Hi, Mitch. I bet what you were looking for was an opinion from actual owners of both LFT-8b and F25. Well, I’d be happy to chime in as a past owner of both products, at the same time.
Here is a
link to my humble setup at a time , a couple of years back. As you can see , it was very modest. Nothing like yours. I was salivating at your pics. Those ARCs of yours nearly killed me!
Anyway. I can guess two possibilities.
1) You were trying to replicate, as much as possible, the looks of the IRS Betas with the Rythmik F25s. They kind of look like the bass towers.
2) You were trying to match the Eminents with the Rythmiks from their audio characteristics. The Eminents are exceptional speakers, but their bass response is rather underwhelming. Their beauty is in speed, transparency and Maggie-like openness and large imaging, without all the Magnepan drawbacks. So, you need a sub that wouldn’t be lagging behind. Before I bought the Eminents I researched which sub can be matched with them. The consensus was either a Rythmik or a Hsu. All others will create plenty of HT bass, but will lag behind with music. This wouldn’t matter to someone with a hifi level gear, but your equipment is a bit higher than that. Top notch. The loss of coherency between an HT sub and Eminent speakers will be obvious to you. Someone who shops at BestBuy that wouldn’t be as apparent, if at all.
May be you wanted to accomplish both, I m not sure. But let me tell you what I think. The F25 is an excellent sub. Plenty of power, very responsive, I loved the large variety of different settings in the back. You can adjust even the damping factor to sacrifice the bottom end in favor of responsiveness while listening to music. I cant say all these settings created any audible difference, but it was nice to know they are there. But over time I found the Rythmik still not being fast enough to play along with the Eminents and the Maggies (I had and played all three at the time). Over time I sold both the Eminents and the Rythmik (I had jut one F25). I found another sub that is sublime with music , provided you have a highly resolving speakers and all other gear (which you clearly do) and you are not a bass freak. The
RELs are not boom-boom machines, they are designed to work for midrange. I was surprised to learn they are auditioned with purely midrange vocal tracks without drums and bass guitars. They are also fast enough to keep up even with Maggies and Eminents. Incidentally,
Paul McGowan who is also an Infinity IRS freak swears by REL as the only true subwoofer maker. So, my suggestion to you is to be true to the audiophile path you have chosen and get a good REL to accentuate the Eminents instead of each component playing its own tune (coherency again!). They are not cheap but they are worth every penny.
Best of luck and I hope I helped a bit.
This is my
setup now, BTW.