Kali Audio LP-8 Powered Monitor Loudspeaker Review

Reviewing the Kali Audio LP-8 studio monitor might seem slightly unusual for regular readers of Audioholics. We are a home-audio focused site and do not normally deal in pro audio gear. However, studio monitors often find their way into home use with the prevalence of ‘bedroom studios’ where people have made a room in their home into a recording or mixing space. The performance demands of studio monitors and home audio speakers have a lot in common; they are both sound reproduction tools that, one would hope, strive for accurate reproduction of the source content. Whether that content is an album or a movie or a work-in-progress shouldn’t really change the behavior of the loudspeaker; it should be blind to content. This being the case, a monitor should be as adept for recreational home audio listening as conventional home audio loudspeakers. One of the things we will be looking at is how these monitors fare for that purpose as well as monitoring purposes.

Kali Audio is a newer manufacturer that was launched in January of 2018. Since then they have made a splash with rave reviews for their products among pro-audio reviewers. Our interest in Kali had been piqued by the engineering pedigree that they brought with them from JBL’s pro-audio division, along with their stated goal of making JBL LSR 300 series ‘killers’. JBL’s LSR30X line is a very successful and highly regarded budget monitor series that leveraged JBL’s research into state-of-the-art waveguide technology for ‘prosumer’ use. Kali uses one of the principal engineers involved in the design of JBL’s sophisticated waveguides with the intention of making a superior monitor to the LSR30X for the same cost. Given how well-performing the LSR30X monitors are, that is quite ambitious, however, Kali has the expertise to do just that given their engineering team’s familiarity with JBL’s monitors.

Appearance

Aesthetics don’t normally factor into the decision when choosing studio monitors - at least it wouldn’t in a perfect world. But, if we are being honest, we still want our speakers to look nice, even in a working environment. Monitors tend to go after a different aesthetic style than home audio and are more businesslike than ‘furniture-esque’ as many home audio speakers aim for. That isn’t to say they have to look crude but rather a sleek kind of utilitarian style, and that is what the LP-8s go for. The LP-8s may not be as living room decor friendly without wood grain paneling, but they wouldn’t look out of place in a gaming setup or media room. The LP-8s do not look pretty in the normal sense of the word, but I do think they look cool. All of the curved lines on the front baffle make it look a bit more organic than just drivers mounted in a box. A small blue LED on the front lets the user know when it is powered. For home use, it might not look too out-of-place in rooms with modernist decor. It’s a black box, but it’s a black box with some style.

Design Analysis

The basic design used by the Kali Audio LP-8 is a very common one among monitor manufacturers in this segment and price range; a two-way active speaker with an 8” woofer and 1” dome tweeter in a waveguide. But, contrary to surface appearance, the LP-8 separates itself in attention to detail.

One design detail is the waveguide that Kali calls the ‘3D Imaging Waveguide’ which uses some of the latest advancements in acoustic research and sophisticated computer modeling to achieve some very specific performance targets. It is intended to control directivity for a narrow dispersion on the vertical axis and a wide dispersion on the horizontal axis so that there are few acoustic reflections coming from a floor, desk, or ceiling, but there is a wide-angle of even coverage over a lateral plane of listening positions. It is attempting to control dispersion in an even manner as well so that the response remains uniform at all angles in the front hemisphere of the speaker. This is done to preserve an even tonality across a breadth of listening positions.

Kali uses a beefy 8” woofer. A smaller woofer might tend to incur distortion at higher drive levels. They claim that the coils and magnets are larger than competing monitors, and they have implemented a dual-layer voice coil. The reason for this is their performance target of a low-distortion, continuous 85 dB loudness level at the listening position with 20 dB of headroom above that. The listening position they design for is someone seated at a 2.8-meter distance. If those SPL targets sound familiar that is because they are the same used by THX for reference level listening. While these are not THX-certified monitors, they are looking to achieve the same kind of performance level at the listening position.

