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Pairing Planar Speakers With A Subwoofer (Eminent Technology)

What do you think of pairing the Eminent Technology LFT 8-B planars with a pair of Rythmik F25 subwoofers?

Please check out my room on my system page. I am attempting to emulate a set of Infinity IRS Betas.

System page: https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/876

Eminent Technology LFT 8-B: http://www.eminent-tech.com/main.html

Rythmik F25 subwoofer: http://www.rythmikaudio.com/F25.html

mitch4t
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
10,284 posts
 

The perceived "speed" of a sub is greatly influenced by the room, where in the room the sub(s) is(are) positioned, not merely the mass of the sub’s driver. "I am afraid the speed of the sub or lack thereof cannot be improved by positioning". No, but it certainly can be made worse by poor positioning! By the way, do you know the mass of the Rythmik and REL woofers? How about that of the GR Research 12" paper-coned woofer? How about the gauss figure of those woofers motors (magnets), without which the cone's mass figure is irrelevant?

Regarding the distance a planar is from the wall behind it, that distance effects not only depth and imaging, but also frequency response via comb filtering. The back wave of the planar reflects off the rear wall, meets the front wave, causing frequency-related cancellation and reinforcement.

grigorianvlad's avatar
grigorianvlad
11 posts
 
@bdp24  Good to know, thank you. 
I wonder if @mitch4t ended up buying both the Eminents and the Rythmiks?  What are his thoughts?
The Eminents are notoriously inefficient. Before them I had Polk LSiM705's with sensitivity of 88dB/W/m. Room calibration set them at -7dB (from -12dB to +12dB). The Eminents are rated 84dB/W/ml. So, naturally I assumed that auto calibration will set them at -3dB to create the same sound level, to compensate for low sensitivity. Guess what. It set it at +7dB, a whole 14dB louder! You need a lot of juice to power them, the 75W minimum power rating isn't realistic. I had a 600W@8ohm power amp and it barely did the job. They also took around 6-7 months to break in.
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
10,284 posts
 
Yup, they like juice. The Maggies are far hungrier, though (I’ve owned four pair, including the Tympani-IVa’s I now have). The ET"s have a nominal impedance of 8 ohms to the Maggies 4 ohms. The LFT panels on their own are an 11 ohm load, so a moderately powered tube amp works great with them. Then a solid state amp can be used for the woofers.
grigorianvlad's avatar
grigorianvlad
11 posts
 
@bdp24 What is amazing about the Eminents is that their midrange driver handles the range of 180Hz to 10kHz without a crossover. The Absolute Sound review is right on target. Such open and transparent speakers. But as ugly as genital warts. Their WAF is negative one million.
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
10,284 posts
 
They're not too terribly bad with the grills in place, but without them they're about as ugly as speakers get! I'm thinking about taking off the stock cloth, and putting on some real sheer stuff that's acoustically transparent. 
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