The BIG The Fives EQ update is finally here!!

[John Bee]

To enjoy the new features The Fives firmware needs to be updated. There's a new "Klipsch The Fives Updater" app that contains instructions about how to do that. It is a 2 step process:

* Step 1 is about preparing a USB thumb drive and updating The Fives from that USB drive. But that is not all, because there's a second step.

* Step 2 is about completing the update through bluetooth from the brand new "Klipsch The Fives Updater" app. Once the update is done, that app can be uninstalled because from that point on all updates will be delivered through Klipsch Connect app. No more USB flash drive or one-time-use "Klipsch The Fives Updater" app.

 

Once the above is done, then make sure to have the newest Klipsch Connect app version 1.9.0, connect The Fives to your phone via bluetooth and the Klipsch Connect app will reveal a lot new features!

 

 

Edited December 15, 2021 by John Bee

[John Bee]

After updating the Fives, the Klipsch Connect app now reveals a ton of new features!

 

 

[coldfreeze]

This is such a long-awaited updated. Now, the Fives feel complete.

[RS_audio]

New to the forum here.. just bought a set of The Fives about two weeks ago and have been testing them out so this update is well timed!!

 

Hopefully this is the right place to ask a few questions, if not please let me know..

 

1. What is "Night Mode"? Toggling on/off didn't seem to change anything..

 

2. I have an SVS SB-1000 Pro sub connected to my Fives, I assume I am seeing "Subwoofer" greyed out in the app b/c my sub is not from Klipsch and is not detected even though it is connected?

 

3. Speaker placement was also greyed out for me, anyone else seeing this?

 

I am by no means an audiophile but I do appreciate music. I was looking for an audio setup that has a nice clean profile across the range and can faithfully reproduce music. Initially, with dynamic eq on I was not happy everything sounded "boomy", turning it off helped a bit but the mid-range (vocals) sounded like they were getting pushed to the back. After connecting a sub I was shocked at how much this affects the clarity of the vocals., things sound nice and clean now. Night and day difference! After this update, I will need to see how the sub sounds and perhaps focus on placement and settings to ensure it is "disappearing" as much as possible. I kind of just set it between the two speakers on the floor..

[voro12]

On 12/18/2021 at 7:34 AM, RS_audio said:

New to the forum here.. just bought a set of The Fives about two weeks ago and have been testing them out so this update is well timed!!

 

Hopefully this is the right place to ask a few questions, if not please let me know..

 

1. What is "Night Mode"? Toggling on/off didn't seem to change anything..

 

2. I have an SVS SB-1000 Pro sub connected to my Fives, I assume I am seeing "Subwoofer" greyed out in the app b/c my sub is not from Klipsch and is not detected even though it is connected?

 

3. Speaker placement was also greyed out for me, anyone else seeing this?

 

I am by no means an audiophile but I do appreciate music. I was looking for an audio setup that has a nice clean profile across the range and can faithfully reproduce music. Initially, with dynamic eq on I was not happy everything sounded "boomy", turning it off helped a bit but the mid-range (vocals) sounded like they were getting pushed to the back. After connecting a sub I was shocked at how much this affects the clarity of the vocals., things sound nice and clean now. Night and day difference! After this update, I will need to see how the sub sounds and perhaps focus on placement and settings to ensure it is "disappearing" as much as possible. I kind of just set it between the two speakers on the floor..

 

Night mode seems to lower the bass as much as possible, not to disturb anyone in the house at night time. Speaker placement is not greyed out for me though.

[SureSoundsGreat]

On 12/18/2021 at 1:34 AM, RS_audio said:

3. Speaker placement was also greyed out for me, anyone else seeing this?

 

 

@RS_audio Can you share a screenshot of the greyed-out feature?

[DanT]

I did the update, being very careful to NOT disturb the phone or the Fives.  Everything was turned off except the Fives.  Others were tired of waiting for me to finish this.  While waiting, they pushed the disk tray button on the BluRay player to load the disk they had chosen.  Well, that powered on the BluRay, which powered on the TV, and that auto-switched the Fives from Bluetooth to HDMI TV.  This happened near the end of update step 2.  The update seems ok. 

 

Maybe the updater guards against this type of interruption, or maybe I was just lucky.  If I had thought of it, I would have disconnected HDMI from the Fives. 

[Hawkeye_a]

My setup: I have the Fives connected to a Klipsch R-100SW subwoofer.

 

Just updated my Fives successfully, and have updated the Klipsch Connect App on my iPhone. I restarted my speakers after the process.

 

Have a couple of concerns/questions:

-The volume slider in the app doesn't appear to change the volume on the speaker or the phone (while playing music via bluetooth from my phone to the Fives)

UPDATE: This seems to work now

 

-The app does not list the subwoofer I have connected to my Fives (Klipsch R-100SW). Subwoofer settings appear greyed out.

