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, thats 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%. Thats 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 thats 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.