Klipsch speakers

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bchinfoon

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I have the opportunity to pick up a pair of klipsch bookshelf speaker ridiculously cheap through an accomodation at work.

I can get the rb-51's for about 140 shipped or b-2's for 92 shipped.

Does anyone have any experience with either set of speakers? It's a pretty significant discount so I'd like to take advantage of it if the speakers are any good. My plan was to hook up the speakers to my 37" Sony LCD which I am planning on making a htpc for.

As of now I'm still not sure what receiver I'm going to buy. Open to advice.
 
In terms of receivers it depends on your budget, your needs and your style preference. What sounds good to one might sound horrible to someone else.

However a popular choice for starters is the Onkyo TX-SR605. You might want to start there...
 
Well, if you price shop the two speakers online the RB-51's cost about $100 more than the B-2's. This ought to mean that the RB-51's are a model line higher. Does it mean it'll sound better than the B-2's to your ears? I have no idea....

The RB-51's also extend down to 50hz so it's bass ought to have more oomph than the B-2's, which extend down to 62hz.

things can also depend on your budget, did you want to fill up on speakers for surround sound, or did you just want a pair for stereo audio? If you only want a single pair then i'd probably get the RB-51's since they'll have more bass. But if you want surround sound and will be adding a seperate subwoofer, and have a tight budget, then i'd probably get the B-2's.

Any idea what sort of budget you have set aside for the receiver?
 
I think I'm going to go ahead and get the RB-51's. I'm gonna demo them at work today before deciding for sure. I'm only planning on having a 2.0 setup since this will be in my bedroom and not the living room.

In terms of recievers I was thinking of keeping it below 300. I work at Best Buy so I can get some decent discounts. I was looking at the following:

Yamaha 361 or 461
Harman Kardon 146
Denon 1508

I know Onkyo makes good receivers as well, but I don't get a discount from then, so I'd like to get it from Best Buy.
 
The synergy line that bestbuy sells is complete crap if you ask me...


they were selling a pair for several hundred dollars at one point, and you could go to bestbuy's own partsearch website and build them for 1/4th the cost with parts... the woofers were a whopping $1.49/each...

800 dollar pair with a maximum of 20 dollars worth of speakers in them... Plywood prices must be at an all time high... not so sure those jank cabinets were worth 390 dollars.
 
The RB-51's are decent bookshelf's. They have that fancy Ceramic-Kevlar-Composite driver that Klipsch is famous for (it looks like it's made of gold! /sarcasim) and the horn tweeter. So it's not their cheap stuff.

With those two features Klipsch is infamous for being one of the brightest speakers on the market. I'm not familular with the tone of a Harman Kardon receiver, but I can tell you if you pair the RB-51 with the Denon you are going to kill your ear-drums and not get as good a sound as either the speakers or the reciever is capable of producing. Yamaha is the way to go with full-fledged Klipsch speakers. Yamaha makes an increadibly warm receiver, really full-bodied in the mids. When you pair that with the brightness of the RB-51's it's a match made in heaven. Warm on the receiver and bright on the speaker. I believe the main difference between the 461 and 361 is YPAO (the auto-calibration feature built into Yamaha's). If you ever decide to go with a 5.1 setup then the YPAO is a really cool feature. It'll calibrate the speakers and receiver to your room and give you a sweet spout where the audio will be full-bodied. If you are just using this in your bedroom, the 361 may be good enough.
 
I didn't know that about the Denon being so bright. Thanks for that info.

I will have to keep the RB-51's/Yamaha 361 in mind.

I have also been contemplating the RF-82 Floorstanders. They cost 200 each, but could be worth it in the long run. Would the sub Yamaha 361 or 461 provide enough power to these speakers?

Or maybe a stereo receiver like the Harman Kardon 3485?
 
I have the Klipsch reference center channel (from the same line as the RB-51 bookshelf) and was pleasantly surprised for the money. I am going to pick up matching RB-51a for the front when I have the money.
 
bchinfoon said:
Would the sub Yamaha 361 or 461 provide enough power to these speakers?
Click to expand...

Yea, the 361 and 461 are rated at 100 watts a channel. I believe the Klipsch RF-82 have a 91 db sensitivity. What that means is with 1 meter of speaker wire between the receiver and the speakers, when the speakers are producing 91 db of noise (at something like 8 inches away from the driver) that it's pulling 1 watt of power from the receiver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker#Efficiency_vs._sensitivity) basically any decent receiver will be able to drive any modern speaker. For example. Yamaha's 3800 (Yamaha's high end A/V receiver) has 140 watts a channel. They have completely different designes and comparing the two like that really isn't fair, however, the 361 would be enough to drive a pair of RF-82's.
 
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