“Cinema 8” speaker set, part 3: RW-8 subwoofer
Written: Feb 12 '05 (Updated Feb 12 '05)
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Pros: Perfect low frequency sound transitions, accurate fine-tuning controls, deep rich bass
Cons: May not be powerful enough for large rooms such as banquet halls or ballrooms
The Bottom Line: Klipsch has done an excellent job putting together its "Cinema" home theater speakers, managing to pack excellent acoustic characteristics and full frequency range into its speaker sets.
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| towwang's Full Review: Klipsch RW-8 Subwoofer Speaker |
In this review: specifications, installation, tuning, and sound performance with music.
This is part 3 of a 3-part review covering the Klipsch “Cinema 8” speaker set, which consists of:
1) Klipsch RSX-4 satellite speaker
2) Klipsch RCX-4 center speaker
3) Klipsch RW-8 sub-woofer with 2-channel stereo amplifier (this review)
Please click on the above links to read the other parts of this review.
The RW-8 is an 8-inch subwoofer speaker with a two-channel audio amplifier built into its cabinet. Although it is the smallest subwoofer in the Klipsch "Reference" product line, it delivers plenty of power to make the whole "Cinema 8" speaker set sound like an array of full-range (larger) speakers. The powerful bass coming out of this unit makes watching action movies a wonderful theatrical experience, and fleshes out the dynamic range of high-fidelity audio recordings. I have reviewed how this speaker set performs with movie audio in part 2; I will cover performance with music recordings in this part 3 further below.
[Packaging and specifications]
Klipsch's manufacturing facilities ship the RW-8 in a non-chalant cardboard box with comparatively little padding. The RW-8 cabinet is much heavier at 13.2 Kg (29 pounds) than the satellite and center speakers, yet the same type of styrofoam pads protected the unit just fine for its long journey from a Chinese factory to the U.S. The contents of the box were:
1) RW-8 subwoofer/amplifier unit
2) Owner's manual, with a black portfolio
3) Y adapter (1 RCA female to 2 RCA male jacks), with addendum to the manual
The owner's manual is generic and contains instructions for all subwoofers in the RW series. Given the simplicity of the product, this should not be a problem for end-users. A mere 3 pages of instructions is printed in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and traditional Chinese. (The quality of the translations fluctuates between excellent to mediocre.)
Brochures, specifications and even the user’s manual can be downloaded from:
http://klipsch.com/product/product.aspx?cid=652
The RW-8 has a shorter warranty of 2 years (as opposed to 5 years for the RSX-4 and RCX-4) presumably because it has to cover not just the speaker but the electronic components as well.
[Installation and tuning]
The installation process is very simple: you connect your receiver's or pre-amplifier's LFE (low-frequency effects) output to the LFE input of the RW-8, plug it into a power outlet, and that's it. Just remember to configure your home theater receiver to enable the LFE output, so that its internal crossover will send the bass effects to the RW-8.
If your receiver does not have a single-channel LFE output, such as the case of 2-channel stereo pre-amplifiers, you can connect the line-level "left" and "right" outputs to the likewise-labeled inputs of the RW-8, and then connect your left and right front speakers to the amplifier outputs of the RW-8. In this case, the RW-8's crossover will direct bass from the 2 stereo channels to the subwoofer, and the rest of the audio signal to your front speakers. This is informally called a 2.1 speaker setup, as opposed to 5.1 speakers for Dolby Digital.
The one thing I could not figure out was why Klipsch included the Y-adapter in the box, with a cryptic addendum stating "The performance of this unit may be enhanced by using this Y adapter from the subwoofer output of your receiver to both the left and right inputs of the RW powered subwoofer". This adapter would be needed in two possible scenarios:
1) There is a connectivity problem with the LFE input of the RW-8
2) Klipsch thinks some receivers do not have good crossovers and judged it necessary for the LFE output to pass through the RW-8's own crossover in these cases.
As I could discern no difference between a direct LFE connection and the use of this Y adapter, I tend to favor the second scenario.
Once all your speakers have been connected, you will want to fine-tune the sub-woofer so that it "cooperates" sonically with the other (presumably smaller) speakers. The RW-8 provides three knobs to let the user achieve a very precise speaker calibration:
1) Volume: the simplest one, lets you boost or curtail the sound coming out of the RW-8 in order to achieve a good balance with the other speakers. If set too low, you will hear very little bass effects. If set too high, the bass will overwhelm the sound of the other speakers. I recommend using your receiver's settings to balance your smaller satellite speakers, and then use this volume knob to balance between the subwoofer and the rest of the speakers. This knob has covers an excellent range of loudness, and I prefer it over the receiver's balancing.
