Klipsch Cinema 1200 impressions: Powerful, junior-sized Atmos—with compromises

Upward-projecting clarification

For the uninitiated: "overhead" speakers are the centerpiece of many modern surround-sound systems, and they're usually the final number you see in a designation such as "5.1.4"—which, in this system's case, means five direct-facing speakers, one subwoofer, and four upward-projecting speakers. Both Atmos and DTS:X Pro send deliberate sound data to the latter type of speakers, whether they are mounted on a ceiling and aimed downward or placed at head level and aimed upward. High-end audio salespeople will tell you that such intentional aiming creates "dome"-like surround sound.

Whether you buy into spatial surround as a valuable concept is its own conversation. I'll start by clarifying that the Klipsch Cinema 1200 does a decent job of exposing the fact that spatial surround does sound different from traditional 5.1 and 7.1 systems, while still putting a lot of heft into existing 5.1 and 7.1 mixes.

I've used the Cinema 1200 in my living room for a little over a month at this point, which means I've tested it with a lot of gaming, films, TV, and music. I find it's easier for me to nitpick about the times it didn't deliver, because, for the vast majority of my use, this set has rocked: shimmering reverb hanging in a dome-like manner inside of a surround-minded music mix; the rumbling and whizzing of screams and gunfire during impressive modern action films like John Wick and Nobody; crunchy low-end leaving a mix's delicate highs and mids untouched.

Crank up the 5.1 mix of Dark Side of the Moon on this thing, and you won't need mind-altering substances to soak it up.

My worst experience, honestly, came when I tested stereo-mixed content without playing with certain built-in settings. The remote includes a "mode" button that switches between various default equalizer options, and the Cinema 1200's EQ default, labeled "standard," absolutely guts default stereo content. Any oomph you'd expect from a climactic splash in a rock song is toast in this mode. Thankfully, Klipsch removes this trickery via the "direct" EQ option, and the results can fill my entire apartment with pristine audio. Jack the volume up, and you'll hear phone calls from the neighbors before you hear this set's tweeters and woofers giving way to audio distortion.

I could go on for a while about how awesome this set is with my favorite content. The Cinema 1200 doesn't flinch at any of the overdriven noise madness on my usual Spotify music testing mix, and it's just as eager to put a healthy amount of sparkle on my highest-resolution downloads of Blue Note '60s jazz remasters. Crank up the 5.1 mix of Dark Side of the Moon on this thing, and you won't need mind-altering substances to soak it up. And it's nimble at letting me switch gears and pwn noobs in online video games full of positional audio data. (Both PS5 and Xbox Series X/S include surround-sound support, but only Xbox includes native Atmos support. I'm not convinced that you need Dolby's standard to better discern the direction of sounds in frantic online video games, but it certainly sounds nice.)

Night 1 is the right one

The subwoofer, on the other hand, is absolutely going to be a matter of taste, and Klipsch's comments to other critics seem to affirm that its booming default is something it's proud of. I am concerned that a nephew of someone on the Klipsch executive board is running the show with this subwoofer, however, because its booming default is ridiculous.

Even when my neighbors are gone and I'm free to rock out, I can't bring myself to use this system without toggling its "night" mode, which is typically a toggle you might use to turn your subwoofer down from "comfortably rumbly" to "mostly silent so the neighbors don't complain." As it turns out, Cinema 1200 includes two night modes. Night 2 is the mostly silent treatment you expect from such a mode, while Night 1 is, as far as I'm concerned, the actual human setting. Each step of the subwoofer's "night" scale includes a scale up to +6 and down to -6, but the lowest setting in "Night 0" (the default) is a few steps away from the highest setting in "Night 1."

Thankfully, I've found myself happy with the room-filling rumble of Night 1, bumped up three steps, which errs more on the side of muscle than subtlety but doesn't artificially dominate any film, music, or gaming content I've thrown at the set. But if you expect pristine low-frequency engineering from a $1,900 sound system purchase, Klipsch may annoy you a bit with this piece.

An app that goes nowhere

And if you had designs on dialing in that subwoofer, or any of the set's other pieces, via a hidden submenu of customizations and tweaks, Klipsch will take you past "annoyed" and right into "lost purchase" territory.

Place some of the blame on the set's lack of a discrete receiver. When you pony up for a dedicated receiver with spatial-surround support, you can typically expect to get some major options for dialing in the sound to fit your specific space. This is particularly crucial for spatial surround, since the standards revolve around bouncing sound off of ceilings or other room surfaces—and highly reviewed receivers include microphones for this sort of thing. Place and mount your speakers however you see fit, then play a series of tones while the receiver's included mic listens from a "center" point in the room. That evaluation will dial-in volume and equalization for each of the attached speakers to some extent, with finicky fine-tuning remaining an option for obsessive calibrators from there.

Klipsch, conversely, gives Cinema 1200 owners the very sparse explanation shown above. Place your satellites roughly 3-6 feet behind your ideal listening position, angled somewhere between 25 and 45 degrees. That's it. The system doesn't come with a toggle-able calibration process of any kind, let alone height or distance recommendations for the soundbar to fit its built-in calibration settings.

And as of press time, the Klipsch Connect smartphone app still doesn't do anything for the Cinema 1200. Connect your smartphone to the sound bar, and you'll learn... that your sound bar is connected to the Internet, in case any firmware updates go live. No equalization. No options toggles. Klipsch had previously assured critics that its app ecosystem would get updated by August of this year, which is admittedly one reason I didn't immediately rush to review it, just in case the company came anywhere close to its self-imposed deadline. No such luck.