Klipsch Reference RF-3 Floorstanding Speakers

Klipsch Reference RF-3 Floorstanding Speakers 

DESCRIPTION

Tower speaker. 2-way with dual aluminum cone 8" woofers, and horn loaded 1" titanium dome tweeter

USER REVIEWS

Showing 1-10 of 208  
[Sep 02, 2020]
Pandaman617


Strength:

I’m a made in Canada era Mirage guy through and through (although I do own the OMD series and do run the 28’s 15’s and C2 here and there) so my typical setup is a pair of OM-8’s for mains, OM-C2 for center channel, OM-10’s for surrounds, two Mirage OM-200 subwoofers and two SVS 12” ported subwoofers and two pairs of Omnisats for my height layer speakers. Everything runs to a Denon x6400h to a 7 channel Outlaw Audio amp with my AVRS left to run a pair of heights. That being said I picked up a pair of these in 7/10 condition cosmetically but fully functional performance wise with a random SC1 center channel thrown in and a 10ft pair of Kimber Kable 8TC cables all for $25!! I had originally purchased these to re-sell them but I have found that they’re extremely efficient and well balanced for home theater, for two channel music they sound more or less what a speaker in this price range should sound like but all in all I’m very impressed.

Weakness:

Stop wasting money on biwire binding posts, at this point in time most companies backed my science and interested in giving their customers the most bang for their buck have stopped this practice quite sometime ago. There is no purpose in passive bi-amping and even less of a purpose behind bi-wiring. What matters in audio in reference to things of that nature are AUDIBLE differences not some minute unit of measurement that shows an insignificant drop in impedance. The Kimber’s I was given with these retail for $799.99, do you know how much better they sound than my 12 AWG OFC $65 for 100ft cables? They don’t, they sound precisely the same and show the exact same in room REW measurements .

Price Paid:
25
Purchased:
Used  
Model Year:
2001
OVERALL
RATING
5
[Apr 15, 2018]
DD67


Strength:

Very clear and natural sound reproduction. I got them used for $100 because in one tower a woofer and the tweeter were dead. Turned out the wiring inside the cabinet was chewed up, probably a mouse during storage. Rewired both crossovers and the cabinet with the dead speakers and voila, great tone oozed from them. Plenty of clear bass, succinct mids and articulate highs. I run them with an old Pioneer SX-5 receiver and only use them with my Technics turntable to spin LP's. The Pioneer is rated at 30w per channel and with these efficient speakers, it's verging on disturbing my neighbors when the volume is at 3 lol. I could only find 16ga Rocketfish speaker cable here, but it sounds great. They are pulled about a foot from the wall, 7 feet apart, angled slightly in towards the center listening position. It's a mid sized, carpeted room. Fantastic speakers. Listening to Pink Floyd Meddle right now and it's pure joy!

Weakness:

Really, there are none. Maybe they're a bit heavy at 57 pounds each, but I don't carry them daily lol

Price Paid:
100
Purchased:
Used  
OVERALL
RATING
5
[May 26, 2015]
rigox
AudioPhile

Nice! Nice, I love them I took me a while to find them, they sound great........!

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Feb 06, 2015]
uman5819
AudioPhile

I bought these well cared for on CL for ~$400. best decision I ever made. These are bullet proof. Every time I turn it up I just get more music! I would say the low middle is a bit muddy but the spread of detail from top to bottom is magnificent! They can kick ass on Kings of Leon screaming guitars, they can present Norah, Sarah, and Ella with dazzling reality of stage presence, and bottom out the bass on Lorde without missing a beat! I have logged hundreds of hours on these and never heard them do anything bad. I power them with the Denon 3803 which I have to say, leaves a lot to be desired in the onboard DAC area. Add a new modern technology high grade DAC between source and amp. I got mine for about $200 I think its the Tubemagic, you will not be disappointed. I did three A/Bs: 1) with the Toshiba CD player pulling DAC duty, then direct to amp (Denon has a switch to bypass all onboard DAC). 2) the optical output from CD player with Denon pulling DAC duty, 3) TubeMagic DAC to Denon direct again. TubeMagic of course also has a tube output. Of the four sources the Tube Magic either in DAC or tube mode was the hands down winner everytime. Using Denon's DAC left vocals muddy and messy and crackly. I turned down pianos, it was ugly. P.S. The toshiba has a 1 bit DAC, whatever that means.

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Oct 17, 2010]
pabxpangulo68
Audio Enthusiast

for those privileged who have the RF-3 series II, I salute you!!!.....after 7 years, the more I listen the more I love them, these are already a legend....by the way, I took a look into more Klipsch recent versions and non of them didn't impress me..I better stay with my old RFs...they really rock!!!

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Nov 13, 2009]
uman1916
AudioPhile

These babies rock whatever you throw at them. They just keep doing it again and again effortlessly. Everytime I hear them I fall in love all over again.