2) Crossover frequency: controls what will be the highest audio frequencies to be output by the subwoofer. Frequencies higher than this setting should be handled by the other speakers. This knob covers a range of 40 to 120 Hz. In the case of the "Cinema 8" set, the RSX-4 and RCX-4 speakers can reproduce frequencies as low as 92 Hz, so in theory you should set the cut-off point at 92 Hz on the RW-8's knob. In practice, I liked the sound best when set to around 85 Hz.
3) Phase: informally, controls the timing of the soundwaves coming out of the RW-8 with respect to what is output by the other speakers. Complicated mathematics come into play in determining the phase matching point, so this is best set by listening carefully. If the phase is too far off, it will seem that the bass is coming out too soon or too late with respect to higher-frequencies from the same sound effect (such as a drum kick).
As the manual states, adjusting all the above parameters is a matter of trial and error. There are no rules of thumb here; you have to spend some time tweaking each setting and find the configuration that is most to your liking. In the end, with a good product in your hands, the results will surely pay off.
[Sound performance]
While shopping around for speakers, I carried to every demonstration room and store a CD of the album "Brigade" by Heart, a recording of very high quality in my opinion. The opening song "Wild child" starts with strong bass drum kicks to really put a subwoofer to the test. From the moment the salesperson played this through the RW-8, I was very impressed. Among the contenders I auditioned in part 2 of this review, most of the subwoofers clearly had enough power to make your walls shake; what distinguished the RW-8 from the rest was, akin to the satellite speakers, its well-defined sound. Whereas an inferior subwoofer would produce the booming effect whenever the sound material called for it, not in every competing product did said effect transition properly. For the test CD in question, the RW-8 not only provided the wall-shaking bass, it worked so well with the rest of the speaker set that it let you hear the actual collision of the beater against the head of the drum, right before the drum vibrations took over and faded away within one second, with no lingering "aftershocks". Among all the speaker sets I auditioned (and covered in part 2 of this review) this seamless low-frequency transition was exhibited only by the Anthony Gallo and, to a lesser degree, the Bose AM15 II speaker sets. The other sets just seemed to massage the sound without reaching a very definite form.
Next CD I tried was Bryan Adams' "So far so good". The songs "Summer of '69" and "Heaven" have a very dynamic range, and gave the whole speaker set a workout. The recording is excellent, yet noticeably louder than the average music CD. The RW-8 was very responsive to the intensity of the LFE effects sent by my STR-DE997 receiver; in this CD you could clearly hear increases and decreases in the volume of the bass guitar within those songs. The RW-8 delivers just the right amount for both faint and loud passages.
Finally, I wanted to check how the speaker set would fare if I were to throw a house party. I liked the surround effects applied to the synthesizer sounds in The Real McCoy's "Another night" album, and played a few tracks. Here the low frequency effects are not so much about clarity than about giving the listener (and the walls) jolts and jerks at a rate of 2 or more per second. The subwoofer acted mainly as an extension for the satellites, carrying synthesizer bass well into the sub-50 Hz range for songs like "Operator". The output delivered by the RW-8 was comparable to what you would expect from a small dance club or lounge. Sound quality was again very satisfying, though I could tell that for a serious soiree one would need more than a single (sub)woofer to truly rock the house.
[Conclusion]
Klipsch has done an excellent job putting together its "Cinema" home theater speakers, managing to pack excellent acoustic characteristics and full frequency range into a set of compact wall-mountable satellites, aided by a moderately sized 8-inch subwoofer. The "Cinema 8" set is not about super-loud power to fill a large hall. It is about bringing out every detail of high-quality audio recordings, from faint footsteps to loud explosions, from the soft decaying violin notes to maniacal drum pounding, with everything reproduced at the right intensity and timbre as the recording engineer intended the music to sound like.
Back to part 2 of this review: RCX-4 center channel.
Return to part 1 of this review: RSX-4 satellite.
[Revision history]
2005 02 12 Written by and copyright Tow Wang.
2005 02 12 Review published and linked.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 375
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towwang
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Member: Tow Wang
Location: California; U.S.A.
Reviews written: 45
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About Me:
Rabidly passionate about computers and electronics!
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