Klipsch's New Speakers Do What a Receiver Does—and They're Built Right In

Klipsch announced three new powered speakers in January 2026 at CES. What makes them unusual is that they contain all the electronics you'd normally buy as a separate piece of equipment—what the industry calls an AV receiver. Until now, Klipsch's powered speakers were mostly just speakers with amplifiers built in. These new models do much more.

The speakers are called The Fives II, The Sevens II, and The Nines II. All three use electronics designed by Onkyo, another audio company. This is a big shift for Klipsch's strategy. Instead of selling you a speaker and asking you to buy other components separately, the company is putting the smarts—and the connections—inside the speaker itself.

What These Speakers Actually Do

All three models play high-quality audio and support Dolby Atmos, which is the technology used in movie theaters to make sound come from different directions. Think of it as 3D audio for your home.

The larger two models, The Sevens II and The Nines II, include something called Dirac Live room correction. This is a tool that listens to how sound behaves in your specific room and adjusts itself to make things sound better. The system comes with a microphone you use once to measure your room. After that, the speaker automatically compensates for whatever acoustic quirks your space has—too much echo, dead zones, that sort of thing. You control everything through an app on your phone.

The Fives II is the simpler, less expensive version. It skips the room correction but keeps everything else.

Why This Matters

Traditionally, if you wanted a high-performance audio system, you needed multiple pieces: speakers, an amplifier, maybe a processor to handle all the audio formats. This approach works, but it clutters your living room and requires careful setup.

Klipsch is betting that people would rather have one device that does it all. The company was responding to a real problem: people either don't want the hassle of connecting multiple components, or they don't have room for them. By putting receiver-level electronics inside the speaker cabinet itself, Klipsch eliminates that choice.

The broader context here is that this trend has been building for years. As technology gets smaller and smarter, companies have been consolidating what used to be separate boxes into single devices. Powering a full audio processing system inside a speaker cabinet is genuinely harder than it sounds—there are real constraints around heat and space that engineers had to solve—but it's increasingly possible.

When These Will Be Available

All three speakers launch in spring 2026 through Klipsch's retail partners. The pricing strategy clearly stacks features: basic model with Atmos, mid-tier with room correction, higher-end with more of the same. This approach lets people pay for what they actually need.

For anyone shopping for speakers and dreading the idea of a complicated setup, these offer a genuine simplification. For those who want flexibility—the ability to swap speakers, try different amplifiers, or expand later—a traditional component system still makes sense. Both approaches have merit depending on what you value.

The Bigger Picture

If these speakers work well, expect other audio companies to follow. Success here could reset what consumers expect from a powered speaker. Right now, the market is split between simple plug-and-play speakers and complex component systems. Klipsch's bet is that there's a large middle ground of people who want sophistication without the headaches.

Klipsch showed working prototypes at CES 2026 in booth #17204, where industry observers got their first hands-on look at how the system performs in practice.