UPDATE: This seems to work now

 

-Not sure if "dynamic bass" is working (it is enabled in the app). The bass coming out of my sub seems much higher than before the update. (Just a guess, but it seems like the Fives are not taking the sub into account?)

UPDATE: “dynamic bass” is enabled (the source LED flashed twice when long-pressing the “reset-sub” button on the remote. But the bass still seems a lot louder than it was before the update)

 

-When I hit the 'reset sub volume' button on the remote, the volume level(for the sub) on the Fives LED lights appears to go to 4 out of 6 lights (which seems pretty high)

 

Cheers

 

Edited December 30, 2021 by Hawkeye_a

[Jetmo]

Would love to hear more reviews/feedback about the update.

 

I've owned the Fives for about a year and just learned the news from a recent Amazon user review. They mention the update caused some issues and had to reset the firmware to clear the update. Anyone experiencing problems? I've largely resolved my EQ issues with external tone controls. Bass and treble only, but works wonders. Is the update and the EQ firing on all cylinders? For example, can small db adjustments be dialed in to multiple frequency bands? After bass adjustments, a lot discerning owners were interested in taking slight reduction in midrange frequencies (apprx 500 hz ). I'm quite fond of the Fives' tuning once you get your bass levels right but interested nonetheless. 

Edited December 29, 2021 by Jetmo

[Kona5s]

I've had the Five's almost a year. Still haven't done a SW update, will get on it! 

 

[DanT]

On 12/26/2021 at 6:09 PM, Hawkeye_a said:

The bass coming out of my sub seems much higher than before the update.

Yes, I can confirm that the subwoofer volume is much higher after the update. 

I keep the Fives subwoofer output at the 'Reset' level, and then use the knob on the back of the subwoofer to get reasonable bass.  After the update, that knob is set close to the minimum and twitchy to set.  I expect Klipsch R-10SW to play well with Fives.  It is surprising to see this knob set so far below midrange.

 

After the update and after adjusting the knob, the Fives drive a bigger signal to the subwoofer and the knob attenuates that signal more.  If there is noise pickup on the wiring between Fives and woofer, then this update hides that noise under a bigger signal, so that might be an improvement.  I don't know if this bigger signal would hit a limit when Saving Private Ryan battle scene is playing at realistic volume.

Edited January 5, 2022 by DanT
typo

[Hannes]

Hello Community, here are our experiences with the firmware update: We were very satisfied with our The Fives and installed the update only because of the equalizer function. The update worked flawlessly, no error messages. Nevertheless, we now have two problems that worsen our user experience.

 

1. Random popping/cracking noises comming from the speakers. Sometimes left speaker, sometimes right. Mostly when changing the input channel. Occasionally when restarting a video after a pause. (HDMI)

 

2. The update has rendered the volume control on top of the speaker unusable. It works, but the gradation of the volume control is now so fine that it feels like you have to spin the wheel forever before anything changes.

 

A factory reset and reinstallation of the firmware did not change anything.

 

Has anyone had the same experience and been able to fix the problem?
If not, can I find old firmware files somewhere to downgrade the speakers?

 

Thanks for answers
Greetings from Germany, Hannes

[Hawkeye_a]

On 1/4/2022 at 7:32 PM, DanT said:

Yes, I can confirm that the subwoofer volume is much higher after the update. 

I keep the Fives subwoofer output at the 'Reset' level, and then use the knob on the back of the subwoofer to get reasonable bass.  After the update, that knob is set close to the minimum and twitchy to set.  I expect Klipsch R-10SW to play well with Fives.  It is surprising to see this knob set so far below midrange.

 

Thanks. Yes, i ended up turning down the 'gain' knob on the subwoofer. I suspect the issue is that when you turn on the speakers, it resets the sub volume to a level which corresponds to '0' in the app. So turning down the gain using the knob on the subwoofer itself seems to have 'fixed' the issue, and now i dont have to turn down the sub's volume on the speakers every time i turn them on.

 

Beyond that 'issue', the update seems fine to me and seems to work as expected (Note: I primarily feed audio into the speakers over HDMI)

 

Cheers

[JAMES 77]

I experience similar issues, occasionally a get a crackling sound coming from either left or right speaker when charging from say Bluetooth to HDMI ect.

But by far the worst is the subwoofer issue (klipsch sw100) after the update the bass is sooooo high on the subwoofer, I have my gain turned all the way down to about 1mm from 0 and also have the dynamic bass turned off, yet still it causes the subwoofer to play such incredible amounts of bass it's unusable now 😒.

