Premiere performance – no amps, no wires...
Klipsch delivers a high-level speaker package with wireless signal paths and active speakers — so no separate amps or cables. The results are sensational.
Klipsch has to be just about the most unusual speaker company on the planet — and we mean that in a good way. What other company can say it still produces essentially the same loudspeaker that it released 70 years ago at its founding in 1946 — the Klipschorn — while also selling the most up-to-date of wireless 5.1 channel speaker systems?
It is the latter that we’re reviewing here: the Reference Premiere HD Wireless system.
Equipment
Being wireless means no speaker cables, which means built-in amplifiers, which means mains cables. You will need to plug each unit into a power point, so do take that into account when deciding whether wireless is for you. If it is, this is one impressive system.
There are a number of variations. The review system was supplied as ‘5.2’, or what we’d call 5.1 with two subwoofers (the same 0.1 signal is provided to both subwoofers). The front speakers are floorstanders, the surround ones are bookshelf-sized. You can go to seven channels if you want to buy the extras. A very compact ‘HD Control Center’ acts as home theatre surround processor and preamplifier, plus wireless transmitter.
All the speakers use the same titaniumdome tweeter mounted in a ‘Tratrix’ horn for high efficiency, and the same 115mm ‘cerametallic’ cone midrange/bass drivers. The front floorstanders and centre channel get four of the 115mm drivers, two of each acting
as woofers alone, the other two as bass/ midrange, making them 2.5-way units. The compact surround channel speakers get one of the large drivers.
In power terms the front three speakers each score 125W (continuous) of built-in power and the surrounds are each fitted with a quoted 50W. All the speakers are bass reflex loaded with rear horn-loaded ports.
The subwoofers are mid-sized and each is fitted a 254mm cerametallic cone driver, forwards facing, with a slot port under it also facing forwards. Each has 250W of power.
All the speaker connections are via wireless only to the control centre — there is no option for physical wiring. Indeed, the only output on the control centre is the HDMI socket for passing through video to the TV. There are four HDMI inputs, optical and coaxial digital audio, and a stereo analogue audio input. Plus Bluetooth with support for the aptX codec (though not for AAC).
The unit uses WiSA (Wireless Speaker and Audio) technology controlled by the WiSA Association. This supports 24-bit 96kHz multichannel uncompressed audio. It uses the 5.2GHz to 5.8GHz spectrum, avoiding the crowded 2.4GHz field. It boasts fast error detection, and a very fast five millisecond latency (i.e. audio delay).
This latency issue is important. We have seen one speaker system which introduces a delay of around a quarter of a second, making it virtually impossible to sync the audio and video (receivers can delay audio but not video). So with wireless speakers and speakers with DSP processing, ‘latency’ (the delay to the audio signal) becomes an important issue when they’re used with video equipment. Klipsch says that the latency of this system conforms to the WiSA five millisecond standard. So there should be no problems in that regard.
Performance
Before performing, your speaker system must first be set up. Of course our test room has cables from AV receiver to speaker positions already in place, so connecting a conventional speaker system is pretty straight forward. So, how hard was this system in comparison?
A little easier, if anything. We put the control centre on top of the AV receiver and transferred the HDMI cables for the TV and four input source devices to it. Then with all the speakers in place, we connected them to power points and (except for the subs — they already know what they are) used the selector button on each speaker to mark its position. Each can be set to any of the seven positions of a 7.1 speaker system.
Turn on the TV, power up the control centre and follow the on-screen instructions to link up to all the speakers, which takes a minute or two. Test tones are delivered from the front left and right and surround left and right speakers in turn, asking for confirmation that the sound was coming from the correct speakers. (It presumably expects no confusion with the centre speaker and subwoofers.) And that was it. What about the time alignment necessary for the most accurate surround effect? And what about balancing the levels?
The ‘menu’ key on the remote control brought up a four-item menu, one item of which provided access to a deeper menu for adjusting those items (plus choosing the subwoofer environment: Wall, Corner, or Other). The default settings had all the speakers at 2.0 metres and all the levels the same. This was a bit like the olden days, prior to Audyssey and YMAO and similar automatic calibration systems, and easily dealt with. A tape measure yielded the correct distances to enter in. Using an SPL meter, the five main speakers needed only a decibel
“Can the choice of wireless over wired for practical reasons be implemented without loss of quality? The Klipsch Reference Premiere HD system shows that it most certainly can....”
or so of tweaking for the correct speaker balance (each produced a test signal when selected).
There’s also an Advanced menu. The most important item appearing thereon is an audio delay setting. This has a maximum setting of 100ms, perhaps a little short for some TVs these days, but probably close enough to get under the threshold above which lip-sync issues are perceived by most people.
The system worked extremely reliably. All the speakers remained robust in their links tto the Control Center, and there were clearly never any audio dropouts. The one minor complaint was a small click from the speakers on signal acquisition. It wasn’t especially prominent, but it did seem a little crude.
Otherwise this system is anything other than crude. The sound produced was marvellously well balanced, with truly brilliant impact and frankly astonishing surround imaging.
We used it as our main system for movies, music, stereo and surround. If the sound quality was impacted in any way by the wireless connection to the speakers, it was likely a positive impact. Having the amplifiers built into the loudspeaker enclosures seemed to add a sense of immediacy and speed beyond that with more conventional arrangements. The timing of everything was spot on, and the control over the sound was excellent, even as I advanced the volume to ridiculous levels.
I was concerned that the surrounds might be a little small and a little underpowered for real heavy-duty surround work, so I pulled out my go-to disc for this: the Blu-ray version of The Who’s ‘Tommy’. The surround mix has Keith Moon’s drums entirely in the surround left channel. The smaller Klipsch speakers had no diffi- culty at all delivering this at extremely satisfying levels. And satisfying means, with The Who, loud!
More surprising still was the remarkable sense of height — appropriate height, that is — imparted to surround movie audio. At a couple of points in the DTS-HD Master Audio on the ‘Children of Men’ Blu-ray, the clear overhead sound was actually quite startling.
The unit accepted all my music via HDMI or optical in PCM format up to 192kHz. Even though WiSA is supposed to support only up to 96kHz, the status screen produced by the control centre suggested it was using 192kHz with my various 192kHz jazz recordings. The same screen indicated 44.1kHz as the ‘WiSA Sample Rate’ for CD-style PCM, so I guess that there isn’t unnecessary internal resampling (the WiSA system is claimed to match its sample rate to the incoming rate). For analogue input signals it reported the ‘WiSA Sample Rate’ as 96kHz.
The unit decodes Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus and DTS, but neither Dolby TrueHD nor DTS-HD. However it does support multichannel PCM (up to 192kHz for six channels, 96kHz for eight), so if you have a decent Blu-ray player, set it to do the decoding to PCM.
The unit passes through video all the way up to 2160p/60 and will overlay its volume control and menu on video up to 1080p/60, plus 1080p/24 in 3D. For UHD signals the volume control doesn’t show and the menu replaces what’s on the screen.
Conclusion
Can the choice of wireless over wired for practical reasons be implemented without loss of quality? The Klipsch Reference Premiere HD system shows that it most certainly can. And when considering value for money, remember that this system effectively includes the cost of amplification, and cabling. Stephen Dawson