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The new LP-6 V2 is part of Kali’s 2nd Wave of loudspeakers. 2nd Wave products draw on 3 years of R&D for across-the-board improvements. A new amplifier platform allows for 12 dB less noise, while input sensitivity has been increased by 3 dB. The tuning has been refined for smoother HF response, and the boundary EQs have been updated to reflect common real-world use cases. Physical improvements include lighter transducer cones for better transient response and upgraded cabinet construction for greater reliability. Once Caleb from Sweetwater hooked me up with them, I put them on stands and followed the guidance from their YouTube videos on placement according to my listening position and I was impressed right away. The stereo field is quite amazing. It took me a while to adjust to not having the subwoofer from the consumer speakers, but I'm doing the majority of my editing and mixing on monitors instead of headphones for the first time in years.
Kali’s team did our Boundary EQ tuning at The Village Studios in Los Angeles, and came up with boundary compensation EQ settings to help you get the optimum sound for where you need to put your speakers. For the 2nd Wave, the boundary EQs have been updated for using the speakers on a desk with monitor stands. The frequency response of the Kalis is 39 Hz to 25 kHz (at -10 dB) and the frequency response is 45 Hz to 21 kHz ± 3 dB per the manufacturer specs (and seems to be verified by Erin's testing). This means that from 45-21Khz, the speakers will play generally level and flat. You will get a significant dropoff as you go from 45Hz to 39Hz and an extreme dropoff after that. Great horizontal directivity. Really, really good. The vertical directivity shows some vertical lobing resulting in a shift in the DI around 1.5 - 2.0kHz. The Early Reflections Floor Bounce and Ceiling Bounce data shows this as well and indicates we need to stay on-axis with the reference plane (the tweeter) and that you may want to put some ceiling absorption in place of your studio (floor absorption isn’t likely possible).
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I found myself with a limited budget, a great passion and no one to get advice from, facing huge array of gear. Each set includes 4 pads with individual levelling adjuster providing a 5° or 10° slope to angle the speaker up, down or flat for optimum listening position.
The cabinets comprise a vinyl-wrapped MDF with moulted plastic front baffle. The front port tube is moulded as part of the baffle itself, and is shaped using computer simulation to minimise port chuffing by ensuring that air exits the port at a constant velocity. A similar port is used to great effect in the IN-8, and I find them to be entirely unfussy about room placement and without the sonic downsides I often hear in ported loudspeakers, namely bloated bass caused by the constricted passage of air through the port, or puffing noises as large volumes of air are forced through a thin port tube. I had the chance to audition the JBL and ADAM monitors. They both sounded great, but I felt the JBLs were boosting the low end and high end a bit much for my personal tastes. Because I'm dealing with lots of explosions, gunfire and horror-type sound fx, I opted for KALI because of the larger woofer. The below graphics indicate how much SPL is lost or gained in the long-term as a speaker plays at the same output level for 2 minutes, in intervals. Each graphic represents a different SPL: 86dB and 96dB both at 1 meter.This means that anywhere within that listening distance, you can listen for long periods of time at reference volume, and momentary peaks such as bass drops or explosion effects will come through clearly and with minimal distortion. The LP-6 has enough output for most 1-2 person setups, and the LP-8 can handle larger setups easily. We wanted to put a port on the front of the LP-Series studio monitors so that they could be used in small spaces where they’d be placed against walls. At the same time, we didn’t want noise from the front port to distract from the accuracy of the speaker, so we developed a special front port that doesn’t make noise. I had been mixing on headphones and consumer Klipsch speakers for a while but after doing more and more sound design for the projects I was working on, I really felt like what I was creating never sounded the way I wanted outside of headphone use. For these limited circumstances it has been found that a usefully accurate Predicted In-Room (PIR) amplitude response, also known as a “room curve” is obtained by a weighted average consisting of 12 % listening window, 44 % early reflections and 44 % sound power. At very high frequencies errors can creep in because of excessive absorption, microphone directivity, and room geometry. These discrepancies are not considered to be of great importance. Please don't be alarmed by the high SPL numbers. These are not real (NFS does not know about the amplification gain in the speaker). Actual level is pretty close to what I measure most speakers at.
One of the features present in the second wave of Kali monitors is a clever Boundary EQ adjustment, which provides several positions to select preset compensating EQ curves depending on where the speaker is positioned. On a stand in free space (the ideal position for the loudspeaker) the EQ can be disabled.Response is very good with some resonances around 1 kHz. There is also a bit of reduction in level/shelving in bass response. If you like what you see here and want to help support the cause there are a few ways you can do so: As an additional question, is it worth it to invest into something like a MINIDSP ddrc 24 to apply DIRAC room correction? Or is that wasted money with this kind of setup? Manufactured in dark charcoal colour from a specially selected 65Kgs/3m density High Load Bearing (HLB) Hard foam, Vibro-Pads Lite will perform over a long life demonstrating true resilience to compression and will not fatigue during use resulting in years of improved listening quality within your studio or private audio environment. Adjustments are provided for installations on stands or on desks close to a wall (within 0.5 m) or against a wall (as close as possible allowing for cables). There are also curves for placement on a sole bridge or on a desktop with stands or purpose-built studio desk with monitor platforms.
Looking at the response data from Kali here ( https://www.kaliaudio.com/lone-pine-studio-monitors ), notice that you get good flat bass to 40Hz (39) at an SPL of about 87dB but the speakers can play to 115dB. That curve will not be as flat at 115dB. If you are going to be playing louder than 87dB, you will want/need the subwoofers to "come to the rescue" for bass notes below 60Hz. The room response must be averaged to recognize trends in the summation of direct and reflected signals at the microphone. The resulting curves must not be taken as a 1:1 representation of what is heard as loudness at different frequencies. The room response gives a picture of the steady state SPL, where sound generation and sound dissipation in the room have reached their equilibrium." -Linkwitz For a primer on what the data means, please watch my series of videos where I provide in-depth discussion and examples of how to read the graphics presented hereon.The RCF monitors are very sweet-sounding. They’re not wholly accurate and one has to become accustomed to their signature sound before any mix will translate properly in the real world. It’s one of the reasons I now use them exclusively for listening, or for non-critical monitoring. They sound wonderful, but nothing beats the instant familiarity of a truly accurate terence monitor. If you are using an AVR with bass management, you would set the crossover *on the AVR* to 80Hz and *turn it off* on the subwoofer. The AVR would then send only 20-80Hz to the subwoofer and 80-20k to the Kalis keeping the bass levels correct. There is a distinct difference between the two and not all speaker or room problems can be corrected with EQ. So EQ should always be thought of as the final tweak and not to compensate for major speaker or room problems. For the DBR62 I'll use my existing SMSL-m6 and an old kenwood kr-a4070 stereo receiver I have lying around.
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