Klipsch RP500M Review - King of the Klipsch

hey i'm randy and i'm the cheap audio man here at the cheap audio man we don't feel like audio equipment speakers amps dacs turntables cd transports should cost more than replacing your garage door when your teenager hits the gas because they actually thought they were hitting the brake and these don't they're the klitsch rp 500m so grab a cup of coffee sit down and let's talk about the klipsch rp 500m [Music] today's sponsor is happy moms children's melatonin uh when your your kids are having trouble going to sleep at night and you want them to go to sleep so that you don't lose your insanity grab some happy moms of melatonin for children gummies because it's it's it's all natural and you don't want to be giving your kids something that was made in a factory you want something that's a gummy all right clips rp 500m it's been a while since we have had an rp speaker in here let's go over some specs rated down to 48 all the way up to 25k that's a one inch titanium dome tweeter five and a quarter inch there you know their copper spun woofer our rear port has keyhole on the back 8 ohm 93 db and i like that sensitivity let's take a look at them they're actually one of my favorite looking clap speakers they have okay they have a cool magnetic grille kind of i don't know kind of see through it's got a cool fabric to it all right now i don't know if you're to be able to see this but i'm going to kind of rotate it the finish on this is black but in the grain or the fake grain it's almost like a silver so it's almost kind of like a metallicy dark black wood and i sure like that i actually think that's really good looking and on the back they have this port and i will say normally i kind of make fun of port technology but whatever they're doing here is working pretty well the wave guide slash horn is kind of a soft rubbery feeling material okay and the clips rb51 ii has kind of a harder material okay build wise you know i they they probably need to be braced better inside and i've i've taken a peek into the rp 600m there's there's no bracing so uh could be brace better but that's all right let's talk about soundstage and imaging all right soundstage imaging i also forgot to say that i paired this with the emotiva ta100 acting as a preamp into the emotiva a300 and emotiva actually just announced they have a whole new amp line coming out all right may want to check that out also the rysong a10 or bayou range a10 tube amplifier also the svs sound base okay so with soundstage and imaging the one thing that we have to take into consideration is that the klipsch tweeter is a narrow dispersion tweeter not a wide dispersion so that greatly affects soundstage and imaging with all that said it still does a great job of soundstage and imaging wherever i may roam at the 14 second point there's a comes out of the right speaker and should come way right in a proper room and when i had these in a medium-sized room was somewhat similar or symmetry between the sidewalls i got all the sound stage and imaging that i wanted okay with imaging with a center image you have to be a little bit more careful with towing and even if you have good center imaging you may not have a wide of a sweet spot really for that center imaging all right but hello by adele she was dead on locked center and i actually heard her a little bit vertical as well all right chocolate chip trip again with proper towing i got seamless travel between left and right speaker [Music] also got a bit of openness and depth of staging when i was a little bit more up into them on all the mtv unplugged records okay so if you if you've ever seen the loudspeaker optimization something video by new record day he recommends pulling your speakers way out into the room and kind of getting into them a little bit you can kind of do the same thing by just getting into them a little bit if if you have like a desktop situation all right let's talk about bass bass i'm pleasantly surprised okay one of the things i didn't like or i can't say i didn't like it um i didn't think the rp 600m punched hard enough okay these punch harder than the rp600ms at lower volumes i know it's counterintuitive but i've experienced that before with the elac wb be 5.2 compared to the 6.2 intergalactic by the beastie boys had surprised me with the amount of punch that it had with that said the roll-off of that song i.e how deep it actually reaches was a little bit compromised and i would say that's probably because of the enclosure design and the port design but in this situation i'd rather have punch than extension because chances are you may be getting a subwoofer if you want however don't feel like you need one because these are actually pretty good they're spec down to 48 and i think that's a legitimate specification on this one all right killing strangers also punchy uh had good palpable feel uh highway to hell by ac dc i felt like there's a little bit more thickness in the bass drum on that so there's probably a little bit of a rise in the frequency response down there but it's where it's supposed to be and it sounds really good all right let's talk about mid-range [Music] mid-range shoot to thrill another ac dc song i like that song to come in uh crunchy all right but also have a little bit of body this gave you all the crunch and metallicness that you wanted on that song the body was a little bit thin but again this is clips and this is very kind of their signature sound so it's it's good it's fine i i like that crunch in there did it have as much body as i've heard on other speakers no but that doesn't really matter if your eclipse fan all right sad but true here we