Klipsch’s flagship Heritage floorstanders, side by side. Here is the Jubilee, the range flagship, alongside the Klipschorn and Forte IV, showing where it sits.

The Jubilee was Paul W. Klipsch’s final project, the fully horn-loaded speaker he dreamed of building to satisfy the most demanding listeners, originally conceived as the successor to the Klipschorn and ultimately something more. It is the flagship of the Heritage Series and unlike anything else Klipsch makes: a two-way, fully horn-loaded design driven by an external active DSP crossover and mandatory bi-amplification. That architecture is the key to everything it does, and the key to the system we build around it, because it allows something few speakers permit, driving the bass and treble horns with two entirely different amplifiers, each chosen for what it does best.

Brief product overview

A fully horn-loaded two-way floorstander combining a patented folded-horn, vented low-frequency enclosure housing two 12-inch fibre-composite woofers with a large K-693 compression driver using a 7-inch axiperiodic titanium diaphragm and a 5-inch voice coil. The compression driver’s exceptionally wide bandwidth lets the crossover sit at just 340Hz, well below the vocal range, so a single driver covers the midrange and treble with no separate midrange unit and none of the colouration a three-way handover in the vocal region brings. Sensitivity is a colossal 105dB. The speaker is bi-amp only: each pair requires four channels of amplification, and every pair ships with an external active DSP crossover that handles phase, time alignment, EQ and gain, with eight balanced XLR and eight unbalanced RCA outputs and independent low- and high-frequency gain controls to blend the two sections and tailor them to the room. The bass section is 8 ohms nominal, 3.5 ohms minimum, and the treble 16 ohms nominal, 7.6 ohms minimum. It is hand-built in Hope, Arkansas, in book-matched wood veneers.

How it sounds

The Jubilee delivers concert scale with almost no effort, its 105dB efficiency meaning even a handful of watts fills a large room with clean, dynamic, effortless sound, and its horn loading giving music a sense of presence and immediacy that conventional speakers struggle to match. The low 340Hz crossover keeps the vocal range whole and free of the discontinuities that trouble three-way designs, so voices are natural and coherent, while the folded bass horn produces deep, powerful low frequencies with the same efficiency and low distortion as the top end. Reviewers place it above even the Klipschorn. The active crossover’s phase and time alignment give it a precision that older passive horn designs could not achieve, and its per-section gain controls are what make the bi-amping approach below not just possible but adjustable.

What we’d partner it with

The Jubilee’s active crossover, and its separate bass and treble horns, invite a system that plays to the strengths of two amplifier technologies at once. We bi-amp it: solid-state on the bass horns for grip, power and control, valve on the treble horns for the midrange and top-end sweetness a horn renders so beautifully. The McIntosh MC462, a 450-watt Autoformer stereo amplifier, drives the two bass horns; the McIntosh MC275 Mk VI, the classic 75-watt valve stereo amplifier, drives the two treble horns. The Jubilee’s 105dB sensitivity means neither is remotely stretched, so the choice is entirely about character, and the crossover’s independent LF and HF gain controls let you balance the two amplifiers’ different output levels precisely, which is exactly what makes mixing solid-state and valve across an active speaker practical here where it would be fraught on a passive one.

In front of them both sits the McIntosh C2800 valve preamplifier, feeding the active crossover, which then feeds the four amplifier channels. Its tube line stage complements the valve treble amplifier and lends the whole front end warmth, and it carries its own DAC and phono stage, so it serves both systems below.

For streaming, the C2800’s DAC is fed by a reference transport: the Aurender N20, a network transport whose OCXO-clocked digital outputs feed the preamplifier’s converter, so the digital front end matches the ambition of the rest.

For vinyl, the C2800’s configurable moving-magnet and moving-coil phono stage takes a turntable directly. The McIntosh MT10 is the natural partner within the brand, a Clearaudio-built deck with a magnetic-bearing platter and the MCC10 moving-coil cartridge, which the C2800’s phono input accommodates.

On cabling, run the C2800 to the crossover and the crossover to the amplifiers on balanced XLR cables, which Klipsch recommends; each amplifier then runs conventional speaker cable to its horn section. AudioQuest and Chord are the cable brands we stock.

Who shouldn’t buy it

If you want a conventional speaker you can drive with a single stereo amplifier, the Jubilee is not it; its bi-amp, active-crossover architecture is mandatory, and it needs four amplifier channels and a preamplifier feeding the crossover. If your room is small, its scale is wasted, and the Forte IV or Heresy IV bring the Heritage sound to a smaller space. And if you want the vintage Klipschorn silhouette specifically, the Jubilee is a different, more modern-looking design, for all that it descends from the same lineage.

The Jubilee is a professional-grade install and takes more setting up than a passive speaker. Every pair includes the active DSP crossover, which is mandatory: the signal runs from the C2800 into the crossover, and the crossover’s outputs feed the two power amplifiers, the MC462 to the bass horns and the MC275 Mk VI to the treble horns, on balanced XLR where you can. Connect each amplifier’s speaker outputs to the matching horn section, bass to the 8-ohm woofer section, treble to the 16-ohm compression driver. Then use the crossover’s independent low- and high-frequency gain controls to balance the two amplifiers, since the solid-state and valve amps have different gain; this is the step that blends the two technologies seamlessly, and it is worth taking time over or having the dealer set. The MC275 runs valves, so give it air and let it warm through. For vinyl, connect the MT10 to the C2800’s phono input, set to moving-coil for the MCC10 cartridge.