Review: Eminent Technology LFT-VIII Speaker

Category: Speakers

I owned LFT-VIII speakers, serials 892087 _ _ L and 892087 _ _ R, for about eight years and used them with the mid-fi Adcom/Rotel/Parasound/Thorens equipment and AQ cabling as listed.

My particular Eminents were characterized by:

1. very limited vertical dispersion anywhere above the midrange, somewhat limited horizontal dispersion in the highs
2. a rolled off high end in absolute terms on axis, imo, even with the user-instigated factory cross-over mod
3. wobbly spike struts and panel to woofer box connection
4. low visual design quotient - they may be works of art to you, but they are more works of industrial engineering art
5. good extension and overall air movement in the lows, with some fullness/slowness under about 100hz compared to quick panels, including their own, with their fairly low Q dynamic woofer/box (traits I did not find personally find objectionable)
6. better sound at medium or loud volume levels, and a capacity to reach quite high spls
7. nice big soundstage, including good depth
8. good imaging, i.e., not hyper-specific as with some monitors/point sources
9. great midrange resolution
10. enjoyable musicality, rhythm if not the best amplitude accuracy or coherence .

They are inefficient planar magnetic dipoles, use a push pull magnet structure (unlike Maggies) without electrostatic-like transformers and had nice Edison connectors. (Along with the previously mentioned dynamic woofers.)

What you should know is they had a slight diy feel to them. They only weighed about 60 lbs. each, but were a pain for one person to assemble and then tweak about the room. They arrived in three big cardboard boxes and it involved balancing the heavy panels upright while putting screws into the wood of the woofer modules. Do you move a lot? That's one reason I sold mine. The screws never stripped their holes, but they needed force to get in place. Not a ten minute walk in the park.

Also, there used to be this whole thing about using a hair dryer to tension the panels when being assembled after transport or storage. That doesn't strike me as a re-assuring or scientifically repeatable process.

Designer Bruce Thigpen was always unfailingly polite on the phone, but seemed absolutely reserved himself about my concerns with the high end response and super-tweeter qc testing, in particular, although he sent the little cross-over jumpers at no charge.

I haven't read Corey Greenberg's old, favorable Stereophile review recently, but I have a dim memory that I generally agreed with his comments. Maybe it's archived on ET or Stereophile web sites.

Associated gear
Adcom GTP-400
Rotel RCD-855
Parasound HCA-800II
basic AudioQuest wiring

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