Klipsch R-41M Bookshelf Speaker Review

[amirm]

Really surprised to see snobby audiophools bash a $100 speaker for not being linear enough for them.

There is no reason even cheap speakers can't have smoother response. The Pioneer SP-BS22-LR is just $118 and sounds and measures better.

You seem to be quite a snob to think only expensive speakers can be good!

 

[napilopez]

If Floyde Toole believed the “correct” thinking was everyone’s taste in speakers was the same I’d wipe my ass with his $54 book and demand a refund.

It's not that much of a stretch. Just that our tastes tend to be more alike than different. Most of us like ice cream and pizza, and most of us don't like eating bread dipped into dirty toilet water. Most us can tell if the colors on a TV are wildly innacurate. If red looks like purple something is off. Same goes for sound.

Fairly linear frequency response and smoothish directivity, that's all Toole really says. Speakers can still sound very different within those parameters.

 

[Darkweb]

They are essentially a cheap rear surround speaker, complete with a keyhole mount to hang on the wall. Once you hit a 4" "bass" driver, all pretensions to high fidelity go out the window.

Missed the keyhole mount. That extra 1khz is for extra jump factor in the breaking glass sound effect. Toole simply never tested for this!

 

[LDKTA]

Woah... These just happen to be one of the most ghastly and fatiguing loudspeakers I've ever heard to date. All of the Klipsch R(eference) line. They are very difficult to listen to let alone enjoy any sort of content on.

 

[carlosmante]

You may have misread the graph. The impedance at 300 Hz is slightly above 3 Ohm. Still, according to the IEC specification method the minimal impedance must be at least 80% of the nominal impedance. In this case, that would be about 3.8 Ohm which may be rounded up to 4 Ohm.

Why it may still be specced at 8 Ohm is written in this article by audioholics.

View attachment 50890


Edit: The spec sheet says nominal impedance is '8 Ohm compatible' rather than 8 Ohm. This seems to indicate that rather than the nominal impedance being 8 Ohm, Klipsch claims the impedance is such that it works with amplifiers specced for 8 Ohm loads.
View attachment 50891

NOMINAL. Look up "nominal" in the dictionary. amirm didn't misread any graph. Once again the keyword is NOMINAL. 80% of 8 ohms is 6.4 ohms not 3.8 ohms.

 

[Bruce Morgen]

La Scalas were originally designed to be PA speakers; every time I hear that someone wants one for home use because it is Klipsch and, therefore, believes that it is high-fidelity & appropriate for a quiet 15 ft by 15 ft room, I cringe.

The fact that they were named after a famous opera venue ought to have provided a clue as to where the design originated.

 

[LTig]

I heard Kipsch speakers twice so far and did find them bright and fatiguing

 

[JIW]

NOMINAL. Look up "nominal" in the dictionary. amirm didn't misread any graph. Once again the keyword is NOMINAL. 80% of 8 ohms is 6.4 ohms not 3.8 ohms.

You seem to have misread my post. Having another look at it, it can indeed be confusing. I will edit it to clarify what I meant.

Amir wrote on the figure that the impedance falls below 2 Ohm at 300 Hz. That is what I contested. I did not contest that the 8 Ohm spec does not fit the IEC standard.

As I wrote, the minimum is at 3 Ohm. Nominal impedance would then be 1/80%, i.e. 5/4 of 3 Ohm which is the 3.8 Ohm I stated.

 

[milosz]

Every Klipsch speaker I've ever heard was "shouty." The attitude in their engineering department seems to be "Damn the resonances, full horns ahead!" My experience hearing Klipsch speakers since the first K-Horn I heard in 1968 has led me to think "horns are shouty."

But I've heard some higher-end "JBL Synthesis" systems (S3900, Everest, etc) that used horns and sounded quite smooth. So I am trying to drop my prejudice against horn loading. I still think it's very difficult to achieve smooth response from most horn loaded designs, that it takes a great deal of engineering to get it right.

 

[Fortension]

I don't know why this result it surprising; they included the frequency response graph on the back of the speaker.

 

[Rockfella]

Every Klipsch speaker I've ever heard was "shouty." The attitude in their engineering department seems to be "Damn the resonances, full horns ahead!" My experience hearing Klipsch speakers since the first K-Horn I heard in 1968 has led me to think "horns are shouty."

But I've heard some higher-end "JBL Synthesis" systems (S3900, Everest, etc) that used horns and sounded quite smooth. So I am trying to drop my prejudice against horn loading. I still think it's very difficult to achieve smooth response from most horn loaded designs, that it takes a great deal of engineering to get it right.

So I was right. I could not bear a pair for more than 10 seconds. It was so shrilly.

 

[amirm]

I don't know why this result it surprising; they included the frequency response graph on the back of the speaker.

Hehe .

 

[carlosmante]

You seem to have misread my post. Having another look at it, it can indeed be confusing. I will edit it to clarify what I meant.

Amir wrote on the figure that the impedance falls below 2 Ohm at 300 Hz. That is what I contested. I did not contest that the 8 Ohm spec does not fit the IEC standard.

As I wrote, the minimum is at 3 Ohm. Nominal impedance would then be 1/80%, i.e. 5/4 of 3 Ohm which is the 3.8 Ohm I stated.

In this case "would be" is irrelevant because the reported impedance is so low that amirm said "Response dips dangerously close to a short at 300 Hz or so".

 

[restorer-john]

In this case "would be" is irrelevant because the reported impedance is so low that amirm said "Response dips dangerously close to a short at 300 Hz or so"

Oh, for goodness sake. 3 ohms is nowhere near a short. The graph is clear, the interpretation is not.

 

[gr-e]

I'm sorry, your interpretation is a bit wrong. When acoustic centers are aligned, both woofer and tweeter response start at exactly zero, though the woofer slope is much more gradually increasing, reflecting the bandwidth limit. But they do start at time zero, group delay at high frequencies is always zero, in any minimum phase system (speaker drivers -- with or without normal crossovers -- are always minimum phase to at least first order precision).

Sure, I was talking about low pass filters making the woofer slope more gradual. Also, I'm not sure, but higher order filters add some kind of delay to the step response, right?

What we see here is a very typical step response of design with a set back tweeter (mounted in the waveguide). The initial falling slope is the higher frequency content of the woofer (neg polarity, the initial direction is the call-sign for this). Then the tweeter kicks in, overlaying the total pressure, with pos. polarity, but it decays quickly so from 1.5ms we see the MF/LF content of the woofer again.

How did you determine that the first dip is the woofer and not a tweeter in opposite polarity? Based on the fact that the tweeter is in a deep waveguide? Now that you mentioned the waveguide, your and @andreasmaaan 's suggestion makes more sense than mine. I was originally thinking of something like this

 

[andreasmaaan]

How did you determine that the first dip is the woofer and not a tweeter in opposite polarity?

The tweeter is connected in positive polarity. It's step therefore can't be in the negative direction.

 

[Rockfella]

Fortunately I didn't get this!

@amirm if you have a chance could you please review Dali Spektor 1? Thanks!

Can't wait

 

[hardisj]

3 ohms is nowhere near a short.

x2. In car audio there are many SPL guys running subs at 0.5 ohms.

 

[carlosmante]

Oh, for goodness sake. 3 ohms is nowhere near a short. The graph is clear, the interpretation is not.

3 ohms? Graph says "dips to <2 ohms @ 300Hz!".

 

[andreasmaaan]

3 ohms? Graph says "dips to <2 ohms @ 300Hz!".

But look at the graph again, it actually dips to just above 3 Ohm.