cbope

my rooms are always deeper than wide. Trust me when I say the 62 horns WILL make a huge difference. Like I said I've owned them all. Two room they have been in are 11x17 and the other is 12x23. Big difference. Both rooms.See if there are any other dealers in your area. If you wanna upgrade this is the only way Id go. Otherwise you could step to the RP-260f and 450c. I just had that combo and it's good. Unfortunately, the only other dealers in Finland sell at full retail. The place I normally buy my home electronics (and Klipsch) is like a Best Buy on steroids. It's actually the largest discount electronics store in Europe. Unfortunately, they don't always have the complete line. For the new RP's, they have only the floor-standers and bookshelf models, the new centers are not even listed yet. And the RII's are all gone, except a lone RF-52. I guess now is not the right time, I'll wait for a while before considering an upgrade.

Sorry, my mistake, you're correct. The 51's are rear-ported.

Well, the store just made the decision for me. After I refreshed the item page, they marked the RF-52 as closeout and knocked 100€ off the cost of each speaker. Sold! Edit: And not sold. It appears the store has only a single speaker left in stock.

Thanks for the recommendations. Upgrading to RII 6x isn't an option, the store doesn't have them any more. There is exactly one pair of RF-52's left... and then only the new RP's are available. I'm quite happy with my 5x RII series. That's interesting about the jump from 5x to 6x, because when I bought my system a couple years ago, I heard the jump from 4x to 5x was bigger than the jump from 5x to 6x. The only thing I don't like about the 5x is that the bass port is on the baffle rather than the back. I don't think the difference in horns would matter much in my room, which is deeper than wide and not all that big to start with.

I currently have a 5.1 home theater setup with the following: RB-51 II L/R fronts RC-52 II center RB-41 II L/R surrounds Dali 12" sub (Klipsch subs not available where I live) I use the system for music, movies and TV. Movies are either upscaled DVD's or Blu-ray. My music library is lossless FLAC ripped directly from CD and played back using a custom-built Kodi HTPC with an HDMI connection to the AVR. Everything is driven through a Sony ES series AVR. I'd like to upgrade to larger L/R fronts and at the same time expand to 7.1. I'm looking at either the RF-52's or the new RP-250's to replace my RB-51's, which would then move to the surround position and the RB-41's would move to the rear surround position. Price is not really an issue, the difference is fairly small. My question is how well will the new RP-250 blend in with the older Reference II's in discrete surround mode? Based on what I've read, the RP's should be an improvement in sound quality over the RII line and this would improve music playback (stereo 2.1 mode) compared to the RII's. But I'm worried the RP's will sound "different" enough to the rest of my RII system that the immersion in movies will take a hit. Should I go for the RB's or pick up the RF-52's while I still can and pocket the small savings?

One last thing regarding hooking up 2 speakers to a single channel. You need to be careful not to exceed the amp's speaker rating by giving it a load greater than it is rated for. For example driving a 4 ohm speaker with an amp rated for 8 ohms. When you wire up 2 speakers, you have 2 choices: series or parallel wiring. In series wiring, you wire the - amp output to one of the speaker's - terminal, connect a wire from the + terminal of the same speaker to the - terminal of the second speaker and finally from the + terminal of the second speaker to the amp's + terminal. In parallel wiring, you wire the - amp output to both speaker's - terminals and the + amp output to both speaker's + terminal. Where you have to be careful is the parallel configuration. When wired in parallel, the speaker impedence of the two speakers together will be halved. For example, wire two 8 ohm speakers in parallel and the impedence to the amp is now only 4 ohms. Too low for many amps to drive without shutting down. In series wiring, you don't need to worry, because the impedences are then additive, in other words two 8 ohm speakers wired in series becomes 16 ohms. Using a higher impedence will not damage the amp, but it will require more power to reach the same volume levels as an 8 ohm load.

Not all modern amps or AVR's can drive 4 ohm speakers. If you try to drive 4 ohm speakers with an amp that is rated only for 8 ohms, you will likely trip the amp's protection circuitry. If it's a very poor design it could even damage the amp.

The difference you are seeing is because a multimeter can only give you a DC resistance measurement, not an impedence measurement. DC resistance you can measure directly with a multimeter, but impedence is a bit more complicated, because it is the effective "resistance" to an AC signal. You won't be measuring impedence with a simple multimeter directly, it must be based on measurements and calculation together. That's a very over-simplified description, but my point is that since speakes are rated based on thier impedence, not resistance, a simple measurement will not give you the correct results. This is why an 8 ohm rated speaker may measure a different DC resistance using a multimeter.

Another vote for Iron Man I. And one I didn't see so far: Chronicles of Riddick. Although I haven't tried this one since my recent Klipsch upgrade, need to do that soon. Sounded great on my old setup, especially the opening bit where Riddick is being chased by the bounty hunter in the hovercraft. Sounds like I really need M&C on Blu-ray, have it on DVD only.

Based on my Blu-ray library which is admittedly quite small, maybe a dozen give or take, DTS MasterHD accounts for roughly 90% compared to Dolby TrueHD. I actually went Blu-ray mainly for the audio, not the picture. The lossless formats are just more defined and enveloping than lossy. I don't hear a big difference between the lossless formats, but then again there are few TrueHD to compare.

It was the NSD version, corrected it in my original post. The Plus is out of my budget.

I doubt cello tape will hold for long. The air pressure could easily push it loose, and then you might get interesting whistling noises from air passing under the tape. I would thread a short 1/4" bolt into the hole, preferably with a small o-ring to seal it.

