Everyone loves the idea of better sound in the home, but most of us can’t afford the space for multi-speaker setups. So what are you to do?
Everyone loves the idea of better sound in the home, but most of us can’t afford the space for multi-speaker setups. So what are you to do?
The RSB-14 is listed by Klipsch as the most powerful model in its Klipsch Stream Wireless Multi-Room family, and is a simple 2.1 channel speaker system that eschews vertical channels (and hence Atmos support) for a more traditional approach. It leverages on their Klipsch Tractrix horns for detailed sound in the mids and highs, and of course, offers a standalone wireless subwoofer to take care of the low end.
Set-up is fairly simple.
All we had to do was to plug both soundbar and subwoofer in and power them up. Pairing was taken care of automatically and all we had to do was to connect to our source via an Optical Digital (TOSLink) cable. Because the system is Play-Fi and Klipsch Stream certified, it can be mixed and matched with products from other brands that also support Play-Fi.
In terms of audio, we’d say the RSB-14 is easily one of the most musical of the lot, with good naturalness in the mid-range and fairly good bass extension too. Vocals are presented with good clarity, and the speaker seems to have a good sense of imaging.
No surprise then that the system performed best on Hotel California by The Eagles during our formal audio testing.
The soundbar manages to offer good stereo separation on this piece with a great amount of clarity, It’s clear that mids and highs are strengths with this system, while the lower ranges seem to come off as reserved rather than dry.
In our movie testing, we thought the set did best with the sample track from Game of Thrones off the official Dolby Atmos Blu-Ray demo disc. This is a scene where archers onboard a ship are ordered to cock their arrows in preparation for battle. The sails of the ship are billowing in the wind and there’s a torch being lit that is thrown into the sea to signal the start of battle. All of these sound effects were captured with a good sense of naturalness, but where the soundbar suffered was in conveying the sense of movement overhead and the general imaging.
