I have become so accustomed to receiving shoe-box sized subwoofers for review (they being the flavour of the month, what with all the apartment buildings going up in Sydney) that when Klipsch’s SPL-150 arrived on my door-step, I had one of those Crocodile Dundee moments, you know, that one where he mocks a New York mugger: “You call that a knife? This is a knife!”
I had exactly the same feeling once I’d unpacked it and discovered that gigantic copper-coloured bass driver. In a world where most subwoofers sport much smaller 254mm diameter bass drivers, or 305mm drivers, Klipsch has fitted a massive 381mm diameter bass driver to its SPL-150. That makes a difference to the amount of air the SPL-150 can move. A big difference.
THE EQUIPMENT
Since I have already told you that the SPL-150 is big, I won’t tantalise you any further by withholding its actual size until later in this review, as I usually do.
It measures 546×495×566mm (HWD), so if you can imagine a cube that’s half a metre in every direction, you’d be just about spot-on size-wise. Despite this size, the SPL-150 weighs only a little more than 34 kilos, so Klipsch is obviously keeping the weight down by using just a single-walled MDF cabinet. It’s also keeping costs down by using a standard black vinyl fi nish.
As for that copper-coloured cone I mentioned, Klipsch says it’s a “long-throw copper spun cerametallic” cone but the cone is not made from copper. “Cerametallic” is a trademark rather than a description