There are no fancy materials used in the woofer or tweeter, instead, the components use conventional materials but optimally designed for these specific performance targets. The woofer cone looks to be made of polypropylene and the tweeter looks like a fabric dome tweeter. I asked the designer, Charles Sprinkle, about the design decisions in this respect, and this was part of his answer:

I think the transducers are noteworthy, not for exotic materials or extra features, but for how we optimized the design using FEA to get the best performance that we could for the money spent. There is literally nothing wasted in these designs. The motor force as a function of excursion is coordinated with compliance as a function of excursion to maximize linearity and reduce distortion.  Of course, we did have to spend extra money on the magnet. In order to use a two-layer coil and reduce flux modulation, we had to use a bigger voice coil and motor for the same motor strength. This was worth the spend as distortion was reduced by 6dB.

--Charles Sprinkle

The LP-8 woofer uses a dedicated 60-watt amplifier, and the tweeter uses a 40-watt amplifier with a 1.8kHz crossover between the drivers. The combined 100 watts should allow the LP-8 to get quite loud at typical mixing console listening distances. For home use, that should be enough power for most people’s listening tastes as well, even though they might be at a farther distance. The DSP abilities of the amp should allow the designers to easily EQ out any serious resonances, so hopefully, we get a neutral response right out of the box. The amp can be connected by balanced TRS or XLR inputs and an unbalanced RCA input.

  

There are ways to alter the response with dip switches on the amp panel to compensate for different acoustic conditions. The default position of the dip switches set the speaker up for a neutral response in a free space that is not close to any large surfaces or boundaries, however, proximity to surfaces and boundaries can cause havoc on the sound thereby wrecking a tonal balance. The dip switch settings can be adjusted to compensate for sub-optimal acoustic conditions, for example, if the speakers are set up next to a wall, or on a mixing console, or on a shallow desk or some mixture of those conditions. What they are adjusting for is boundary gain which can inordinately boost the bass levels; the closer the speaker is to any boundary or surface, the more bass the sound will naturally induce as an acoustic consequence. While it is a nicety for home audio products to have an accurate response, it is critical that studio monitors do so, so this is an important feature. If you are mixing sound with more bass than you realize, the produced content will have a shortfall of bass since you inadvertently compensate for the excess bass.

The front baffle of the LP-8s is a plastic molded piece that feels relatively solid. The side panels are made from ⅝” MDF and are internally lined with a thick layer of stuffing. The port is a shaped slot port that is flared on both ends to reduce turbulence. Kali Audio claims to use airflow simulations to optimize the laminar flow of air in the port. 

All of these design details look to add up to a whole lot of speaker for the $500/pair asking price. Let’s now give them a listen to hear what they sound like…

Listening Sessions

I used the Kali Monitors in two different rooms with different conditions to see how they could cope with different environments. I set them up on my PC desk which is essentially a quarter space, or a space enclosed by two boundaries. This desktop environment puts the listening distance at about 2.5 feet. I also set them up in my home theater room which gave them lots of breathing room and a nearly free-space environment. This is a far more acoustically friendly environment for sound quality. The processor used was a MOTU 828x with Qobuz as the source for music. No subwoofers were used. I used these monitors to listen to completed recordings rather than content creation since this is a home audio publication, and we are more interested in seeing how these fare in a home audio application.

One thing to note is that the LP-8 monitors are not totally silent when they are powered. There is a soft background white noise that is always there, and the gain knob does not affect its loudness. In a near-field listening position, it is audible although subdued. In a mid-field listening distance such as in my theater room which puts me at about eight feet from the monitors, it is not audible. How much of a nuisance this background noise is will vary from person to person. I didn’t find it very obtrusive in the listening situations that I could hear it, but I could see it being a dealbreaker for those looking for a near-field monitor for a quiet room. 

Music Listening

One gorgeous recording that I found in my explorations on Qobuz is an album entitled ‘Darkness Into Light’ which is performed by the female choral quartet Anonymous 4 with instrumental stringed accompaniment by Chilingirian Quartet. Anonymous 4 specialized in medieval music, and most of the pieces on this album are medieval compositions by composers whose names have been long lost in time. Four of the tracks here are contemporary works with a known author, the celebrated composer John Taverner, but his pieces fit in well with these other nearly ancient compositions. This 2005 album is released on the highly regarded Harmonia Mundi label, and the production quality is excellent as one would expect for the caliber of talent involved here. The music is simple and quite lovely medieval choral pieces, and I thought it would be a good test of the LP-8s ability to render a choir performance in concert hall setting (this album was recorded in a large church, the Christian Brothers Center in Napa, CA). 