I am at a loss of what to do, The Five's are Incredible before the update, and the subwoofer was perfect set at 50% gain before the update, now after the update I can't even use the subwoofer without blowing the house down.

What I really want to do is get hold of the previous update and put it back to how it was before, but I need a link to an old update but cannot find this anywhere?

 

Also the volume roller on top of the speaker is now almost useless, it takes about 50 turns to adjust the volume.

 

Any advise would be appreciated as I love klipsch, but this last update is loosing my confidence in the brand.

[Kalam]

I'm quite disappointed with the update, and difficult for me to understand why they release updates that have not been thoroughly tested. My problems:

-Volume knob became unusable as you need to spin it like a flywheel to get any noticeable difference to the sound level

-The eq is basic with only 3 bands to adjust. The problem with the Fives muffled sound has been extensively discussed in these forums, and solution is in the pic below, hello anyone at Klipsch! The same cannot be achieved with three bands only

-I've been considering of investing in a sub to clean the midrange response, but I'm now reluctant to do that given the mentioned subwoofer problems mentioned in this thread.

 

The only improvement with the app was the "vocal" mode for TV usage, but it just beefs up the midrange, making it more audible, but sound is still a bit like "behind the pillow", not clean.

 

 

 

[Kona5s]

I added the SVS 3000 micro to the mix. 

 

The recent update me went smoothly. Loving the extra control. 

 

 

[Kona5s]

On 1/22/2022 at 9:20 PM, JAMES 77 said:

I experience similar issues, occasionally a get a crackling sound coming from either left or right speaker when charging from say Bluetooth to HDMI ect.

But by far the worst is the subwoofer issue (klipsch sw100) after the update the bass is sooooo high on the subwoofer, I have my gain turned all the way down to about 1mm from 0 and also have the dynamic bass turned off, yet still it causes the subwoofer to play such incredible amounts of bass it's unusable now 😒.

I am at a loss of what to do, The Five's are Incredible before the update, and the subwoofer was perfect set at 50% gain before the update, now after the update I can't even use the subwoofer without blowing the house down.

What I really want to do is get hold of the previous update and put it back to how it was before, but I need a link to an old update but cannot find this anywhere?

 

Also the volume roller on top of the speaker is now almost useless, it takes about 50 turns to adjust the volume.

 

Any advise would be appreciated as I love klipsch, but this last update is loosing my confidence in the brand.

 

You have 30 levels of bass adjustment via the remote control! 

[nathandarby67]

I installed the update yesterday, and am having the exact same subwoofer issue with the sub output volume being significantly, almost absurdly greater than before. My sub is the Klipsch R-80SWi connected wirelessly. I had the gain knob on about 50% before the update, and now can't set it above about 5-10% without starting to get distortion, and probably 2-3% brings it about in line with what the pre-update output was with the knob at 50%. Even with that adjustment, the bass still sounds a bit muddier overall to me. In the app I have the sub output set at the default reset level, and dynamic bass off. Overall this is a noticeable downgrade in sound, and I am not very happy with the result. I am hoping this was a mistake and they issue a software update soon. In the meantime, a few questions:

 

In theory, for a given subwoofer volume level, will the overall sound quality be better with the gain set very low and a high input signal, or with the gain set closer to 50% and the subwoofer output signal decreased with the app? 

 

According to what I can tell from the Fives and the subwoofer instructions, given that the Fives have the built in subwoofer crossover at 80 Hz, I should be setting the crossover knob on the sub to LFE. However, in doing this, I can tell a very noticeable increase in the sub output than when setting the knob at 80 or even 120 HZ. I realize the crossover is not a going to be a sharp cutoff, but this tells me that the sub output from the Fives is possibly sending a lot of signal above the 80 Hz point. Maybe this has something to do with the huge increase in subwoofer strength with this update? Does anyone know if the crossover in the Fives is adjustable with software, or is it a set hard circuit? Could it be possible the Fives are now erroneously sending more of a full spectrum signal from the sub output? Also, what are other people generally doing with their crossover knobs on their subs? 

[Kona5s]

On 1/22/2022 at 9:20 PM, JAMES 77 said:

 

 

I've set my crossover to 80hz with a 6db slope. Works best for me. 

[voro12]

Which settings are you guys using as an custom EQ? So far I´ve used (without a separate sub):

Dynamic Bass: On (2/2 blinks with sub-reset button)
Bass: -5

Mid: +4

Treble: +2

 

However, I still think the bass is too strong for music but good for movies and TV-shows with these settings. Gonna try with this and see if it gets better:

 

Dynamic Bass: off (1/2 blinks with sub-reset button)

Bass: -1

Mid: +4

Treble: +2