rgdawsonco

Man, centers are tough. I have spent lots of hours getting centers to blend and it is never perfect unless your center is identical to your fronts, as Scrappydo always says. That said do not give up. Given you have Chorus fronts, I think spending money on the RC 64ii might improve things, but maybe not by much. For me, as others have said, the horizontal center won't sound the same cuz it is usually mounted lower. It is usually mounted closer to a back wall, often in a cabinet, maybe with a TV on top of it. Room correction, like Audessey, can help. In my room, after a lot of experimentation, I found better results by aiming my center about a foot above ear level and setting the crossover frequency the same as fronts. I recently got Palladiums and the matching center. They match pretty well, but the center location still makes it imperfect. I still had to rely on Audessey and experimentation and aiming high to get the best results. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I did, but the space just not right for them.

So, I took advantage of the big discounts on Palladiums and ordered a set of P-37’s, along with the center and surrounds in Merlot. I did not order the sub as it is just too big for me and I already had the RT-10D, which is excellent and compact. The Palladiums replace KLF-20s/C7 and KSP-S6 surrounds. They arrived roughly a couple weeks ago. I am driving them with a Denon AVR-X6200W, and I use Audessey room correction. After many years of tinkering, I had my KLF-20’s really, really dialed into my room and they sounded beyond excellent. My expectations for the Palladiums were better looks, slightly better mids/highs, slightly better imaging, and significantly better center integration/matching. I had my doubts about bass, but given I am running a good sub, I was confident I could get the bass dialed in and would be at least as good. In short, my hope was that these would provide the best sound I have ever heard. (No pressure, haha). The first thing to happen was that my RT-10D subwoofer inexplicably died right at the beginning, so it is in the shop, and I am without sub. When I first turned them on (no sub, no Audessey), I immediately noticed that the P’s had potential, mids/highs were smoother and clearer, and I was very surprised by the quality of the bass. But I knew I had some work to do to get the P’s dialed into my room. Now, I have to say again, the previous KLF-20s were really dialed in, so I had a good idea of the sound I was expecting. After two weeks and probably 20 hours of adjusting speaker positions, running Audessey, dozens of times, with multiple Audessey mic patterns, multiple speaker positions, and driving my wife crazy, last night it finally clicked. And Oh. My. God. It was goose-bump-city all evening. Yes, this is the best sound I have ever achieved in my house. Here are my a few tracks that I use to know if I am dialed in: Blue Ray: I use the movie “Battleship”. This movie has tremendous sound effects. When the alien ship breaks up and slams into earth, the explosion effects are supreme. When a piece of the alien ship slams into a glass skyscraper the explosions and smashing glass is incredible. I expect this to improve when I get my sub back, but I am pleasantly surprised how good the P’s perform without the sub. Music: Mark Knopfler – Album: Golden Heart, Track: Golden Heart. This song has some delicate guitar, delicate vocals, along with bass note that has always been a challenge to get sounding perfect in my room. Greg Brown – Album: Down In There, Track: Hillbilly Girl. This song has acoustic guitar, a delicate deep simple drum beat, and vocals that that will sound grating/awful if my midrange is not dialed in. Yarn – Album: Yarn, Track: Listen Up Sweetheart. This song has acoustic bass, steel guitar, mandolin, gentle snare drum and a certain spaciousness that I look for. Many others, but I use the above ones because I am very familiar with them and they tell me when something ain’t right. Overall happy camper here! Pics:

I think the Denon AVR-X4200W is an excellent choice to go with RF-7s. I tend to keep speakers forever, but receivers seem to need upgrading every 2-3 years as they come out with new surround formats, new HDMI specs, resolutions, etc. Given that, it does not make sense to spend more on a receiver than you did. Perfect choice. And given the sensitivity of the Klipsch gear, you will likely be fine even as you add surround sound (in a average size room). If you do need more power you can add an external power amp that will never become obsolete as you upgrade receivers in the coming years. You will love your new system. I find the Audessey Room calibration in the Denon's to be excellent. Definitely use it. It will provide two curves, "Audessey" and "Audessey Flat", By default it will use "Audesse"y which applies a very slight attenuation in the higher frequency range. "Flat" does not. Choose the curve you like. I happen to like the default with the Klipsch's.