One aspect of the recording I could detect right away on the LP-8 monitors is that the microphone was set up at a distance from the performers since the singers as well as the instrumentalists were pretty well centered in the soundstage, although there was that venue ambiance that spread out over a wide swath of the listening position. In this recording on these speakers, the listener is not given a front-row seat but rather a position quite a few rows back in the central area of the nave, although not so far back that acoustic reflections of the recording venue become dominant. The voices of Anonymous 4 were sublimely rendered by the LP-8s. Their cohesive performance along with the reverberation of the church hall formed a singular beautiful sound that was abetted from time to time by the string quartet. The imaging was superb, and the performers were very much discernable from the acoustic reflections. The tonal balance was very good as well, and no frequency band stood out, which is, of course, what one would hope for in a studio monitor: neutrality. ‘Darkness Into Light’ was a terrific listening experience with the Kali LP-8 monitors, and it showcases the value proposition of using monitors as home audio speakers.  

Orchestral music is perhaps the best type of music to gauge a sound system’s tonality since it is so spectrally broad and dense. In orchestral music, the plethora of different instruments and their wide harmonic spread means that very often vast ranges of audible frequencies are being stimulated. What is better is that since so many people have had so much exposure to these instruments, we know what they are supposed to sound like. If some frequency range is too pronounced, that can be caught pretty quickly in a recording of a full orchestra. Toward this end, I picked an album that I was familiar with to get a sense of the LP-8’s tonal balance. Some orchestral works that I am familiar with are Danny Elfman’s scores to Tim Burton’s Batman movies, and I chose the score to ‘Batman Returns.’ One aspect of ‘Batman Returns’ that makes it a great choice for this, other than my own familiarity with the recording, is that there is a wide variety of compositions within this score since the three villains get their own theme along with our hero, and there is also a diversity of moods and emotional tones throughout the movie.

On the LP-8 monitors, it was easy to hear that this album was recorded on a scoring stage instead of a concert hall since there wasn’t as much reverb in the recording that you would hear in a large performance venue. It was also a lot easier to localize instrumental sections and individual instruments, and that is not normally the case for orchestral music recorded in concert halls where you can get some general imaging of instrumental sections but it is usually somewhat ambiguous. Recording technique plays a big role in all of this, but you need a good speaker system to render the results of the recording if you want to discern those qualities. The LP-8 is more than able to deliver that kind of insight. Individual instruments were vividly reproduced, and everything sounded natural and not exaggerated. On occasions where bass is called for, the LP-8s were able to deliver, such as when bass drums gave a pulse to action scenes or when an organ is used to underscore Batman’s theme. Relistening to this music score, there is a lot of detail that one misses from simply watching the movie since the movie has such a dense sound mix. The experience of listening to the score alone is quite different and is rich with nuances that get lost in the movie itself. The LP-8s paint such a vivid picture with music that is so evocative that I have to wonder how someone who has never seen ‘Batman Returns’ would imagine the kind of scenes that this score is attached to. Listening to the music itself in a darkened theater room ended up being quite a cinematic experience itself, and the LP-8 speakers are critical to that experience since they were able to capture the full dynamic range of this score from low bass to upper treble.

For music of a more down-to-earth variety, I found a new album from folk music prodigy Sarah Jarosz on Qobuz entitled ‘World on the Ground.’ Singer-songwriter Jarosz has been building a formidable body of recorded work since the age of 18, and now 29, she has just released ‘World on the Ground,’ her fifth album. But quantity does not mean diminished quality, and the musical artistry on demonstration here is undeniably world-class. The music on ‘World on the Ground’ hovers somewhere between bluegrass, folk, country, and rock, depending on the track. ‘World on the Ground’ is a collection of songs about life in Jarosz’ childhood hometown of Wimberly, Texas. The production quality is very good, and even though this is a studio recording, it sounds like an exceptionally well-recorded live performance. I could easily see this album becoming a staple of hi-fi demos.

