yepimonfire

60hz worked well for me. The R-15m are great speakers for the price. Neutral sounding and excellent imaging. The RP series is a lot better though, especially when pushed louder . The 160m has a lot of headroom, and easily reaches 35hz in room with no distortion at high volume. Just give the speakers at least 3-6” from the wall.

Any idea why Klipsch decided to use a higher xover on their floor speakers than the bookshelves? The 250/260f are crossed at 1800hz and the 280f is crossed at 1750hz, while the bookshelves and centers are crossed at 1500hz. The II series had lower crossovers for the larger horns in the rf 82 II and the rb 81, at 1400hz. Seems to me as far as controlled directivity goes a higher xover with the bigger woofers would result in worse directivity control than the bookshelves.

A friend and I went through and compared a bunch of speakers to my 160m’s when we got to speakers well above the price class of the Klipsch, they did just as well, the only difference heard was that the Klipsch had better transient response and the vento did slightly better at revealing the “air” of the recording room, but neither was preferred over the other. He liked them so well he has decided to replace his HT setup with reference premieres. My mind was blown, I expected the ultra high end speakers to destroy the Klipsch.

Need an R-115sw in there for play back of the “brown note” to aid in occasional constipation relief.

The sound of the new reference series isn’t laid back, it’s just that the reference II series had a hot top end, whereas the new series is pretty much ruler flat across the entire frequency range. B&W’s have a colored sound due to a sloping response and a bumped up midbass, Klipsch Reference Premieres are very neutral sounding.

Tweeter power handling is also less of an issue with Klipsch as well since direct radiating tweeters are already about 3 or more dB sensitive than woofers, horn loaded tweeters are 10dB or more. Most of the content in music and even movies is centered between 100hz and 2khz as well. Also, while it’s fine to list an in room sensitivity, I’d prefer if they gave the anechoic as well, since most people have no idea what it is.

FLAC doesn’t discard redundant data in the way you’re thinking. To put it in simpler terms, let’s say you have a 2 second part of the song that’s silent, that silence at 16bits/sample and 44100 samples a second wastes almost half a MB, an FLAC encoder can reduce this wasted space by replacing the silence with a small amount of data marking it as silence vs encoding 88 thousand strings of 0000000000000000. Often times stereo content has identical data in the left and right channels like a vocalist, an FLAC encoder can cut this in half and mark it as a shared channel, so instead of 1.5mbps of data, it now only takes up 750kbps. All of this is reversed upon decoding leaving an exact copy of the original PCM file. Think of it like this, when you ZIP a file, does it somehow destroy parts of that file? Of course not, if it did, those files would be corrupt. Flac is pretty much the winzip for pcm.

The correct answer here would be “not as loud as my wife”.

Do you mean rf 52 or r 25f?

Totally agree. Even with regular reference stuff I can get plenty of spl with a cheap Chinese mini amp. My buddy has a pair of icon bookshelves and one of those lepai amps, which was tested by old school stereo on YouTube to just barely do 7 watts into 8 ohms and we tested it out and cranked the volume until we could hear distortion. Managed to get 97dB at 8’ away, which is way louder than he cares to listen. Personally, I’ve heard absolutely no difference in sound quality from one amp to the next, and I can’t objectively find any reason why a properly designed solid state amp would sound different. Rather put that money into speakers, where one CAN hear a big difference.

No, but I frequently watch movies with the volume cranked loud enough to hit 95-100dB peaks per speaker, and 110 total on the spl meter.

My room is very well treated. I do not have any issues whatsoever with clarity from the center. I’m just talking headroom. If the avr turns the bigger center down 3dB, that means at the same volume, it only takes half as much power, freeing up headroom for the rest of the speakers. I’ve always been of the opinion that it makes a lot more sense to get more efficient speakers than to just throw stupid amount of power at them. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We’re the kind of people who mount Heresy’s to the ceiling for Atmos, or place commercial cinema speakers in an average sized living room [emoji3] Maybe everyone else is just under doing it? Lol I guess the benefit is we don’t really have to worry about whether or not our lower powered AV receiver has enough headroom. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Damn. 130dB is entirely unnecessary lol. I’m perfectly satisfied with enough headroom to playback movies at -10 to -5dB from Reference with no distortion. I suppose if you have a huge room greater than 30’ with multiple seats for HT that kind of dynamic headroom would make sense, since you lose 6dB with each doubling of distance. Efficiency and dynamics is why I’m a fan of Klipsch. 90% of your average two way bookshelves or towers start really straining at higher volumes. Klipsch just take it. With their reference and premiere series, the cerametallic woofer is so rigid, there is virtually no distortion until you exceed xmax, causing the voice coil to travel past the magnetic gap. Unless another manufacturer starts designing horn loaded speakers with constant/controlled directivity that can perform similarly, ill likely be loyal to Klipsch indefinitely. Especially now that their latest series has virtually solved all of their inherent problems (such as brightness/harshness). Their premier series is damn near studio monitor accurate, as you can see from close miked individual driver measurements, they’re +2dB, -1dB. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

