While I'm not even close to believing that Klipsch's are the best ever made (of course they're not) they are still a pretty good speaker & I wouldn't trade mine for anything except maybe even better horns such as the Avantgarde's. I love the dynamics of horns; mine stage quite well & have a natural sound that cone speakers haven't provided in my room; so your experiences I believe were setup related. These speakers are SO very sensitive & revealing that if the source & setup isn't good then you will definitely know about it. I experienced none of your complaints, & you are correct in that synergy is the secret to getting them to really deliver.
So many people talk about mating horns with tubes, & in fact these classic designs were made back when tubes were the only gamne in town. However I've tried driving them with many different components & my best results are with mosfet amps. Perreaux works quite well, as does Ayre Acoustics, McCormack, Monarchy, classic Luxman, & of course Accuphase. A very quiet tube preamp such as a Golden Tube SEP2 or SEP3 works very nicely driving a solid state mosfet amp. Another quiet one is the AMC 1070s Tube Preamp. A number of other expensive & highly regarded tube pre's were revealed by the horns as so noisy & microphonic as to be unbearable. Right now I also have an Accuphase pre (solid state) & the combo is magic.
Cabling synergy is also very important, again I suppose due to the sensitive & revealing nature of these horns. MIT speaker cable does a real nice job for me, the MH750 Magnum biwire. Interconnects, AC cords, line conditioning, clean source components, tweaks: all are critical. It's a lot of fussing around to get it right but when you do get there it's just amazing. Up to you if it's worth the hassle; it is for me.
So many people talk about mating horns with tubes, & in fact these classic designs were made back when tubes were the only gamne in town. However I've tried driving them with many different components & my best results are with mosfet amps. Perreaux works quite well, as does Ayre Acoustics, McCormack, Monarchy, classic Luxman, & of course Accuphase. A very quiet tube preamp such as a Golden Tube SEP2 or SEP3 works very nicely driving a solid state mosfet amp. Another quiet one is the AMC 1070s Tube Preamp. A number of other expensive & highly regarded tube pre's were revealed by the horns as so noisy & microphonic as to be unbearable. Right now I also have an Accuphase pre (solid state) & the combo is magic.
Cabling synergy is also very important, again I suppose due to the sensitive & revealing nature of these horns. MIT speaker cable does a real nice job for me, the MH750 Magnum biwire. Interconnects, AC cords, line conditioning, clean source components, tweaks: all are critical. It's a lot of fussing around to get it right but when you do get there it's just amazing. Up to you if it's worth the hassle; it is for me.