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Oct 07, 2003]
arjn
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Great Bass effect..with a punch to it No need of a Sub with HT Sounds Great with Tube amps Need very little power to to theie high efficiency

Weakness:

Feet are cheesy and could have been better Do not sound very great at low volumes

I Bought this 4 months back. I ahd auditioned it with Paradigm,Polk and Bose. Although my heart was set on the Amphion Xenons, the price factor made me go for this. After the fist 50 hours of breakin I am in love with these babies. They play both classical as well as rock with equal ease and my receiver is hardly tested ! I find no need for a subwoofer ...Just put in hell Freezes over by he Eagles and when the drums in Hotel California hit in...My god.. its amazing !! I use it primarily for Music and find no need for a Sub. Even in HT mode, I dont need a Sub as the extensions is pretty good..but the salm (Which i dont particularly care for) is not there and can only be provided by a Sub. There are reviews that say these are bright, but my ears seem to really take on to these and can spend hours listening (Before breaking in they were harsh) I do like to go around and listen to other speakers, but when comparing t most in these price range like Def techs, KEF, Mirage ii come back happy that i bought these. Additionally these look Great without the grill and really Stand out...anf the moment you put the grill back on they kind of merge in...I could go on...

Similar Products Used:

Bose AM5 ,Pioneer, Wharfedale 8.3s, monitor audio bronze3.

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Sep 29, 2003]
pangulo68
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

all

Weakness:

none

For more than 2 years I had hooked the Bose AC5 III to my Harman Kardon AVR7000 and used them most of all for music. For a long time I was convinced the sound was quiet nice but then I started to notice the absence of some sounds specially in the 200-300 Hz range. I always blamed the AVR7000 so I hooked an AudioControl EQ C-101 to help fix that hole. Then I moved from music CD-s to DVD´s so I had to hook a center channel and surround speakers. As the Bose Center Speaker was too expensive and my budget too short I started to look at the reviews and narrowed it to klipsch RC3 II, and I couldn´t beleave it. The sound coming out the RC3 was way better than that of the Bose, and for the first time I started to hear sounds I didn´t know were there, so my next goal was to get rid of the Bose and start saving money to buy the RF3´s. It took me a while but finally I bought them about 3 months ago and this is the result of the final system set up: H/K AVR 7000 Receiver Klipsch RF3 II mains Klipsch RC3 II center Polk R20 surround AudioControl C-101 Eq Real Time Analizer Pioneer DVD-656A Velodyne CHT-12 Sub I bought the Klipsch RF3´s not only because the center channel impressed me, but because of the amount of reviews with very good ratings, and before doing so I also gave them an audition just to make sure. Now the AVR7000 sounds different, clear and crisp. At the begining the bass was quit weak but after almost 40 hrs of break in they sounded better, some times I dont´t even use the Velodyne because the bass they give is more than enough. I had to relisten to all my CD´s and DVD´s because now I can hear a lot of sounds the Bose was just unable to reproduce. One day just for fun, I used the C-101 which has a Real Time Analizer built in to compare the frequency response of the Bose against the Klipsch and I realized that the klipsch has an almost flat response starting at 40Hz up to 16KHz, just a little fall in the last two 1/8 whereas the bose response is totally irregular, with a dramatic fall at the last 3 1/8 and very weak at the first around the 40 Hz. Other thing worth to mention here is the amazing difference in sensitivity, with the Bose I used to put the volume between -5 and 0 db on the AVR7000 to hear it loud, but with the Klipsh, I can get as much db with just -15 db, which is good because i don´t need to force the amplifier. I you ever consider buying speakers for under $1000 go Klipsch, you will never regret, they are hard to find, specially here in Costa Rica, but if you see them, go buy them. I demo them to my friends with the drum solo in "Moby Dick" by John Bonham in the Led Zeppeling DVD, you can actually feel Bonham and the drums just as if you were standing right close to him.

Similar Products Used:

Bose Polk JVL

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[May 06, 2003]
Wyloch
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

As always, brilliant, articulate highs and plentiful, resolved bass, well tuned mids.

Weakness:

Ha! This is Klipsch we're talkin' about!

One particularly impressive and downright surprising feature was the mid frequencies. Klipsch always delivers rediculous highs and plenty of low, but commonly causes mids to get drowned out, resulting in an emptier sound. The RF-3s seemed very well balanced. These fit great with my bookshelf KSB 1.1s as rears and 60 watts of Yamaha going through them.

Similar Products Used:

Denon Polk Audio

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Apr 23, 2003]
arjn
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Punchy base, "Live" Soundstage.

Weakness:

Wish they were lighter :)

First of all *Thanks* to all the reviews posted ..they have been the most helpful I did around two weeks of analysis before zeroing in on Klipsch, Paradigm (Monitor) and Bose AM5 (Of course availability in Singapore was a factor), On sound quality to my not-so-trained ears Paradigm and Klipsch were both awesome (Enigma on Bose was quite nice and sounded slightly nicer than a Sony I owned..but was I blown away by both Klipsch and Paradigm ) 196 reviews and a rating of 4.78 with so many audiophiles could not be wrong so RF-3II it was !!! Bought these just 2 weeks back and No regrets.(Prices here in singapore are usually a way higher than US prices). Bought these primarily for Audio as we see very little movies and these *rock* in all categories from Classical & Fusion to Rock. As mentioned by so many folks before please do give these a fair hearing before buying anything else. BTW I hear a new line based on the Reference series is on the works and to come out some time in May-June

Similar Products Used:

None worth a mention here

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
Showing 1-10 of 208  

(C) Copyright 1996-2018. All Rights Reserved.

audioreview.com and the ConsumerReview Network are business units of Invenda Corporation

Other Web Sites in the ConsumerReview Network:

mtbr.com | roadbikereview.com | carreview.com | photographyreview.com | audioreview.com