The Audacity of Hope, Ark.: The $20,000 Klipsch Palladium P-39F speaker

Klipsch may be one of the oldest American speaker companies, but that doesn't stop it from manufacturing iPod, computer, stereo and home theater speakers, along with a full line of professional cinema and music speakers.

Paul W. Klipsch founded the company that bears his name in Hope, Ark. in 1946. And incredibly enough, the Arkansas plant is still building the company's higher-end speakers.

I reviewed Klipsch's new flagship speaker, the Palladium P-39F ($20,000/pair), for Home Entertainment magazine, and I had a blast. The new speaker forgoes Klipsch's traditional, square-edged aesthetic; for the Palladium project the company enlisted the talents of BMW DesignworksUSA in Los Angeles, Calif. They did a great job.

The Audiophiliac and the P-39F

I found the new boldly curved speaker's "boat tail" shape distinctive as all get out and it's not just for show, the rounded cabinet's interior quells resonance that would muddy the sound. Those curved sides are made from seven ply, constrained layer, composite laminate wood panels, and the front baffle is reinforced with steel.

It's a large speaker, 56 inches tall and 24.75 deep, but it doesn't seem as imposing as some statement designs. The Palladium's zebra grain veneers come in your choice of three finishes, natural, merlot, and espresso (the wood is sourced from protected forests).

The 165-pound speaker rests on an aluminum and steel plinth/base; which reminds me, the P-39F's speaker cable connectors are stealthily concealed within its bottom panel.

It's a serious rock and roll animal, built to handle dynamics and power like ultra high-end speakers that retail for many times the price of the P-39F. Bass is meaty and solid, yet as clear and concise as the mid-range and treble. Oh, and before you get the impression these bad boys have to be played at lease breaking volume to sound their best, I found them exceedingly accomplished at hushed, late night volume as well.

When I reviewed the P-39F tower speaker it was the only Palladium available, but in New York last week Klipsch showed the P-17B bookshelf speaker ($4,000/pair), P-27C center channel ($3,500), P-27S surround speaker ($4,000/pr) and P-312W subwoofer ($4,000). Complete Palladium 5.1 channel systems start around $16,000.

[v1m]

I'm sure they sound nice. What justifies the ridiculous price tag? Seriously: every audio reviewer asserts that a product he likes sounds as good as those "retailing at many times the price of the [INSERT NAME HERE]. "Many times" the $20k price of these speakers would be, if we take many to mean at least five, six figures and up. Maybe the nebulous audio reviewing world needs better metaphors. You could write, "This speaker sounds as good as a low-to-mid-range car. And nearly as good as a Miami condo at post-bubble prices. It doesn't throw quite as broad a soundstage as the national debt, but I've heard speakers as nuanced as the crushing medical bills that have driven you into bankruptcy, and this competes. Just don't confuse it with the magnificent sound of the Iraq war debt; this is nirvana, surely, but at a lowly $20K, it ain't heaven."

[pjk0]

It's a good thing this column isn't called "The Audiophile" because most audiophiles who actually deserve the label would laugh at the products that are touted here as "state of the art".

Klipsch isn't even on the radar of most people who really call themselves "audiophiles", and many of them actively deride the company's products. They're a small cut above Bose consumer speakers, another product which is 99% overpriced hype, and rarely recommended by anyone who actually knows what real music sounds like. (although I do hear they market some noise-cancelling headphones which work pretty well)

From what I can tell, Klipsch products improved a little after Paul Klipsch died and his kids took over the business, but they still insist on putting those godawful horns in most of their speakers, and the fact that they do this while most of their competitors don't isn't because they have a magical insight and ingenuity that no one else in the world has - it's because most smart speaker designers that value accurate sound reproduction abandoned that architecture 40 years ago for very good reasons.

[just-iced]

For the last 60 years Klipsch has been one of the top loudspeaker manufacturers in the world. Their success is undoubtedly attributed to their devotion and adherence to the principals company founder Paul W. Klipsch instilled into his company in the early 40?s.
Paul Klipsch is one of the founding fathers of Hi-fidelity, his contributions to speaker design and audio technology as a whole still serve as the cornerstone of the entire audio industry. In fact it is no coincidence that the term High-Fidelity was coined about the same time he started producing his legendary speaker systems. His 1946 invention of the Klipschorn speaker system was the world?s first true High-Fidelity system. It was the first time a speaker was able to reproduce the entire frequency range with unerring fidelity in a home setting.
Paul Klipsch was a verifiable genius who holds patents in the fields of geophysics, ballistics and acoustics. His contributions to the world of audio have not gone unnoticed; he received the Audio Engineering Society's highest honor, the prestigious Silver Medal, for his contributions to speaker design and distortion measurement. He was inducted into several ?Hall of Fames?, including the Science & Industry Hall of Fame with the likes of Alfred Einstein, the Audio Hall of Fame, the Consumer Electronics Hall of fame, and the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame, an honor shared by Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver and the Wright brothers.

[cardes]

Klipsch isn't even on the radar of most people who really call themselves "audiophiles", and many of them actively deride the company's products. GENIUS! Logic is super clear here. LOL.

But seriously, you sound like you know a lot about transducer design and whatnot. You must be an excellent engineer, so good luck with all of that.

[thundert00th]

20k for a pair of speakers?!

i could buy enough speakers to run a live concert in a stadium on 20k

they better sound like the voice of GOD for that price

[thundert00th]

other things i could do with 20k
quit my job and be a full time college student instead of having to work to pay for college
get an apartment
go to a bit better college
buy a better car
buy gas for the car i already have until we run completely out of oil
feed the starving people in Africa for a few weeks

[ndgoalie35]

Your pretty optimistic for what you can do with 20k. Depending on where you go to college, it would only give you semester of tuition.