Ace of Bass – KLIPSCH RP-1600SW

Sat the name Klipsch and most people will instantly think about high-efficiency speakers, ones with horn tweeters and distinctive gold metallic midranges and woofers.

- By Jim Wilson

If you're of a certain age your mind might take you to their groundbreaking Klipschorn, that marvelous horn-loaded behemoth of a loudspeaker. Over 75 years after its introduction, the Klipschorn is revered by audiophiles. I'm not sure anything like it exists even today. I'm not reviewing something from their speaker line though, what I have in my living room is a subwoofer from their Reference Premier series; the RP-1600SW.

The RP-1600SW is the top model in Klipsch's premium subwoofer line. It features a 16" driver with a front slot port they've dubbed the Aerofoil. Klipsch designed it with flares at both ends, the goal being to minimize annoying port noise. You know for sure I'm going to put that to the test.

IMPRESSIONS

"Bulldog" was my first impression when I freed the RP-1600SW from its foam shipping cocoon, which was an incredible 2.75" thick in sections. As a breed bulldogs tend to be short and muscular, wide and low to the ground. That's exactly like the RP-1600SW, with the grill on you'd probably never think this subwoofer has a 16" driver. While it isn't really very wide or tall it does have some depth, more than 2 feet worth. Not necessarily a bad thing however, in order for a subwoofer to be efficient you need a large cabinet. Going the 'size matters' route means Klipsch engineers were able to rely more upon acoustic principles and less on digital mechanisms - like DSP, or Digital Signal Processing - to tailor the output. They leveraged physics to achieve a lot of their response goals. Personally I prefer that, I would rather minimize the influence of bits and bytes when it comes to what my ears hear.