Few loudspeakers carry the weight of expectation that the Klipsch Jubilee does. Conceived as the project Paul W. Klipsch himself intended to be his crowning achievement, a successor to the legendary Klipschorn, the Jubilee sits at the pinnacle of the Klipsch Heritage line. For the experienced enthusiast, this is not a speaker you audition casually. It is a fully horn loaded, two way system that demands you rethink some assumptions about how a loudspeaker converts amplifier watts into moving air. Let us take it apart, conceptually, and understand why every decision was made.
What is the Klipsch Heritage line, and where does the Jubilee fit?
The Klipsch Heritage line is Klipsch's collection of hand built, horn loaded loudspeakers assembled in Hope, Arkansas, the same town where Paul W. Klipsch founded the company in 1946. Heritage models are defined by their use of high efficiency horn loading, real wood construction, and design philosophies traceable directly to PWK's original engineering principles. Within this family sit familiar names like the Klipschorn, the La Scala, the Cornwall, and the Heresy. The Jubilee is positioned as the flagship, the most ambitious and technically advanced expression of the horn loaded ideal. Where the older Heritage models rely on passive crossovers and single amplifier drive, the Jubilee moves the design forward with active DSP and bi-amplification, making it the most modern Heritage product in concept while remaining faithful to the horn loading that defines the line.
Core Topology: Why Full Horn Loading Matters
What does "two way, fully horn loaded" actually mean?
"Two way, fully horn loaded" means the Jubilee divides the audio band into just two sections, high and low frequency, and loads both of them through horns rather than mounting a driver on a flat baffle. This is the crucial distinction. A conventional loudspeaker mounts a cone directly to the air, where the driver's small, dense diaphragm has to push a large, light column of air. That is a poor impedance match, and it wastes energy. A horn is an acoustic transformer. It gradually couples the high pressure, low velocity motion at the driver's throat to the low pressure, high velocity behavior the open air wants, over the length of the horn's flare. The result is a dramatic increase in efficiency and a reduction in the excursion the driver needs to reach a given loudness.
Being fully horn loaded means both the treble and the bass benefit from this transformer action. Many speakers horn load only the tweeter. Loading the bass as well is far harder and requires a large, carefully folded structure, which is exactly what the Jubilee's enclosure provides.
How does the Tractrix horn loaded compression driver handle high frequencies?
The high frequency section uses a Tractrix horn loaded compression driver, which pairs a compression driver with a horn whose flare follows the Tractrix mathematical curve. A compression driver is fundamentally different from a dome tweeter. Instead of radiating directly, it uses a relatively large diaphragm that fires into a small chamber, then through a narrow throat called a phase plug. This compresses the acoustic output before it enters the horn, which raises efficiency and lets a small amount of diaphragm motion produce substantial sound pressure.
The Tractrix flare profile is the key to its behavior. The Tractrix curve is derived so that the expanding wavefront remains close to spherical as it travels down the horn, which minimizes the abrupt impedance discontinuities that cause reflections and coloration inside a horn. Practically, this yields controlled, even directivity, meaning the speaker projects a consistent tonal balance over a defined listening window rather than beaming the highs in a narrow pencil. For the listener this shows up as smoother off axis response, more natural imaging, and reduced harshness in the presence region, all while retaining the effortless dynamic snap that compression drivers are known for.
How is the low frequency section designed?
The low frequency section is a horn loaded bass section, meaning the woofer's output is coupled to the room through a folded low frequency horn built into the cabinet rather than a simple ported or sealed box. Bass horns are physically demanding because low frequencies have long wavelengths, requiring a long horn path and a large mouth to work correctly. Klipsch achieves this by folding the horn path inside the enclosure, allowing a manageable cabinet footprint while still giving the low frequency driver a proper acoustic load.
The audible payoff is significant. Because the bass is horn loaded, the driver operates with low excursion for a given output level, which reduces the distortion mechanisms that come from large cone travel, such as suspension nonlinearity and voice coil movement out of the magnetic gap. The bass tends to sound tight, articulate, and fast, with the sense that transients start and stop precisely. Perhaps most notable is that this bass integrates seamlessly with the horn loaded treble, because both sections share the same fundamental radiating character, something a hybrid horn plus direct radiator design struggles to achieve.
The Active Brain: DSP Crossover and Bi-Amplification
What is an active DSP crossover, and why use one here?
An active DSP crossover splits the audio signal into high and low frequency bands using digital signal processing at line level, before amplification, rather than filtering the already amplified signal with passive components at the speaker terminals. This is a major departure from the classic Heritage approach, where a passive crossover made of inductors, capacitors, and resistors sits between one amplifier and the drivers.
The reasons to go active with DSP are compelling for a design this ambitious. Passive crossovers must handle full amplifier power, so their components dissipate energy as heat and can interact unpredictably with the driver's changing impedance. A DSP crossover works on a small, clean signal, so it can implement filter slopes, phase alignment, and frequency contouring with a precision that passive parts cannot match. It can apply time alignment to compensate for the physical offset between the treble and bass acoustic centers, and it can shape the response to correct for the natural behavior of each horn. In short, the DSP lets the designer dial in exactly the crossover behavior the drivers need, then keeps that behavior stable regardless of drive level.
