Klipsch Palladium P-39F?

"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

     

I don't doubt that better crossovers exist, i just doubt that 90% of the sound is controlled by this. If that is the case then I would be quite confident that many high end companies would have huge external crossovers. I am sure the crossover is very important, i just think that the ones Palladium or Wilson or Theil use are sufficient.