This is a review and detailed measurements of the Klipsch PRO-180RPC LCR in-ceiling home theater speaker. It was kindly sent to me by a member and costs US $450 (MSRP $670).
I installed the speaker in the plywood panel for special "baffle" measurement using Klippel Near-field Scanner. Please note that this is the "LCR" version of this speaker which angles the drivers 45 degrees. The normal one I think just has them pointing straight out. The 180RPC is rather light speaker as you can tell from rather small magnet on the woofer (which is also angled):
Crossover is second order:
The angled driver makes measurement challenging as the baffle system in NFS assumes zero degree radiation. I work around it in the measurements but that means eliminating fair number of graphs which no longer make sense.
Klipsch PRO-180RPC LCR Measurements
As a reference point if we go with the sound radiating 90 degrees to the surface of the speaker we get:
The on-axis is poor now because of comb filtering caused by reflections caused by the tweeter angle (the up and down above 5 kHz). I post it so that we can see sound power and the fact that sensitivity is quite good. It peaks to 96 dB which is what the company advertises. I measured about 5 dB more sensitivity than typical 2-way speaker I measure.
The design angle is 45 degrees. I could generate that response but was too lazy
and settled for showing you 40 and 50 degrees vertically:
We see that the response becomes much more smooth and now displays the classic Klipsch recessed mid frequencies and accentuated highs. I highly recommend aligning your listening position to the 40 to 50 degrees. Off-axis is poor of course so better to have carpets and such to absorb them.
For distortion measurements, I aligned the microphone to be close to 45 degrees which results in similar frequency response:
I didn't realize I could disconnect the tweeter and make driver measurements until I was ready to post this review. Without it, we can only guess that the peak in the distortion is from woofer going outside of its comfort. Sadly the distortion lands where our hearing is most sensitive.
Company advertisement for the impedance uses fancy marketing language to hide the real number:
Fortunately the high sensitivity means that there is not much demand on the amplifier.
Waterfall measurement shows a pronounced resonance but this could be due to the baffle I built:
Finally here is the step response:
Conclusions
I miss my comprehensive measurements of speakers due to limitation of the setup here. The data we have indicates this is a reasonable design if you listen to it at 40 to 50 degrees. Otherwise like every other angled driver in-ceiling speaker I have tested, response would be quite poor. So I would place it away from close surfaces and use a carpet to absorb those reflections. Sensitivity is a major plus here easing amount of amplification power you need. On-axis frequency response shows that it needs just a couple of filters to be good.
Without ability to listen to the Klipsch PRO-180RPC LCR I don't have a recommendation for you. Generally though I kind of like what I saw especially at this price.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I installed the speaker in the plywood panel for special "baffle" measurement using Klippel Near-field Scanner. Please note that this is the "LCR" version of this speaker which angles the drivers 45 degrees. The normal one I think just has them pointing straight out. The 180RPC is rather light speaker as you can tell from rather small magnet on the woofer (which is also angled):
Crossover is second order:
The angled driver makes measurement challenging as the baffle system in NFS assumes zero degree radiation. I work around it in the measurements but that means eliminating fair number of graphs which no longer make sense.
Klipsch PRO-180RPC LCR Measurements
As a reference point if we go with the sound radiating 90 degrees to the surface of the speaker we get:
The on-axis is poor now because of comb filtering caused by reflections caused by the tweeter angle (the up and down above 5 kHz). I post it so that we can see sound power and the fact that sensitivity is quite good. It peaks to 96 dB which is what the company advertises. I measured about 5 dB more sensitivity than typical 2-way speaker I measure.
The design angle is 45 degrees. I could generate that response but was too lazy
and settled for showing you 40 and 50 degrees vertically:We see that the response becomes much more smooth and now displays the classic Klipsch recessed mid frequencies and accentuated highs. I highly recommend aligning your listening position to the 40 to 50 degrees. Off-axis is poor of course so better to have carpets and such to absorb them.
For distortion measurements, I aligned the microphone to be close to 45 degrees which results in similar frequency response:
I didn't realize I could disconnect the tweeter and make driver measurements until I was ready to post this review. Without it, we can only guess that the peak in the distortion is from woofer going outside of its comfort. Sadly the distortion lands where our hearing is most sensitive.
Company advertisement for the impedance uses fancy marketing language to hide the real number:
Fortunately the high sensitivity means that there is not much demand on the amplifier.
Waterfall measurement shows a pronounced resonance but this could be due to the baffle I built:
Finally here is the step response:
Conclusions
I miss my comprehensive measurements of speakers due to limitation of the setup here. The data we have indicates this is a reasonable design if you listen to it at 40 to 50 degrees. Otherwise like every other angled driver in-ceiling speaker I have tested, response would be quite poor. So I would place it away from close surfaces and use a carpet to absorb those reflections. Sensitivity is a major plus here easing amount of amplification power you need. On-axis frequency response shows that it needs just a couple of filters to be good.
Without ability to listen to the Klipsch PRO-180RPC LCR I don't have a recommendation for you. Generally though I kind of like what I saw especially at this price.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