Interesting, I would have thought that hole was sealed and not vented into the inside of the enclosure. I just got an RC-52, but unfortunately my TV is sitting on top of it so I can't easily check it. How did you close the hole?

Anyone heard of them? I'm still looking into a sub to go with my new Reference HT system. The company seems to be based in Germany, and the construction and designs look impressive. I'm looking at the Sub 2040 ESP on www.elac.de/en/index.html. The sub is a bit pricier than the SVS SB12-NSD, but it's available locally unlike the SVS which I would have to order from Norway.

Nice find. You obviously have a much different definition of "wife-friendly" than I do. My wife would *FREAK* if I came home with those for the living room. I even got "the look" when I unboxed my recent RB-51 II's and RC-52 II center, and those are far from what I would call big.

While I agree with your first point, your second point about the signals arriving faster violates the laws of physics. Assuming a copper conductor in both types of cables, there will be no difference in the speed of the signal between the two cables. Electrons travel at the same speed in the same material. However, it could be compensating for the speed of air pressure waves traveling through air to the listener. High and low frequencies do travel at different speeds although this is usually not noticeable at normal listening distances. I might have to experiment with the distance setting on the sub to see if there is any audible effect.

I doubt you can reassign the rear center to be a front speaker, at least I have never seen that option in an AVR before. As mentioned before, connecting both to a single channel may give you impedance problems. What is the impedance rating for each speaker? The majority of home speakers are 8 ohm. If you wire two 8 ohm speakers in series, you end up with a 16 ohm load on the amp. Not a big problem, except you may have level issues. At 16 ohms, if all your other speakers are rated 8 ohms, you may not be able to set the level high enough on your center channel. It won't hurt your amp though. If you wire in parallel, however, you then create a 4 ohm load on your amp. Many AVR amps cannot drive 4 ohms well, unless it is a higher end AVR which can supply a lot of current. In the worst case, you can damage your amp by pushing it to drive too low of an impedance. Even if your amp can handle it, you may have level issues anyway, as your center will now be much louder than the rest of your system. Can you use a single speaker for your center channel, or is it not able to keep up with the rest of the system?

Thanks Jason. I think I will wait and see, so far I have not noticed any noise or vibration. If it does appear a drop of superglue seems like it will do the trick.

Different THX certification. There are computer, and home theater certification, and within home theater there is selects and ultra II Precisely. I have a Logitech Z-560 4.1 computer system with THX certification. They do sound very good for a computer system, though not up to a really good set of speakers. I did actually use them for my budget HTPC system a few years ago when we were living in an apartment, and they worked well. I still have them hooked up to my gaming PC. I would not rule out a speaker that does not have THX certification, but it does help to more-or-less guarantee a certain level of performance. Of course speaker sound is very subjective, so don't rely solely on THX cert.

Different THX certification. There are computer, and home theater certification, and within home theater there is selects and ultra II Precisely. I have a Logitech Z-560 4.1 computer system with THX certification. They do sound very good for a computer system, though not up to a really good set of speakers. I did actually use them for my budget HTPC system a few years ago when we were living in an apartment, and they worked well. I still have them hooked up to my gaming PC. I would not rule out a speaker that does not have THX certification, but it does help to more-or-less guarantee a certain level of performance. Of course speaker sound is very subjective, so don't rely solely on THX cert.

My Sony DA2400ES AVR has an auto calibration function to set up the speakers, basically it sets the speaker distances for each speaker, levels, and crossover frequency. It overall seems to work well, usually with a bit of minor tweaking. But the speaker distances are somewhat off. Not a lot for main, center and surround, but the sub distance in particular. For example, my sub is exactly within a centimeter or two of my R front, but the distance for the R front is calculated as 4m 69cm while the sub ends up at 5m 92cm. A huge difference. The calibration mic was placed at the listening position for calibration. Should I correct this manually or just leave it? I wonder if actually measuring the distances with a tape measure and entering the precise dimensions for each speaker is overkill. But perhaps not. Comments?

I don't think they should be loose, only 1 or 2 per speaker are like this. The others seem to be firmly attached to the frame and do not move at all.

So, I picked up my new Reference speakers yesterday and hooked them up immediately. However, I noticed when unpacking them that a few of the small magnets that hold the grilles to the speaker cabinets are slightly loose. They don't come off, but they can be moved in and out of their holes several millimeters. I'm concerned this will vibrate at certain frequencies. Should I put a drop of superglue at the base of each magnet to lock them in place, or is this not a concern? Has anyone else found this on their Reference speakers? To be honest, I was a bit surprised at this as the build quality otherwise seems be excellent.

This is starting to go a bit off topic, but I thought I would add to it. If anyone is looking for a good sound card to drive headphones directly from a PC, seriously look into the Asus Xonar Essence STX. It has a proper 1/4" headphone jack on the back panel and an onboard headphone amplifer that is powered by a dedicated power cable from the power supply, not the bus. You can even set the output impedence to match different headphones. I use one to drive my Sennheiser HD 555's and it sounds very good. It may not rival $1000+ dedicated audiophile outboard headphone amps but it will give the less expensive ones a good run for the money. You can even change the onboard op-amps to tailor the sound, although the stock ones are pretty good.

The speakers will not be on top of the TV, they will be on stands to either side of the TV, centered at ear height. They will be approximately 5 feet apart. I believe Klipsch (and others) put the ports on the rear for space reasons on their smaller dimension speakers. The front is taken up by the drivers and the cabinet would need to be physically larger to place the port below the woofer, like it is on the larger RB-61's.