Today, I received my new toys. Since I’ve been spending almost all of my free time in my home office recently and my old Altec Lansing speakers were crackling, I decided to splurge and order myself a set of Klipsch bookshelf speakers and a mini amp.
In my living room, I have a butt kicking, heart stopping, head pounding Klipsch Reference Series setup with a 1200-watt [peak] powered sub. I don’t need that much in my office though. My new setup had to be Klipsch, but I don’t care for their PC speakers. I wanted to get some book shelf speakers, but wasn’t sure how to hook them up without buying a huge fracking receiver.
After a bit of googling, I stumbled upon some class T amplifiers. After reading every review I could find (there aren’t that many reviews out there), I decided to spring for the Topping T-Amp TP-21 from P-Mac Audio. I also ordered a set of RB-51s from Klipsch.
I was a little worried that the T-Amp wouldn’t be able to drive the RB-51s even though a couple people said they sound great together. I was also worried about the sound quality. The amp is only $139 though. Not like I’m spending $1000 on a mid-line receiver.
Well, today they arrived!
I plugged them in to the amp and connected the amp to my sound card and fired up iTunes. I used some John Coltrain and Diana Krall to see how they sounded and was disappointed. Out of the box, the sound is very flat. After futzing around with the iTunes mixer, I got the sound just the way I like it. I probably should buy a dedicated pre-amp.
Then, I switched over to some progressive metal. Dream Theater’s Images and Words rocked. I’m a picky listener, definitely not an “audiophile”, but I think this combo rivals my home theater setup – excluding the volume and lack of a sub, of course.
Even though the amp is only 25-watts per channel, since the Klipsch are so sensitive, the can get quite loud. I turned the volume all the way up and there was only a little clipping. Could be the cheapy sound card in my pc though since I also had the PC volume way up.
[ Power switch is on the back rear ]
What I like about the amp and speakers is that they both can use banana plugs. That makes setup or tear down a breeze. Corrosion is also less of a worry since I bought some pre-soldered cables with bananas.
I like the magnetic clips. My old floor standing speakers have plastic inserts and I’m always worried about them getting broken since my defective, clumsy cat likes to jump up on them from across the room. Sometimes she makes it, sometimes not quite..
All in all, I’m very happy with the setup. Now to get back to lab practice.