Home Theater Speakers

If you already have a Klipsch center channel I would only purchase Klipsch speakers to tonally match the center.

I removed four very good Klipsch (mounted on the wall) I was using for surround and rears and replaced them with four, in- wall-mounted Sonance speakers. 6.5 inch. Sound fantastic and no tonal match problem. At same time upgraded my Klipsch mains (FRC) with Martin Logans, another big improvement. Rounding out the set up are a pair of SVS subs. Everything driven by a Marantz 7015. But I kept my four in-ceiling Klipsch speakers. Matching is not as hard today.

Andrew at Best Buy’s Magnolia Store in BR can fix you up.

We swear by Sonos - so easy to set up and really great product and wireless so no wires and drilling into walls etc

LINK

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Matching is not as hard today.

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Excuse the bluntness but that is a load of bollocks, timbre matching is just as hard as it ever was and don't bother retorting with room correction software. RC software can't make a hard dome in a horn sound like a silk dome, it can't help with matching horizontal and vertical dispersion differences and it can't do much at all for speakers that have poor sound power traces. RC software mainly works with the room/speaker interaction as the name would imply and even Dirac Live and Trinnov's "The Optimizer" is fair from perfect.


If OP wants to keep his center and wants to have a good timbre match then he needs to look at the Klipsch Reference series. Given he wants a smallish speaker the RP500/600 would be the best choices. That being said they would not be my choice for music in the price range. If you are less concerned about the timbre balance between the center and the L/Rs my choice for under $1,000 for music would be the B&W 606 S2 Anniversary. Their lively top end would at least match the Klipsch generally. If you are willing to go to $1,261 the KEF store on Amazon has the LS50 Meta on sale. These are the second generation of the LS50 and are probably the most lauded sub-$2000 speaker in recent history.

I have a pair of the LS50 Meta Wireless IIs in my office which are the same speaker just active with built-in streaming. They have laser imaging (expected for a well-utilized coaxial driver) and really linear (for the price) on-axis frequency response, directivity, and sound power. They have a really deep soundstage and the horizontal dispersion is good but not great though if you have an untreated room that is actually an advantage as there is not as much issue with first reflections from the sides. This was really the first (affordable) speaker in KEF's long history that really nailed the coaxial speaker to the point I can't hear any evidence of it being coaxial, so all the good of a coaxial with none of the traditional bad of a coax.


The cons: anechoic F3 is ~50 hz and being ported it drops off quickly below that, to my ears it could use about 1 to 1.5 dB boost in the 1k to 2k range. It isn't capable of huge SPL, if you like to listen to music at over 100dB this isn't the speaker for you but there aren't many of them in the price range that can WITH quality sound.

This may of may not be a con but being rear-ported it will not function to its potential unless it is at least 10-12 inches from the wall.


OP's choices come down to whether they want a timbre match in the LCR or not. If it is important then the Klipsch in the Reference series are the easy choice. If they want to put music over HT significantly then there are a ton of choices and I mean a ton, the B&W and KEF would personally be my choices but could probably list a couple of dozen more great sub $1000 bookshelves without much trouble but speakers influence the sound so much people will naturally have favorites.

Obtuse1, never fails to impress.

I can only say from my personal experience that there is a point of diminishing returns on a lot of equipment. If you're not pursuing a ridiculously high end setup, then just get some good mid-range Klipsch bookshelf speakers and add to the setup as money allows.

IMO, start with a good 3.1 setup and grow from there.