Well designed and thought out. Excellently solid build-quality. Smooth,warm sound and great detail. Fun- to-listen-to and dynamic. Beautiful wood-veneer finishes. Fairly high sensitivity.

Not for the non-tweaking so far as room placement is concerned. Warm-sounding electronics of quality would not hurt any.

Horns intrigue me. Despite a certain amount of snobbery from the "audiophile" circles,horn-loaded speakers have been a wedgie in the cheeks of the hipsters that simply persists and persists. I think this is because a properly designed hornspeaker,while difficult for manufacturers to realize in an truly integrated way,has something in terms of the mimicry of natural sound that strikes a profound cord in the human brain. Perhaps it all goes back to the fact that humans themselves are "horn-loaded",since our throats are most certainly a type of horn. Simplified,I say that a certain immediate,viscerally-exciting quality can be remembered as one of the primary sonic attributes of hornspeakers. That said,the RB-5 speakers that I have auditioned impressed me with not only the pristine clarity of the sound but also with the smoothly warm delivery of the music at all frequencies. I have been shopping for new bookshelf speakers since I have acquired a very nice N.E.W. A-20.1 power amp--two channels of the finest single-ended pure class-A motivation that $500-U.S. money can ever hope to buy($1000 is the normal retail price,but HCM Audio has them on sale)! As a consequence of the limited pure class A power-supply,I am looking around for an easier to drive pair of speakers than my currently owned B+W models. My considerations so far have been narrowed down to the Klipsch RB-5,the Soliloquy SAT-5,or the Axiom Audio M-22TI SE--all bookshelf models with fairly high-sensitvity and excellent reviews as well as being in the "budget-audiophile" category under $1000 per pair. I must say that I was a bit skeptical before auditioning the RB-5's,seeing that old-fashioned looking horn-hole staring me in the face. I was totally unprepared for the sweet and seemingly seamless integration between the horn-loaded tweeter and the aluminum woofer. And,while the soundstage did not remind me of the widely transparent sort that B+W delivers,within the narrower sweet-spot of the RB-5 I found no mid to hi-range graininess,very tightly controlled bass,and endless low-level detail. I think that very careful positining is needed in a given room in order to fully realize this speakers soundstaging potential,but I will bet that many who buy these speakers will not take the pains necessary and may end up missing something. A very well designed speaker.

Similar Products Used:

B+W,others.