go um when the first guitar riff riff kind of comes in though [Music] june real good real good quite good i enjoyed it okay a rooster by allison chains off the mtv unplugged lane staley's voice was a bit thin okay but again we go back this is kind of the clip sound it's carried forward from nearly every speaker that i've heard from klitsch all right it just lacked a bit of body had all the clarity it needed um totally it was good too it just lacked a bit of body all right mid-range is fine if you if this is typical clips mid-range all right but female vocals hello by adele mmm linus more set mtv unplugged depth vibrato not depth as far as like uh sound depth but like into the the vocals it's very good female vocals very good let's talk about treble treble um kind of a stand out here all right there can be a bit of shorter nurse around 2500 that's actually kind of mid-range when they get right up into that like actually on rooster sorry we're going back to mid-range actually on rooster uh when he comes yeah that part yeah you know he ain't gonna die yeah no no no no you know he ain't gonna die all right that was a bit much randy um anyway back to trouble sad but true was actually really good the symbols i i listened to and i usually don't even listen to that song for the the symbol i usually listen to it for the body of the guitar the symbols were awesome the decay was awesome africa again some by uh weezer the cover not by toto the decay was awesome all right center man 16th notes at the beginning really good sound like they're in the room again maybe a titch thin i know thin and treble that's kind of a paradox that we're talking about but it's still tactile i can hear the stick i can envision the stick hitting the hi-hat quite good what are my final thoughts final thoughts on this speaker is it is without a shadow of a doubt my favorite rp clip speaker i've heard and i've had the same situation with elac and their b5.2 versus the b6.2 i like the 5.2 better i like the 500m here better what i don't like is the price i know go figure right now i think it's dollars i think this is more around a 350 to 375 dollar speaker with that said there are some open box options on amazon there's also some renewed options on amazon that fall within the price range where i think this speaker really lives there's also the rb 51 2 available which is this one's grandfather or grandmother you may want to wait for the saturday speaker shootout on that though okay uh you know people there's people out there like danny over at gr research that does a lot of speaker modifications and upgrades and can take uh maybe what some would feel would be the speaker's limitations and improving upon them and that's great that's something you could do on this if you're so inclined and if you want to maybe brace the cabinet a little bit more or maybe fill out the mids a little bit more however there's something else that's actually quite quite a bit more affordable and it's this look at this little thing it's a little eq ballari eq okay i just got this in i've always wanted one of these they didn't send it to me i bought it nobody sent the eclipse rp500ms to me either i bought them as well okay you know what i did i dialed back uh 2000 hertz just a titch i dialed up 400 hertz just a titch and guess what i loved it actually it was great out of the box again pleasantly surprised about how much i like this a bit shouty at 2 500 hertz you know when people really get get into that area but i can live with that this gives you that clip sound that excitement um there's limitations more directional it's fine if you love clips you're probably going to love the speaker if you haven't heard the rp500m frankly i think it's better than the rp 600m and with a little eq guess what this is staying with me why because of the sensitivity ratings this is going to be my tube speaker all right um the amp pairings that sounded best with this were um the ryzong a10 um it sounded good with everything because the emotiva is more neutral with a little bit of thickness in the mids and it filled these out svs sound base really filled these out uh quite nicely so what i would avoid on these is maybe some of the smsl 8018 topping mx3 um unless they have like tone controls um and every all of them have tone controls but it's really the the mids and you know that 2000 hertz area that you want to bring down okay i couldn't be happier with this speaker so if you want to support the channel you can do it in a variety of ways i have a patreon patreon.com slash cheap audio man we do patron only zooms i have a patron only facebook group and we have patron only content you can buy merchandise i have a veterans t-shirt fifty percent of all the proceeds buying the cheap audient man veterans t-shirt goes to homes for our troops it's a veterans organization any of the links in the description most of the links are affiliate links so if you use them by something you don't have to pay anymore i get a small commission you can also sign up for amazon hd for free click on the link scroll down the bottom click try hd you get three months for free i get a couple of dollars and i have some playlists in there test tracks satanic panic leg warmers all right that's it so don't binge watch netflix or hulu or anything binge listen to your favorite streaming service cassette record a track and fill your soul with happiness and with that i'm randy i'm the cheap audio man

Channel: cheapaudioman

Views: 41,187

Keywords: klipsch rp600m, klipsch, klips rp500m, speaker review, subwoofer, elac, jbl, bookshelf speaker, best bookshelf speaker

Id: -28eJvhpe-A

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021