How does bi-amplification work with this speaker?
Bi-amplification means each frequency section, the high frequency horn and the low frequency horn, is driven by its own dedicated amplifier channel, fed directly from the DSP crossover outputs. Rather than one amplifier trying to drive the entire loudspeaker through a passive network, the Jubilee uses two amplification paths, one optimized for treble and one for bass.
The benefits stack up. Each amplifier only has to reproduce its assigned band, so intermodulation between bass and treble demands is eliminated within the amplifier stage. A large bass transient can no longer momentarily rob the treble of clean power, because they are on separate amplifiers. Because there is no passive network sitting between amplifier and driver, the amplifier maintains direct control over the driver's motion, improving damping and transient precision. Combined with the horn loading that already makes these drivers extraordinarily easy to move, bi-amplification gives the system a reserve of control and cleanliness that is difficult to obtain any other way.
What does the 8 ohm nominal impedance tell you about drive requirements?
The 8 ohm nominal impedance describes the average electrical load each amplified section presents, and 8 ohms is a benign, amplifier friendly figure. Nominal impedance is a representative value across the audio band, not a fixed number, since real impedance rises and falls with frequency. An 8 ohm nominal rating means neither section demands the high current delivery that low impedance loads require, so it works comfortably with a wide range of amplification. Combined with horn loading, which delivers high efficiency and thus needs little power to reach high output, the Jubilee is an inherently easy speaker to drive well, which is one reason horn systems have long been paired with lower powered amplifiers by enthusiasts who prize clarity.
Build, Materials, and Craft
Why is the enclosure made of plywood?
The enclosure is a plywood cabinet, horn loaded, and plywood is a deliberate engineering choice rather than a cost decision. Void free plywood offers an excellent combination of stiffness, internal damping, and dimensional stability. For a horn enclosure, the walls must define the precise geometry of a folded horn path and resist flexing under the substantial internal pressures that horn loading generates. Plywood's cross laminated grain structure resists warping and gives consistent mechanical properties in all directions, which matters when the cabinet itself is functioning as an acoustic waveguide, not merely a box holding drivers.
The practical benefit is a rigid, acoustically quiet structure. When the cabinet walls do not resonate or flex, the energy the drivers produce goes into the air as sound rather than being smeared in time by panel vibration. This contributes to the clean, uncolored character that well designed horn systems can achieve.
What does "hand built in Hope, Arkansas" signify?
"Hand built in Hope, Arkansas" means each Jubilee is assembled by hand at Klipsch's original Heritage facility, the birthplace of the company. This is not merely a heritage marketing point. Folded horn enclosures require careful assembly to ensure the internal horn paths are correctly formed and sealed, since air leaks or geometric errors in a horn directly degrade acoustic performance. Hand building allows the craftspeople to fit, glue, and finish these complex structures with the attention such geometry demands, and it connects the current product line directly to the manufacturing lineage PWK established.
System Integration and Living With the Jubilee
How do you connect and integrate the Jubilee into a system?
Because the Jubilee uses an active DSP crossover with bi-amplification, integration is fundamentally different from wiring a traditional passive speaker. The signal path runs from your source into the DSP crossover, which splits the signal and feeds separate amplifier channels for the high and low sections, with those amplifiers connecting directly to the respective drivers. This means system planning must account for the required amplifier channels and the DSP processing, rather than simply running one pair of speaker cables from an integrated amplifier. The reward is a system where the crossover behavior is defined and repeatable, and where each driver is driven exactly as intended.
How should you position a fully horn loaded speaker like this?
A fully horn loaded speaker benefits from thoughtful placement because both its bass horn and its treble horn interact strongly with room boundaries and listening geometry. Bass horns typically couple best when the mouth can work with the room's corners or walls, reinforcing low frequency output through boundary loading. The controlled directivity of the Tractrix high frequency horn means aiming, or toe in, has a meaningful effect on the balance you hear at the listening seat, since the horn defines a coverage pattern rather than spraying sound everywhere. Taking time with placement and toe in lets you align the intended coverage window with your seat, which is where these speakers reward careful setup with startlingly coherent imaging.
Who the Jubilee Is For
The Klipsch Jubilee is the culmination of the Heritage philosophy, a fully horn loaded, two way system that trades the passive simplicity of its Heritage siblings for the precision of an active DSP crossover and bi-amplification. Every element serves the same goal that has driven Klipsch since 1946: couple the driver efficiently to the air, minimize distortion, and let the music through with dynamic ease. The Tractrix compression driver handles the highs with controlled directivity, the folded bass horn delivers fast, low distortion low frequency output, the plywood cabinet keeps the structure quiet and true, and the active electronics tie it all together with a level of control the original Klipschorn era could only dream of. For the experienced enthusiast who understands what horn loading offers and is willing to build a system around it, the Jubilee represents the fullest realization of Paul W. Klipsch's lifelong pursuit.