The 3-D Imaging Waveguide allows you to hear a 3-D soundstage from a stereo pair of speakers. By matching the shape of the waveguide to the interactions of the HF and LF drivers, this waveguide produces a stereo image that is wider, taller, and deeper than the space where the speakers are placed.

 

The LP-8 accomplishes this by ensuring that the speaker's reflected sound matches its direct sound. Every time you hear a loudspeaker, you're hearing both the direct sound from the speaker, and reflections from the speaker's signal bouncing off of objects in the room. When those reflections are congruent with the direct sound from the speaker, listeners perceive a better sound overall, and are able to make out very subtle details like where microphones are placed in a room. When done very well, the stereo image will sound three-dimensional.

All of this should give you a high degree of confidence in your mix. It allows you to mix faster and produce better mixes overall.

The voice coil on the LP-8 allows the speaker to have high excursion, resulting in clearer sound with lower harmonic distortion, and a high degree of detail.

On most port tubes, air leaves at different speeds from different points of the opening, creating noisy turbulence. This turbulence can be heard as chuffing, or an audible air sound coming from the monitor. This sound will add to the noise floor and obscure the details of the low end.

 

The port tube on the LP-8 was designed to ensure that all of the air leaves the port tube at the same velocity. This helps add to the low end response of the speaker, while keeping the bass clean, tight, and devoid of extra noise.

The LP-8 is capable of 85 dB continuous output, with 20 dB of dynamic headroom from as far as 8' / 2.2 m. This makes it an excellent choice as a main, side surround, or overhead speaker in most small-to-medium-sized mixing rooms.

Bass on the LP-8 is delivered by a magnet and voice coil larger than much of the competition at comparable price points. This gives you more accurate bass response that extends lower, so you can dial in the low-end sound you need. Nothing is over represented, and the bass that is present on your track will come through with clarity and punch.

Kali's team came up with boundary compensation EQ settings at the Village Recorder in Los Angeles to help you get the optimum sound for where you need to put your speakers. Combined with the LF and HF trims, these boundary settings will ensure that the speakers sound their best no matter what room you're mixing in.

There are EQ settings for:

• Free Space
• Speakers on stands, against a wall
• Speakers on a desk, away from a wall
• Speakers on a desk, against a wall
• Speakers on a console meter bridge
• Speakers on a studio desk

 

 

The integrated 40W + 60W Class-D Power amp delivers clean, reliable power that's optimized to this speaker. The new 2nd Wave amplifier platform delivers all this with significantly lower idle noise, and better sensitivity than the original version.

The LP-8 features balanced XLR and TRS inputs, as well as an unbalanced RCA input. The RCA input can be set to -10 dBu sensitivity when you're using consumer devices like a laptop or smartphone's headphone jack.

The new LP-8 V2 is part of Kali's 2nd Wave of loudspeaker. 2nd Wave products draw on 3 years of R&D for across-the-board improvements. A new amplifier platform allows for 12 dB less self noise, while input sensitivity has been increased by 3 dB for +3 dB SPL overall compared to the original.

 

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.