Steve Guttenberg finally reviews the Eminent Technology LFT-8b loudspeaker.

I am a super freak.....er....I mean..super tweak....he he.

You REALLY WANT to upgrade ALL the crossover parts, jacks and wiring in these things.......The speaker posts, caps, wiring and coils are NOT serious stuff. Change the posts to Nextgen WBTs.....change the caps to best Clarity, Mundorf, V-Cap, Jupiter copper, other copper caps, etc....bypass with smaller values for more speed and clarity. Make sure you put the outer foil of the cap to ground or to the load (speaker). Change all coils to copper foil wax paper 12 gauge Jantzen coils. Make sure you go "into" the inner winding of the coil....and "out" the outer winding. Change the wires to VH Audio, Neotech Litz or other great wires. If there are any resistors in the xover then change them to Path Audio resistors or the latest Mundorf’s....or power Caddock’s bypassed by a nude Vishay. The difference will blow your mind.

I would not use the DSP in the C version on the panels......just for the woofs. I personally would get the B version and make a baffle next to the speaker and use a couple of 12 inch Acoustic Elegance dipole drivers on an open baffle......and then get a separate crossover/amp to drive them. These are the same drivers used in the $120K open framed IO speakers from Italy that Jason of AudioJunkie fame went crazy over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqueX42qRf0&t=163s

So Ric (@ricevs), you’re no longer a fan of the GR Research/Rythmik Audio OB/Dipole Sub? That too can be used in place of the stock LFT-8b woofer.

The 2-woofer version of the OB Sub kit is available from Rythmik for $999, and from GR Research with the required OB H-frame (in flat pack form) for $1660. Both prices for one sub, two required of course.

If you can build your own H-frame (or the smaller W-frame), a pair of the OB Sub kits will run you $1998, about $400 more than the pair of LFT-8c woofers. The difference between the two is the Rythmik/GRR is an open baffle version of a dipole sub---with two 12" woofers, and the LFT-8c has a front-firing 8" woofer and a rear-firing 6.5"---in a sealed enclosure. Both are powered, the LFT providing DSP not included in the OB SUB. But the Rythmik plate amp does provide all the controls necessary to mate the OB Sub with the LFT-8b planar panel.

Turns out that the problem may have been the Khozmo passive preamp… I switched to my Precision Fidelity C7 tube pre and output seem to be the same in both channels. Will be doing some measuring as soon as I can borrow a 0hm meter from a friend-:)

2 years ago Ron at New Record Day stated the Spatial M3 Sapphires with their passive bass woofs were "faster" than Danny’s servos......he compared them several times. He talks about this starting at 28 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFQKGaxfIJk

The servo subs are great.....but they are not state of the art. The guy at GT Audio was using the servo subs and is now using Acoustic Elegance woofers in his H-frames.

https://www.gtaudioworks.com/

The servo subs also cannot play that high and have limited tunability. Using a xover/amp you can set the xover anywhere you like with the AE woofs and equalize to your hearts content and get rid of all bass nodes.

Please read this review on the Kryon speaker using AE woofs.....the guy said it was the best bass he ever heard in his room. Of course, you need to make a serious baffle and brace it well. Kryon uses the AE woofs in all their open baffle designs including the monster one without any baffles.

https://6moons.com/audioreviews2/kyron/1.html

https://kyronaudio.com.au/gaia.html

Joe Cohen of the Lotus Group designed the two Granada speakers shown here (using the same AE woofs).....way over 12 years ago. You can search for reviews.....they were loved. Don’t know if any were sold.

https://www.lotusgroupusa.com/granada-loudspeaker.html

@ricevs: Yeah Ric, in one of his YouTube videos Danny Richie speaks about New Record Day Ron having found the Sapphire to produce "faster" bass than the Rythmik/GRR OB Sub (just for the record, Ron's opinion carries little weight with me). Danny contacted Ron to find out what the heck was going on, as in Danny's opinion that was most unlikely.

Turns out Ron was running the Rythmik/GRR OB Sub with its' Extension Filter Damping control set to "Low". With the 3-position Damping control knob set to "Hi" (Q= 0.7 Bessel filter), or even "Mid" (Q= 1.07 Chebyshev filter),  the OB Sub produces considerably tighter bass, at the expense of reduced output.