Ralph Lopez

What a fun and interesting discussion this became. I wish we all knew each other and lived close enough to hang out and listen to great music over so many wonderful systems. I’ll report back as the IVs break in but I think I know what to expect, as many Klipsch speakers as I’ve owned. If you can swing buying them, I recommend them. Roy Delgado has been indispensable in improving PWK’s designs. So far, the improvements between the series III speakers and series IV seem to be the best and most immediately noticeable, to my ears, anyway. Happy listening, friends!

I have 5 full-blown systems, three at my house and two at my brothers. I buy gear, mostly without audition, then try it it, almost always like it a lot, then get the bug later on for something better, buy it when I have the money, and then get too busy and too lazy to package up what I end up not using too much anymore and either shift it to my brother’s home or put it in a closet, sometimes bringing it back out to mix and match with a new change somewhere in one of the other components (speakers, amps, preamps, DACS, power conditioners, interconnects. It’s nuts, I know, but it’s the only thing I blow money on and I have been fortunate enough to make a comfortable living so don’t worry about it too much. I owned Forte speakers and they are the closest in sound to the Cornwalls, now that the Klipsch Chorus speakers are out of their Heritage lineup. I agree with you about watts, generally, but have known specific exceptions (and there must be many more than I am familiar with). As I write, I own and have in my home the Cornwalls, Volti Audio Razz, DeVore O93, and Epos M22 speakers. Amp wise, I have a Shindo single-ended Cortese (10 watts), Shindo push-pull Montille (20 watts), Line Magnetic 845 (single ended, 20 watts), McIntosh 275 tube push pull (75 watts), Decware “Rachel” (6 watts, single-ended tube), and Pass Labs XA-25 (Class A, 25 watts). At my brother’s house, I have 2 identical Conrad Johnson ET 250s (tube input, solid state output to 250 watts), Pass Lab XA60 monoblocks (60 watts, Class A), and Adcom something or other (250 watts, Class AB). I have hooked those up to the entire array of Klipsch Heritage speakers I’ve owned and they all sound fantastic, except for the Shindo Cortese (too few watts and transformer-wound for 16, not 8, ohms), Decware (just too few watts) and Adcom (way too dry and sterile-sounding). But the watts have not necessarily corresponded to the sonic weight or speed of the speakers. The biggest sounding of all those amps is the little 20 watt Shindo Montille. That amp boogies like NONE of the other on the Cornwalls. So does the 20 watt SET Line Magnetic 845. Huge sounding. But each of the other amps, save the Adcom and Decware, also sounded great in slightly different ways. I guess the proof that I did not necessarily prefer one to the other is the fact that I still cycle them through as the mood or curiosity strikes me. Klipsch can be very revealing of changes upstream so I have found that I have to be just as careful matching preamps as amps. I generally prefer tube electronics, especially if they don’t very obviously sound like tube electronics, to solid state. But Class A solid state designs, like Pass Labs, compare very favorably with everything else I have heard. For what I pay for DACs, preamps and amps, some people have told me that I should spend more on speakers. I have not found that to be the case, though. Klipsch, in my opinion, are very underrated in the audiophile community. Matched with the right electronics, they can do things most other speakers cannot without really expensive, massive amps. With the Cornwall IVs matched to my electronics, I can make them sound different but about as wonderful as my DeVore or Harbeth speakers, which, for good reason, are well-regarded among audiophiles. I love them. Hell, I love them all. But I really love Klipsch, for delivering what they do for the price. I know that you know what I mean.

I am a 63 year old longtime music lover and sometime audiophile. I very rarely join in on conversations about any of the equipment I own or have owned because my “testing” is simply based on my own anecdotal experience, in my own idiosyncratic listening-rooms, with my own (mostly unusual) combination of components. But I now own a pair of Cornwall IV, the purchase of which required I trade-in my beloved Cornwall III. I bought the IVs without first hearing them because I also own a pair of Heresy IIIs and IVs, too, and I thought the improvement in sound between those two sets of speakers probably would also demonstrate the likely direction of differences between the two latest generations of Cornwalls. First, let me state this: the forth generation of either of those two speakers definitely sound more appealing than the already pretty good third generation. Their bass and treble are more extended and their midrange projects more than the earlier generation. The crossovers reportedly have been changed to steep-slope designs, which I really did not understand the significance of until I heard them. Basically, to my ears, there is little to no overlap now between the frequencies at the crossing over points between the tweeter and midrange, midrange and woofer. Whether or not that explains what difference in sound you will hear, I can tell you that, to my ears from my listening chair, the sound is just a good deal more clear. I hate to say this, but, within its limitations as a wide-baffle/box speaker, the speakers both, but especially the already-better-sounding Cornwalls, sound more audiophile (as I compare them to my audiophile level Harbeth HL5 Super Plus and DeVore Orangutan 93 speakers). I cannot yet say they sound more natural because neither or broken-in yet, but it is pretty obvious that they are better. I drive my Cornwalls in a large room with a Line Magnetic 845 20 watt SET, which is designed as an integrated amp but which I bypass directly to the amp because I drive the amp with a Shindo Vosne-Romanee preamplifier, fed signal from a Denafrips Terminator Plus receive streaming signal from a Bluesound Node playing mostly Tidal higher-res recordings. Until I got the Cornwall IVs, the system with which I use the DeVore speakers sounded better, though less dynamic and exciting. That system utilizes a Shindo Cortese SET with a Shindo Masseto preamp and Holo Audio Kitsune Edition DAC from my computer. The Cornwalls IIIs were more fun to listen to in the larger room but the DeVore setup clearly was more resolving. It is a closer thing now with the Cornwall IV. My experience is that when more modern iterations of Klipsch Heritage speakers sound less musical it is either because they are driven by mismatched electronics (Class AB solid state other than more expensive brands, like McIntosh, Pass Labs, Krell, something like that) or the listener is more familiar with electrostatics or narrow-baffle ultra-modern audiophile designs, neither of which recreate the genuine tone and timbre of live music, in my experience (though please do not misunderstand me: I occasionally have LOVED the sound I have heard over certain Quad, Magnepan, Focal, Golden Ear etc. speakers). They don’t soundstage or image like the speakers that do that best. Neither does most of the live music I have heard. What they do, however, is sound closer to live music with the result that I enjoy recorded music nearing to the way I do listening to live music, which often has the hairs on the back of neck standing. If that is what you like, too, I think you will thoroughly enjoy Cornwall IVs. For me, they are quite good enough to pair with Line Magnetic, Shindo and Denafrips.