Klipsch The Three Plus Review

Verdict

It gets a lot more right than it gets wrong, The Three Plus, and it looks the part as it does so. As far as simple value for money is concerned, it’s got to count as a conspicuous success…

Introduction

All-in-one systems are all the rage just now. All shapes, all sizes, all prices… they don’t even have to be all in one to be ‘all in one’ right now, just ask the likes of KEF or Q Acoustics. 

But The Three Plus by Klipsch is an all-in-one for sure, which puts it up against alternatives from brands like Ruark Audio and Tangent Audio… it’s certainly got brand cachet and heritage on its side, but is this Klipsch the real all-in-one deal? 

Availability

The Three Plus by Klipsch is on sale now, and in the United Kingdom you’ll need to part with £379 to own one. It’s around $399 in the company’s native America, white Australian customers are looking at AU$529. There’s a lot of functionality here for that money, there’s no denying it, but a chock-a-block spec sheet will only carry a product so far…

Design

• 178 x 355 x 213mm (HxWxD)
• matte black or walnut real wood veneer finishes
• physical and app control options

I’m aware that my opinion on the design and overall aesthetic of a product are not in especially high demand. But for what it’s worth, I think the industrial design of The Three Plus is right on the money, especially in the walnut veneer finish of my review sample. It looks correct, somehow.

It’s a neat 178 x 355 x 213mm (HxWxD), which makes the Klipsch ideal for a tabletop or a shelf (as long as you can give it just a little breathing space). No matter if you choose walnut or matte black, the top is good-looking and tactile real wood veneer – and the contrasting strip of metal that’s home to a couple of controls (input selection and a volume dial) on the top and a company logo on the front face of the box looks good too.

The cabinet is curved at every corner, and the acoustic cloth that wraps around all four sides is applied beautifully. The overall standard of fit and finish is very good indeed. 

Features

• 120 watts of power
• 2.1-channel speaker array
• wireless and wired connectivity

The majority of your interactions with the Klipsch will probably come via the Connect app that’s free for iOS and Android. It’s got playback control, a night mode control, a three-band EQ with five presets, allows you to check for upgrades and so on… all the usual stuff, basically. It’s a clean and good-looking app, and is responsive and stable.

Getting audio information on board The Three Plus can be done a number of ways, and there are sufficient options that the Klipsch can reasonably be called a system rather than a speaker.

Wireless stuff is via Bluetooth 5.3 with SBC and AAC connectivity. Klipsch has specified a Bluetooth chipset that allows The Three Plus to feature ‘Broadcast’ mode – which means that it can, in a fairly limited way, act as a transmitter as well as a receiver. If you have other ‘Broadcast’-enabled speakers – as many as 10, in fact – your The Three Plus can transmit a mono Bluetooth signal to any of them that are within range. So a simple, straightforward multi-speaker system can easily be established.

Wired connections are all made to the rear of the cabinet. Here you’ll find a digital optical input (good for resolutions up to 24-bit/96kHz), a USB-C socket (so hooking up a thumb drive, PMP and that sort of thing is straightforward) and a pair of analogue stereo RCA inputs too. This last input is switchable between line-level and phono-level, so attaching a turntable is simplicity itself. Klipsch has helpfully pointed out that the USB-C is capable of powering a WiiM Mini if you want to introduce some network streaming into your set-up too.

Digital-to-analogue conversion is handled by a DAC of unspecified type and resolution, and all the analogue information is powered by 120 watts of Class D amplification. Ultimately, sound is delivered by what Klipsch describes as a 2.1-channel arrangement of two 57mm full-range drivers, a 133mm bass driver and a couple of 133mm passive radiators.      

Sound Quality

• Direct, detailed and quite chunky sound
• Quite consistent performance in most circumstances
• Likes it as loud as realistically possible

For all that The Three Plus is quite understated and unobtrusive in its physical execution, the sound it makes is, it’s safe to say, not. The Klipsch is a boisterous, energetic listen, more than happy to play uncomfortably loud in the pursuit of a good time.

That’s not to say it’s in any way uncouth, you understand. It’s quite an insightful and articulate device where detail retrieval and simple musicality are concerned – it’s just that it has a quite positive, direct attitude that means it seems happier dealing with the more visceral elements of recorded music than the cerebral.

It’s a remarkably consistent listen across its digital optical, USB-C and Bluetooth inputs, too. A listen to Patti Smith’s Because the Night via a CD player, a DAP and as a stream via TIDAL gives very, very similar results: a stack of low-frequency presence, controlled enough to keep the rhythm honest and varied enough to allow expression of texture and timbre, upon which everything else just rides.

The character-packed midrange is open and eloquent enough to allow the voice full expression, and the top of the frequency range is just about assertive enough to hold its own in the face of the low-end confidence. Integration is smooth, and the soundstage is reasonably open and defined.    

There’s plenty of dynamic headroom available too, which is just as well – because the Klipsch gives every impression of playing quite loudly even when it’s at a very low output level. Such is the direct and quite forceful nature of its presentation, it seems to be pressing on at all times – and when you decide to turn it up, it’s capable of quite oppressive volume.

It never sounds forced or stressed, though, and it doesn’t lose any of its ability with soundstaging – it just gets louder and then, if you can bear it, louder still. You have to explore the outer reaches of its abilities before it starts to lose composure or sound fatiguing.

It’s a slightly different story where the phono input is concerned. The same song heard via a turntable goes without a lot of the positivity and drive that otherwise characterises The Three Plus, and dynamic variation gets squashed at the same time. Detail levels aren’t so high, low-frequency presence isn’t so assertive, and in general the Klipsch sounds a little more tentative when heard this way then when heard through any of its other inputs. 

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