opinion for either set at the above prices with the thought that these would also eventually form the mains for a 5.1 or 7.1 home theater system. I do not yet have an amp or preamp/signal processor, but like what I have read about the Emotiva equipment here. It is unlikely I will go to tubes anytime soon so if the KLF is too bright for decent solid state equipment like the RF-7 is reputed to be, that would be good to know. I suppose Heresey III's would make good center/surrounds for the Forte II's but am not sure what of the Klipsch line might be a good match tonally for the KLF's and if it would be a long term scavenger hunt to find companions. I have read about the aging capacitors on the crossovers, and have looked over Bob Crite's website, so kind of have a handle on the fact that some maintenance may be required on 15 year old speakers. Not sure if there is much avilability for parts/upgrades for the KLF's so would be glad to hear about anything related to that topic in case I come across a blown driver I at least know where to bargin from. If I end up with an el-cheapo receiver for the very short term, which of the above presents the easiest load to drive? I would guess the Forte's since there is only one woofer involved. Any comments on preamp/signal processessors for 3-D TV would be appreciated. I know nothing about this topic that is not dated by 20 years or more, but I understand just about everything is going to HDMI. I don't know if the 3-D signal requires anthing special about the preamp or if all the magic occurs in the Blu-Ray player and TV. (and active glasses) Well, that is only like 20 questions or so, so I guess my game is up. What say you all?

+1 to that! Make mine in an Image form factor with the sonic signature of the Custom 3's and throw in an additional dB or two of sensitivity and I will be ALL over them.

For the money, the S4 model ($80) with the Ipod sounds really good. I have a classic 80Gb Ipod and if I use the reduced bass setting on the EQ it makes the S4's really close to the C3 and X5 models. With no EQ curve the bass is actually almost too much. If you are hard on things and don't expect to be able to reasonably make a warranty claim, you might be able to score a set off of Craigslist or something. I got a set of X-5s that way for about the price of a set of S4's. For maximum durability I would go X-5 or S4. Haven't tried the $50 S2 to see how it stacks up with those. First generation X10s had some occasional problems with splitting strain reliefs, and the custom series has been discontinued. If you do run across a custom, they have a moldable earhook that could get mangled, as well as some finicky cables that have a tendency to kink up with less than careful care. (but the C-3's sound GREAT, just a hair better than the X-5's in my opinion) P.S. back in the day I had a Pioneer SA8800. Was a college kid and got it off a pawnshop. Didn't know what I had and virtually gave the thing away 10 years ago...

Does anyone know if Klipsch modified their ear gels sometime since introduction? My original Image ear gels look somewhat different from the new sets I recently got from Klipsch. The newer ones seem to have a radiused exit hole where the old ones almost had a sharp edged exit throat. I only half jokingly wonder if it is a modified tractix curve shape. There does seem to be some benefit, my custom 3's had the old style and would often get choked off against my ear canal. The newer opening being somewhat bigger has a much less tendency to do this. I also noticed that the original black gels look really cool on the X5 images... I also wonder if the "newer" radiused design is available in black. Would buy a few sets for sure. I like the dark color better than natural silicone. Did someone spike my brownies or has anyone else noticed this...