Klipsch Palladium P-39F?

Ha, I can take any Klipsch speaker and essentially make it sound better than "Thiel or Wilson"… However Stock form some klipsch are just horribly imbalanced. Focal drivers are OK, but never found them much better than most decent paper drivers for far less money, maybe some of the exotic tweeters and or really huge subwoofers they make. Anyway Klipsch does make some killer drivers far better than many of the "Exotic" companies, most of their reference series woofers are far better, far more efficient, and reasonably priced over many of the big brand names. They are just that much more efficient, and their woofers play some true wide frequencies down low with ease, you would find it incredibly difficult to overdrive a klipsch speaker without some really crappy or really ridiculous power. I have scrapped and bottomed out just about all exotic drivers from Focal, and dynaudio, several others, but mostly based on not the greatest crossovers and points used.

Its simple, for the most part klipsch especially in some of the lines over the years produced subpar cabinets, cheap wire, and really CHEAP crossover components. You can take a pair of klipsch, Raspy horns and all, put a 300 to 1000 dollar worth of real crossover parts on it and easily make some 15,000 to 50,000 dollar pairs of standard dynamic drive speakers sound mediocre in comparison, Trust me I have heard it many times in many different iterations of the idea! Anyway Klipsch has improved a LOT in the Palladium cabinets, that’s most of the difference, as they always made great drivers, however they also went up from 5 dollar computer crossovers to at least 50 dollar Bennic crossovers, Yes they are bennic crossovers and still WAY cheap and semi-crappy OEM parts even in the 20,000 dollar Palladiums.

They should have at least stepped up to the Mundorf and or Clarity cap levels of parts for these speakers, because the palladiums although far better than many still barely broke above the "Skimp" level on crossovers, and crossovers in this case and most speakers are 90% of the design and final sound you get.. Cabinets about 7% and drivers about 3%. That’s my argument, the palladiums are nice no doubt, but for about 8000 to 10,000 per pair MAYBE on the big ones... Not 20,000. The drivers in the pair are worth about 600 to 1000 bucks, the cabinets are probably about 2500.00 and the crossovers if lucky have about 100 bucks in them. Again this is true in many or most speakers, so that’s just the industry as a whole and the greed especially with the highest markups in electronics are on cables and speakers, cables being the worst when they cost 15 bucks to make and sell to you for 600 to 1000 a pair. But again who can blame them when their 20 k speaker that cost them 3000 to make can beat out a 30 k pair that cost a designer 5000 to make, they are simply creating in that market. Good for them if they actually sell any! It might be tuff however as the name in this game is a stigma much like Bose.

"palladiums although far better than many still barely broke above the "Skimp" level on crossovers, and crossovers in this case and most speakers are 90% of the design and final sound you get.. Cabinets about 7% and drivers about 3%"

How factual are these percentages? Why would Klipsch fail to use quality crossovers in their most premium product? The idea that the engineers at a company with the resources of Klipsch would design a flagship product using inferior parts that you claim account for 90% of the overall sound is rediculous. Why do people feel that Klipsch is somehow out of the loop with regards to speaker design? They have over 60 years of history but apparently no one knows about the critical crossover which accounts for 90% of the sound. Someone should send them a link to this forum.

Macallan7
No offense I think you missed the point.. Actually NOT 90% of the cost so to speak should be put into a crossover at all.. But 90% of your FINAL sound is gonna rely heavily on how good the crossover is was the point. By the way you would be shocked at how many speakers in the big money range have crossovers that are worth as much as your 80 dollar DVD player from Target :-) Interestingly don't get me wrong with some crossover parts you can easily be 90% of the cost, most good capacitors these days cost more or double the cost of a good woofer! But not the bennic's used in these klipsch worth about 3 bucks each, and at their discount probably 80 cents.

Crossovers don't sell a speaker, well in this case, not a lot of sex appeal in that, especially for those that don't understand specs. etc... Looks for the most part do sell these days.. No doubt Klipsch is using some high grade parts, again not my point. Yes any speaker manufacture or Book will tell you 90% importance of the design is how well the crossover is designed, Klipsch DID in fact design I am sure a perfect crossover by SPECS and theory, but did still use rather cheap parts which equates to not as good of sound or tolerance as higher grade parts.

So your correct Klipsch did a perfect job on the crossover with basic parts doing the duty, However you take the exact crossover, same value parts etc... And up them to better parts which would cost nearly 50 times what some of the parts they used do, now you are putting it into a class of this kinda money. But problem is that they would have to build them in outboard Boxes, NO WAY would higher grade crossover parts fit in their original design, it would be nearly 10 times the size with the crossover parts I am talking about, and basically be a box the size of a good sized amplifier on the floor next to floorstander itself, so SEX appeal, and simplicity to the standard owner are now lost having to contend with another large box to run their speakers, and only true hardcore guys would buy this, not the Doctor with his wife allowing him to buy some new pretty home theater speakers sitting in the middle of the living room :-)

Again the palladium is a great speaker, and yes paper spec. and Parts used are definitely within the upper crust of design, however not enough money in quality parts to justify such a cheap crossover in my opinion. They are in the market where most people have never heard of wilson or Avantgarde, so they gear this product again for the hollywood guy with some money that just wants a cool speaker, but it could be much more. Its a big company and all about business, funny thing is they were at one point marketing Monster cable inside the speakers, it sounded worse than the old versions without it!! But then again when you took it apart it was literally the .25 cent a foot 18 and 16 gauge cheap crap that monster gave some chinese company the right to stamp their name on the roll.

I understood you to mean that the crossover has an impact on 90% of the sound not the cost, i just question the validity of this claim. Furhermore what brand of high-end speakers use crossovers the size of amplifiers? Theil 3.7 is the same dimensions as the lowly Klipsch RF-7 and the the Wilson Sophia is not a huge speaker either. I don't doubt that Klipsch takes WAF into account with the Palladium line but so does every other high end manufacturer. The Klipschorn certainly does not attempt to be a cute speaker, does it employ the massive crossovers you speak of? What company does?

Macallan7,
NOT MANY!!! But most speakers use simpler crossovers, however there are several using outboard large ones, some only take about 1 inductor and 1 capacitor for example, but still is the size of a shoe box. Its not about the part QUANTITY, the Quality parts are far larger. For example you take 1 cap, like a 10 uF cap in a standard Klipsch speaker, its about the size of a half roll of pennies for example.

That same CAP from Clarity or Mundorf, or someone similar and its literally almost the Size of a soda can. So it is definitely not easy or cost effective for most mass produced speakers to implement this for sure. That was not my argument either. Hey I would definitely take a pair of palladiums don't get me wrong, but knowing for 1000 bucks more with such a huge investment already Yes I would build outboard far better crossovers and they would be about the size of a 12" X 16" X 7" amplifier each. And the Palladiums issue with crossover is they are Very complex from what I saw, they are a 3 way meaning a section for tweeter, woofers, and mids, and have about 10 to 15 parts per board. If you use some good ribbon inductors and some Mudorf or clarity caps in that crossover not only will they be that large, but also about 10 to 15 lbs each in weight.

Here is a quick link I came up with on the klipsch website actually… The woofer and tweeter boards alone next to each other although not easily seen in perspective because nothing is next to them as a reference would barely fit next to each other like that on the table in a basic preamp chassis you have on your rack. see link it’s a cool project to which you can read and check out. Oh and looking back at the link now I do see its the crossover shown next to large Mono block tube amps! Almost the same size. Don't get me wrong the crossovers pictured here are probably 5 times the cost of the palladiums, and they can get much more expensive than even this.

http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/t/103108.aspx