Disappointed w/ Klipsch Heresy III. Now what?
Sorry OP but I don't think the Heresys are your cup of tea. I have a pair of H3s and I have run them with a number of amps including Quicksilver mini-monos. The Heresys do not image all that well and need a little juice to get bouncing. A sub does help but they are not a reference level system. I would not spend a lot of time or money trying to change the way they sound. You might like the sound of the reference series a lot better. Hope this helps. |
I’d recommend you sell your new Heresys, get another pair of Ohm 1000s, and put your money where you should have--in a more powerful amp. That’s all you needed with your previous system. 35wpc for a pair of Ohm floorstanders was a bad match, no matter how mellifluous the Brio can sound. The Ohm 1000s have a realistic bass extension down to 34 Hz. Although the Ohm 1000’s sensitivity rating is 88dB (which is pretty good for a speaker like that), you need a low output impedance and hefty power supply to make that deep bass come alive. By contrast, the Heresy is down a claimed -4dB at 58 Hz! You could pump all the watts and current you want into the Heresy, but its bass extension would be MIA nearly a full octave short of the Ohm’s low frequency extension. You'll never get the sound you want with that much bass missing. The Heresy was never designed as a full-range speaker. It was made to complement a pair of Klipschorns, which by design *must* be placed in the corners. The Heresy was designed to fill in the gap between such widely spaced speakers. The corner speakers made plenty of bass, so bass wasn’t a primary consideration for the Heresy design. Trying to recapture the linear, phase-coherent real-life frequency extension of the Walshes via the Heresys will bring on endless tail chasing. You could play that system 24/7 for 5 years and the "break-in" will never get that last octave of bass. You’re not going to get the subtlety, nuance, bass extension, and room-filling dispersion of the Ohms either. You could add a subwoofer or two to add some bass, but then you’ve added another $1K expense, only to have gone from a pair of elegant Ohm columns with a room-filling omnidirectional pattern to a less compatible combination of low-powered British integrated, 60-yr-old design horn-based main speakers, and powered subs. Cut your losses; Get rid of the Heresys and Brio, get another pair of Ohm 1000s and an amp that they deserve. You spent $2k on the Heresys and didn’t get what you wanted. Add subs to fill in the bottom octave and you’re out another $1K minimum for a total of $3K. And that’s no guarantee you’ll like the results. For $2500 you could have stayed with the Ohms and gotten a Rogue Sphinx v2 with 100/200 wpc into 8/4 ohms and a tube front end, all for $1295. For $2500 you could have gotten the monstrously powerful Parasound Halo integrated amp rated at 160/250 watts/channel into 8/4 ohms with an MM/MC phono preamp, plus a DAC that handles pretty much every digital format. It’s a Stereophile Class A recommended component, by far the least expensive integrated amp in that category. Having chased audio nirvana over a span of 45 years (including some time as an audio sales guy) I’ve developed a sense of choosing my battles, and I think you could spend more time, money, and frustration trying to get a pair of Heresys powered by a Brio to meet your requirements than to return to what you already had and replace the Brio with a more appropriate amp. |
