Klipsch SA-3 Outdoor Speakers
July 2001
Almost as Big as the Great Outdoors
by Mike McGann
Some folks might find it kind of funny. Here I am, alleged (okay, very alleged) audio critic guy, with no less than four Dolby Digital home theater systems in my house and what do I do when I want to listen to music outside on my back deck? I haul out my Radio Shack monster AM/FM radio and sit it near my chair.
Ridiculous? Well, maybe. My backyard and deck are kind of big, yet my neighbors aren't that far away, making it tough to have sound that fills the yard without annoying the folks next door. Two pairs of outdoor speakers have languished around my house for more than two years without my feeling motivated to set them up. With small little woofers and fairly small enclosures, I knew there wouldn't be much bass and I'd have to seriously crank 'em up just to hear anything out by the pool.
Then the folks at Klipsch offered me a pair of their new SA-3 Synergy outdoor speakers ($700/pair). One look at these bad boys and I knew they weren't your everyday outdoor speakers. Aside from the nifty horn-mounted tweeters, something Klipsch has been doing for years to great effect, these outdoor speakers have eight-inch woofers. With the big woofers, these are quite big speakers, nearly twice the size of say, a Parasound Nomad Nine outdoor unit. At least in theory, that meant bass should be seriously better than any outdoor unit I've tested.
First off, I tested the pair indoors in my lab, in part to get them thoroughly broken in, also because the first weeks of March came up very cold and rainy here in the east. I was pretty quickly impressed with their behavior, much as I was with the Synergy home theater system I reviewed in these pages last year. Detail was good, imagery and soundstage was good (although that's truly less of an issue with an outdoor speaker). In general, I found them to be very good competitors for bookshelf speakers of the same price range. Of course, these I could also shoot with a water pistol, unlike any of the bookshelf units I commonly listen to in my lab.
Taking them outdoors was a fairly simple task. Klipsch provides a nice mounting bar that offers a good amount of flexibility in how you set the speakers up. I opted to mount them horizontally hanging from the eaves of my roof, facing toward my deck. Two quick screws each—zapping them in with my DeWalt cordless drill—had them in place in all of five minutes. I ran 16-gauge speaker wire to them, via a hole I drilled. That wire was connected to my Pioneer home theater receiver, which allows for A and B speakers.
by Mike McGann
Some folks might find it kind of funny. Here I am, alleged (okay, very alleged) audio critic guy, with no less than four Dolby Digital home theater systems in my house and what do I do when I want to listen to music outside on my back deck? I haul out my Radio Shack monster AM/FM radio and sit it near my chair.
Ridiculous? Well, maybe. My backyard and deck are kind of big, yet my neighbors aren't that far away, making it tough to have sound that fills the yard without annoying the folks next door. Two pairs of outdoor speakers have languished around my house for more than two years without my feeling motivated to set them up. With small little woofers and fairly small enclosures, I knew there wouldn't be much bass and I'd have to seriously crank 'em up just to hear anything out by the pool.
Then the folks at Klipsch offered me a pair of their new SA-3 Synergy outdoor speakers ($700/pair). One look at these bad boys and I knew they weren't your everyday outdoor speakers. Aside from the nifty horn-mounted tweeters, something Klipsch has been doing for years to great effect, these outdoor speakers have eight-inch woofers. With the big woofers, these are quite big speakers, nearly twice the size of say, a Parasound Nomad Nine outdoor unit. At least in theory, that meant bass should be seriously better than any outdoor unit I've tested.
First off, I tested the pair indoors in my lab, in part to get them thoroughly broken in, also because the first weeks of March came up very cold and rainy here in the east. I was pretty quickly impressed with their behavior, much as I was with the Synergy home theater system I reviewed in these pages last year. Detail was good, imagery and soundstage was good (although that's truly less of an issue with an outdoor speaker). In general, I found them to be very good competitors for bookshelf speakers of the same price range. Of course, these I could also shoot with a water pistol, unlike any of the bookshelf units I commonly listen to in my lab.
Taking them outdoors was a fairly simple task. Klipsch provides a nice mounting bar that offers a good amount of flexibility in how you set the speakers up. I opted to mount them horizontally hanging from the eaves of my roof, facing toward my deck. Two quick screws each—zapping them in with my DeWalt cordless drill—had them in place in all of five minutes. I ran 16-gauge speaker wire to them, via a hole I drilled. That wire was connected to my Pioneer home theater receiver, which allows for A and B speakers.