Here's a link on speaker wire gauge guidelines. This wiki recommends keeping wire resistance to <5% of rated speaker impedance and includes a table by gauge, by length, by rated speaker impedance. Yours are 8 ohm, so 14 AWG would be good for a run of up to 80 ft, using this guideline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_wire

Here is that link I mentioned before with a table as to what gauge to use with speaker load by length. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_wire

The rule of thumb I have seen is that you want to keep the resistance of you wire run to less than 5% of the nominal impedance of your speaker to keep in inaudible. This is usually pretty easy to do with short runs wit 8ohm speakers. If you have 4 ohm speakers like Palladiums and a 30 foot run, then you might need 12 gauge to achieve less than 5%. There is a table on Wikipedia. If doing the calculation yourself be sure to include double the wire length as you have to account for both strands. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Not one mention of Palladiums...hmmmm.

Kept getting this call from Seattle. Kept ignoring it. Then I finally realized it was Amazon trying to confirm the order. Glad they kept trying. Showing as shipped already. Arrival 7-10 days from now. Told the wife I ordered the Merlot. She says "Oh good, I can see you are so excited! I said, "I'm gonna have them the rest of my life." She says, "I know, I'm gonna bury you in one of them." I said, "Well, I didn't get the big ones.", haha. I hope I don't regret not getting the P-38s.

I have always felt that I like Klipsch 3-way designs best. Outside the Heritage Series, the KLF's were the last of the 3-way designs and so I have stayed with them since I got them back in the 90's when they came out. They have been one of the best purchases ever for me, and I got my money's worth, that's for sure. I hope and expect these Palladiums to be a similarly good purchase. I'm not expecting miracles in sound improvement, there is no such thing as perfection in this hobby. But they are beautiful, will sound great, probably better than what I have, and will last me the next couple decades. I'll be happy with that.

Thank you. At these prices, it's a heck of a deal. I feel good about this decision. I wonder if Klipsch will follow up with another similar line or if they will just pull out of this market segment.

Well, I took the plunge. Ordered P-37s, the center, the surrounds. Went with Merlot. I could have gone either way on color, but I know the wife will like the Merlot. Thank you all for your comments and advice. It was helpful.

I have a 75ft dual cat 6 run in my house, but it only does 1980i. I have not heard of any dual cat 6 solutions that do 18gbs. Are there any? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

In most the pictures the espresso just looks solid dark brown. I think the grain gives them the wow factor. If the espresso supplies that then I'm leaning back towards espresso. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I am nearly positive I will buy the P-37s, center, and probably surrounds. Asked wife to pick color but she can't decide between Merlot and Espresso. The Espresso would probably blend into my room better, but the Merlots look so impressive and show more grain. We are leaning Merlot. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I have recently been following the JVC owners forum at AVS and that last 100 pages have been on the topic of issues with UHD 4K and cables among other issues, including issues with active cables, since the Samsung UHD BD player came out. The UHD 4K spec requires cables capable of 18gbps and the results have been very flaky. From what I am seeing there, 40ft might be a challenge. They are tearing their hair out trying to get 6ft to work. Most of the video pros over there like Monoprice and the cable you reference claims 18gbps capability. And by the time you move to 4K (and upgrade pretty much everything in your signal path) the HDMI chipsets might be better, and cables might be better. But currently there are lots of issues out there with 18gbps. I'd say go with the monoprice, but be prepared and able to change the cable if and when you have issues. Alot of people over there are having issues with cables that are supposedly spec'd to work. Many have purchased a device called HD Fury ($250) or used other techniques like receiver or display settings to manipulate the encoding (to lower the bit rate) to get things to work.

