Interesting speaker I received as a "gift" (read: free), and a rather positive surprise. KLH 943PL has an interesting speaker configuration: two 3 5/8" matched paper drivers on either side of the tweeter stack (yes I said "stack") in a sealed enclosure. The center lower tweeter is a metallic dome tweeter, 5/8 inch, matched with an upper plastic piezo-electric tweeter (!) perhaps a half inch. This makes for a four speaker, three-way setup, usually not a recipe for success in a low end speaker! I am testing it in a system with a beautiful old Sony STR-D550Z AVR running in 3-speaker Pro Logic mode along with a pair of Polk Audio R10s and a lovely little Cambridge Soundworks Ensemble II passive sub (5 1/4 inch ported driver) to help out the Polks at the bottom end. Inputs are a Yamaha DVD-S657 true Universal player, plus an MPOW Bluetooth receiver feeding the DAT/MD input. This is a terrific little center channel for reproducing voices - I am hearing vocal details I was not expecting from multiple tracks. It is a bright speaker, but not annoyingly so - I simply run the center channel gain at -2. Just don't turn it up to 11 as the Piezo and dome tweeters don't scale up linearly, and the piezo comes apart as a bright mess (as most of them do) at high listening levels. Just keep it low and enjoy the sharp, detailed voices. The KLH (recall the K stands for Henry Kloss!), when kept within its sweet spot, is accurate, listenable, and all in all better at the center channel job than expected. For a tabletop or bedroom system, it's size and quality make for a reasonable recommendation.

Keep the center volume down or the piezo tweeter will make you pay. **also** the KLH speaker grill creates a good deal of sonic congestion with it's inner plastic grid of supports behind the cloth; I simply took a wire clipper and trimmed out the offensive grid portions where they were directly blocking speaker faces - congestion gone and clarity went up considerably when I did this (it's a common problem with low cost speakers and grilles).

Movies

Music

Like most people in the world I'm on a budget when it comes to my audio. So after doing some research and a recomendation from my brother I decided to give KLH a try. The 943pl gives accurate imaging of vocals in movies, but music can become clouded and muddy when it comes to music; however I think this is due more to garbage in garbage out from the reciever.

Similar Products Used:

Creative 5100 5.1