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- Verified Buyer
Klipsch announced some new upcoming speakers recently and the Groove is the first in their new lineup.So far it doesn't seem to be available outside the US and as I am based in Europe I had to order it overseas to have a listen to it. I know both GiG and KMC-1 well so I was curious to hear how the Groove held up against those.Let me tell you that it is definitely an impressive piece of engineering with a very skillful tuned sound for high fidelity. It doesn't have any artificial boosts or frequency emphasis like JBL or Bose tend to apply to their speakers thus it might compare a bit "boring" when put directly against those. But the Groove is definitely the much more honest speaker. Bass reaches nicely deep for a speaker of that size, you get clean response down to 60hz, but Klipsch doesn't apply any low-cut, so you will even get much deeper frequencies when they are contained within a song, and with careful positioning closer to a wall etc, you really will hear the lowest kicks missing from most other small speakers.Unlike the KMC-1 which tended to sound quite a bit tinny at low levels, the Groove manages a nicely full-bodied sound even at lowest levels, but for my taste this goes at the expense of treble, it sounds too muddy at low listening levels, it got get along with a bit of treble boost at lowest loundess settings, here simply the human ear is to blame as it becomes less sensitive for high and low frequencies at low levels, and while Klipsch seems to compensate for low frequencies with a slight boost, it doesn't do anything for treble.At higher levels bass gets reduced and the Groove can play really loud, louder than most contenders, but it starts to distort during the latest volume steps. Bring it down some notches and it will be about as loud as the RIVA S while the RIVA S will still sound cleaner with no distortion at all. I compared both back and forth a lot and for being 100 bucks less expensive the Groove really does a great job, it has similarly powerful bass, but better mids presence, although I prefer the smoother treble of the RIVA S, nevertheless the Groove is just a simple mono speaker, the RIVA manages a much more spacial sound overall, maybe not true left/right separation but you will simply hear the music floating around the speaker with the RIVA S, while with the Groove it always sounds as if it was coming from a single point source. Why Klipsch didn't even consider adding True Wireless Pairing to this speaker, remains a mystery. 300$ for a wireless stereo system like that could be still reasonable and you would get a much better sound than from any of those UE-toys, which can all be paired for stereo.I also miss synced volume control between speaker and player, but you can leave the Groove at maximum and simply control volume from your streaming device, it doesn't affect the sound or add any additional hiss.The overall design may appear a bit weird, but it has some looks and could even be mistaken for some rear speaker of a 5.1 surround setup, it is just that the buttons are hard to recognize at dark conditions, you can't really feel any of them. It would have helped if there was some backlighting at least for the volume or play button, which btw can also act as skipping button (2 presses skips forward, 3 presses skips back).I really welcome the ability to disable the embarrassing rock-like status tones. You can simply turn them off completely by keeping the "Aux"-button pressed for some seconds, kudos for that, as so many companies still ingnore this and add some stupid awkward and much too loud tones to most of their speakers: "chakaboom"!If you are into Hifi and not so much into boosted artificial sound, you should check out the Klipsch Groove, as it reminds me a bit of a mini Hifi-system and makes all UE offerings so far sound really poor. Many may prefer the overly sculpted sound of Bose or JBL, but anyone longing for fidelity will love the Groove. The only thing I am missing is stereo pairing with another, and I cannot quite accept the distortion at high levels, but at least it plays louder than most others still without any compression or dynamics processing.The Groove gives quite a rugged impression and is also IPX4 rated, so it should do well outdoors without any problems, If you don't mind mono sound and can live with a bit of distortion at highest levels, I think it will be hard to find anything better at this size. A pity no carrying bag or any way to mount the speaker with some loop or carabiner is included, but it is quite a heavy device so it may be not that comfortable having it hanging around from your belt or similar.A great first for Klipsch and makes me even more curious to hear the upcoming new speakers!