Last sentence - This is good to hear and what I would hope for. We all know the KLF-20 cabinets are notoriously awful and resonant. The KLF-20's are usually great, but sometimes inconsistent. Imaging is usually good, but acoustic instruments sometimes wander, changing location and "size" depending on the notes. My expectation would be that the Palladiums could perform better here. But Home Theater is important, too. I'm looking for realism. I want everyday sounds (e.g. a car door shutting, dialog, gunfire, a phone ringing) to sound real. Traditional Klipsch has consistently done this very well for me.

Wow. OK then, you are the type I had hoped to hear from. You have owned them all (that could not have been inexpensive, haha). And after all that, I see from your signature that you currently use the RF-7's for Home Theater and the Cornwalls for 2-Channel. This speaks volumes to me. Please tell me what you like about the RF-7s and more on your opinions on the Palladiums. There must be some reason you didn't keep them.

Thanks for the replies. This is my home theater room. As you can see, I am a little space challenged. The size of even the P-37's is pushing it as the space in front of the speakers is a walkway and I don't have room to bring the speakers very much out from the wall. I am even considering the RF-7/RC-64 as they are not as deep and the RC-64 is sealed allowing me to put it as close to the wall as I want. In either case, I will be using a sub and crossing over to the mains at 40-60Hz as recommended in the Palladium brochure, so maybe that would mitigate not being able to get them away from the back wall. I also will utilize Audessey Room Correction, which may also help mitigate this arrangement. It all works well with my KLF's. (No way to fit Heritage models.) I also lack side walls for surrounds, so I have compromised with KSP-S6's on the back wall as wide as I dare and taking advantage of their side firing design. This arrangement is mostly Home Theater. When I listen to music, it is mostly acoustic (e.g. Lumineers, Munford & Sons, Yarn, etc) and I my ears are sensitive to shortcomings in accuracy there. The other shortcoming of the KLF system is the C7 center, which in my opinion, does not mate perfectly with the KLF-20's and I would expect the Palladiums to be much better. The P-17B's might be an option, but I have never been a big fan of bookshelves. I like big sound. Ideas, comments welcome.

thought we were closer than that? This made me laugh :-)

I posted recently about noticing the big discounts on Palladiums the other day. So I says to the wife, "Hey, Those speakers I have always wanted are on sale big time." She says, "You mean those nice ones we saw at Listen Up that I liked?" I say, "No, those were the B & Ws. Those are really, really expensive. I'm talking about the Klipsch Palladiums. The Palladiums are less." Then she says, "Well, do you love the them?" To which I say, "Which ones?" And she says, "You tell me. Just make sure to get what you love...because you're gonna croak with 'em." (That's our inside - meant to be humorous - way of identifying those once in a lifetime purchases of something you really love. Normal rules of prudence are relaxed in such rare cases, haha.) The problem is I have never heard them so I can only guess. So those of you that bought them. Do you love them? Would you do it again? Any regrets? My Legend series KLF-20s, C7, systems is going on 20 years old and I'm considering the P-37Fs and P-27 center. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I am thinking about P-17B's or the P-37F's along with the P-27C center paired with my existing sub, a klipsch RT-10d. But I sit only 12ft away from them, and of course no way to try before I buy. My old KLF-20s/KLF-C7 work well in this room/setting, so I'm guessing the Palladiums would, also, but I'm not sure.

Of course, the P-39F's come in left and right, but the price is still half MSRP and the same appears so for the rest of the line. I take this as a sign they are being discontinued, but I have not read that anywhere other than a post where someone said they "heard" that they were being discontinued.

I am seeing Palladiums heavily discounted, as in about half MSRP (on Amazon via Sound Distributors). What the heck is going on? Are they being discontinued? Is something new coming? Might be time to get some.

I guess it's just the picture. The center looked a foot or more closer. Sounds like your system is optimal for HT. I wasn't really sure on the center, so I threw that out there. I have the same center, and I like it for movies. But i don't use it for music. Tell us more about the acoustic treatments.