For example, is it pink noise? Long term, short term? Burst? Be nice to know since they fail to disclose the fact they add 4dB to their sensitivity rating for “in room” sensitivity in their spec sheets. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They still do on their subs and the rf 7 II/III, unfortunately, without knowing how they derived the number , it’s meaningless. Just like their inflated sensitivity ratings, the only reason I know they add 4dB for “room gain” is because I dug up a post on this forum where they stated that, there are no standards in the consumer market unlike the pro market, so unless manufacturers state how they got that number (ie full bandwidth pink noise @1m, half space, full space etc) its anyone’s guess. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I just purchased the 160ms to replace my 150ms, which will be moved to the surrounds. Currently, I’m using a 250c for a center. As far as pure surface area for displacement goes, the 6.5” woofers of the 160ms have a surface area of 33” square, while the dual 5.25” drivers in the 250c have a combined surface area of 43”. I am well aware the center channel is the most important speaker, since 60-70% of the entire soundtrack, including loud, dynamic effects like explosions are anchored to it. The 250c has the same sensitivity as the 160m, and is 3dB more efficient than my current 150m, which seems about right, since Audyssey has calibrated my center 4dB lower than my 150m. Do I actually need the extra headroom from the 450c or would I benefit from it at all? My room is 2000 cu ft and the couch is 11’ from the front, I’m a bit crazy with the volume levels, usually watching movies with the receiver set to -15dB to -5dB. I’m currently running a 5.1.2 atmos setup with 150ms as the fronts, a 250c center, and r-15ms for the surrounds. The top middle are rb 10s mounted to the ceiling with an omnimount. All speakers except the ceiling speakers are crossed over at 60hz, ceiling speakers (rb 10s) are crossed over at 80hz. I will be moving the 150ms to the rear once the 160ms arrive. The heights and surrounds are only 6’ away, so they won’t require as much power. My surrounds are currently calibrated at 2dB less than the front. My main goal is having ample headroom to handle the volume level I watch at. With movies at -5dB, this means each speaker needs to be able to produce a peak spl of 100dB. My receiver is rated 80wpc @8ohms. With multichannel content blasting away, I’d expect this figure to land somewhere around 60wpc. If you subtract the 4dB Klipsch tacks on to their sensitivity rating for room gain, that’s 92dB a 1m for the 250c. At 60w and 11’ away, that’s still around 100dB. The 450c only adds an extra 1dB. Any opinions? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Curious myself, I decided to see how much spl I could get at a distance of 11’ at my couch in a 2000 cu ft room from my relatively modest RP-150ms. I finally topped out at 100dB, limited mainly by the xmax of the woofer @50hz. You can see the THD at 50hz 100dB here. An impressively low 3.6% distortion. Good luck getting that kind of dynamic headroom out of a different brand speaker of similar size! I’ve seen tower speakers break down at those spl levels. I can only imagine the amount of unsafe volume levels one could achieve with a 280f or even an rf 7III... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

About 60% of effects come from the center too. I’d much rather have a bigger more capable center channel than bigger l/r speakers and a puny center. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I usually listen -10dB from Reference level using the 150ms and 250c in a 1900 cu ft room 11 feet from the mains, and have no issue reaching this volume without distortion. I also have the fronts crossed over at 50hz, and they will happily play a 50hz sine wave at -10dB without distortion as well. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just temporarily with picture hanging strips, but one could mount them with an omnimount provided they don’t mind putting holes into the cabinet. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yup, but just because a horn has a nominal pattern doesn’t mean it’s constant with frequency. All of the reference stuff I’ve measured displays constant directivity, the premier and icon “reference” is even better than the II series. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yup, but just because a horn has a nominal pattern doesn’t mean it’s constant with frequency. All of the reference stuff I’ve measured displays constant directivity, the premier and icon “reference” is even better than the II series. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have RB-10s mounted to the ceiling with an omnimount like so Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you read the Dolby Atmos home theater paper, it states that ceiling speakers should have a 90 degree dispersion pattern out to 10khz. Many have commented with woes finding a speaker with such a wide pattern, necessitating aiming of speakers and a fairly narrow range of decent seats in a home theater. Since Klipsch gives a 90x90 dispersion spec with their speakers, I decided to test out whether or not they could meet atmos specs. I mounted an R-14m speaker flush to the ceiling, and placed the mic 45 degrees off axis vertically and horizontally 6’ away, and ran a sweep up to 20khz. A 3ms window was applied to remove reflections from the measurements. Oddly enough, the windowing caused a strange jump around 600hz, which should be ignored. As you can see from the graph, the speaker manages -3dB off axis all the way out to 13khz, exceeding the requirements. If one is considering ceiling speakers for atmos, where a large number of seats off axis vertically are concerned, Klipsch just might be a good solution. Anyone else know of any wide dispersion speakers that can meet Dolby’s specs? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk