Rx 25 preliminary review

[wireless]

I received my Rx 25s last night. I formerly had KLF-20s, a c-7, two Forte surrounds, and an LF-10. I sold the KLFs including the c-7 and set up a 2-channel system with the Fortes. I needed shielded speakers and a smaller center that could be tucked away on a shelf. The height of the center channel had to be no more than 9". Most tv/stereo stands' shelves are 9" apart. This requirement dictated the rc-25 or smaller.

The Rx-25s seem okay.

Build: Good news and ok news. For the price point, they are built pretty well. I was happy with the heft of the RF's and the RC. Especially the RC which was solid and relatively heavy for its size. The veneer on all looks okay but is thin and the layer around the back side of the rf speaker was not glued well on one corner and could easily be snapped off. And you know what chipped plastic vinyl does for the looks of a speaker. But overall it seemed put together well. No obvious flaws.

The RS-25s are only 8 lbs so they are pretty light. I don't know what a good surround really sounds like but at only 8 lbs I figure they must not be required to do much.

One thing I liked that the acoustic design engineers may not fully appreciate is the design for attaching the feet is done very well. They have these deep sturdy threaded wells that these solid screws screw into. They are strong and didn't feel like they would strip or pull out. The head of the screw has a good strong deep + indentation for the phillips screwdriver. The mechanical design engineer did a good job on these.

I wish Klipsch would come out with a high-end line though. Weren't they supposed to be working on one? No doubt they've got plenty of good speaker designs just waiting to be built. I would have had no problem paying double what I paid for the Rx series if they had decent wood cabinents and upgraded components. Why Klipsch doesn't introduce a modern high-end line (and I'm not talking about $20k speakers) is a mystery to me. Maybe they think it would cannabilize Heritage sales. And some would argue the Heritage series is the high-end line. Well give me a real wood cabinent in a size I can use beside my tube tv and fit in my living room. A lot of us that grew up with Klipsch Heritage speakers have different requirements (and more cash) so it's not a stretch to think that a product as described would sell well to our demographic.

Sound:

This portion is why the review says preliminary. I got everything set up and listened to a CD about the same time my 2-yr was going to sleep. There wasn't much time to listen to them at any volume.

I could clearly hear the difference between the RF-25s and the KLF-20s. Of course the RFs aren't broken in yet but the clarity was good. It wasn't as smooth or clear as the KLFs but I wasn't immediately turned off by their sound. The bass was clearly deficient compared with the KLFs. It sounded like they were clipping or a bit hollow. Then I thought, wait a minute, I didn't buy these to listen to music and I have a sub. I set all the speakers to small and the sub crossover to about 90 Hz. The receiver small setting has a cutoff of 80 Hz so I figured 90 Hz on the sub would rolloff to 80 Hz. I got mixed results on that because the sub only seemed to be emitting very low frequencies. Anyway I'll have to look into that further. It didn't sound bad by any means. The instruction manuals for the RX speakers says that all Klispch Reference speakers can be set to large. I wondered if these were old manuals that only pertained to the RF-3 and above.

I tried to play a dvd (Led Zepplin's new one) but at first couldn't get anything but 2-channel output out of the Marantz. Finally I figured out that the dvd player output had been set to PCM instead of bitstream. The two-year old likes to play with the remote. I did get 5-channel going and listened to one song at a lower volume. The speakers sounded pretty good but I didn't listen long enough form an strong opinion.

That's it for now.

-David

[dougdrake]

Thanks for the review!!

You might try bypassing the crossover on the sub, or setting it to its highest level, if you are letting the receiver do the crossover work. You may be getting some crossover interference, especially with the sub set so close to the receiver's setting. Just a thought.

DD