The first thing that struck me when I started listening to ‘World on the Ground’ on the LP-8s is how sharply focused the imaging was. Jarosz’ voice imaged dead center of the soundstage with instruments flanking her in their own well-defined placement. All of the elements of the recording had their own spacing and distinct recreation by the LP-8s. The instruments and Jarosz’ voice sounded lifelike and realistic. Everything was tonally well-balanced, and it all sounded so smooth that I have to think this is a very good approximation of the intended sound. That wouldn’t be all that surprising since I was listening to a recording on studio monitors that was likely made with studio monitors. The LP-8s also did a great job of tracking the wide dynamics in this 24-bit recording; soft passages of the music were clear and lucid, and louder moments had a stirring impact. ‘World on the Ground’ sounded terrific on the LP-8s, and I am not sure what else a speaker system could do to improve this performance. Album highlights for me were the tracks ‘Orange and Blue’ and ‘I’ll Be Gone,’ so do your ears a favor and give those songs a listen!

After going through albums to assess the LP-8s’ tonality and imaging abilities, I felt it was now time to see how hard they could jam. It’s hard to find harder jammin’ music than Drum’N’Bass and one of the hardest jammin’ Drum’N’Bass artists out there is Broken Note. This type of music can push a system full-tilt with monster bass lines and extremely rapid percussion. It rarely leaves much headroom in the recording, and it is unrelenting in its aural assault. The album I chose was entitled ‘Exit the Void’ by Broken Note which was recently released this spring from the label MethLab Recordings. So now the question is how hard could the LP-8’s hit with the latest release from some of the roughest sonic hooligans in electronic music? 

To begin with, I was impressed with the level of bass coming out of these bookshelf sized speakers. While the bass isn’t as prodigious or as boundless as one would get with a good subwoofer, the LP-8s had some real grunt ability. They gave a solid low-frequency foundation to the instruments and could really belt out some solid bass. Those looking for massive deep bass will want to add a sub, but the bass levels on the LP-8’s felt natural which is what is needed for mixing purposes. If you want to add a sub for mixing purposes, care is going to be needed to integrate it properly with the LP-8s, as you will not want to mix with hotter bass reflected in the playback system than is in the source content. As was mentioned before, the LP-8s aim for specific dynamic range targets at a 2.8-meter listening distance which is approximately 9 feet. That is about this distance of my own listening position to speakers in my theater room, and the LP-8s had more than enough dynamic range for my own tastes. I don’t think many people would have tolerated the loudness level that I listened to for the full duration of ‘Exit the Void.’ They punched hard all the way through and stayed clean at loud levels. These things can rock, and if you just want a pair of powered speakers that jam hard, I can report that the LP-8s are up to the task. They killed it with this album. If you like your electronic music loud and clear but are on a tight budget, the LP-8s should be a big blip on your radar. 

Movie Listening

One film I had been looking forward to was Spike Lee’s most recent endeavor titled ‘Da 5 Bloods’ released on Netflix. It concerns the exploits of four black American Vietnam veterans who return to Vietnam to look for the remains of their commanding officer and also some gold that they had hidden there before they left. ‘Da 5 Bloods’ looked to be part war movie, part heist movie, and part emotional reckoning with the past. Spike Lee has always saturated his soundtrack with music so I expected ‘Da 5 Blood’ to have a rich sound mix that could show off a sound system’s abilities. I streamed it on the day of its release in two-channel mode using the LP-8s as the sound reproducers. Upon viewing this film, one thing that surprised me about the sound mix was the very traditional orchestral score by Terence Blanchard. It was a very sweeping and dramatic score that was heavy on the strings and french horn, and it sounded superb on the LP-8 monitors. There were quite a few Marvin Gaye tunes tucked in the soundtrack as well that shined with the LP-8s. Dialogue intelligibility was good, and I had no problem following conversations even when it became very heavy with slang. Battle scenes were given plenty of fury and punch. The low-end of the LP-8s was good enough so that I did not miss the use of a subwoofer in either the action scenes or orchestral music, even though bass was very much present in both. In the end, I enjoyed watching ‘Da 5 Bloods’ with the Kali LP-8 speakers. It had a typically lush sound mix that is characteristic of Spike Lee movies. I think the movie would have benefited with a bit tighter editing, but it sounded good all the way through, and the experience is certainly enhanced by the use of a good speaker system.

For something a bit more fanciful that would have an abundance of effects noises, I queued up the 2011 science fiction opus ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ which I had not yet seen. I hadn’t previously had any intention of watching it, but I was interested in seeing how the LP-8s would sound with such an effects-driven movie, and I didn’t want to rewatch something I had already seen. It was available on streaming from Amazon, so I thought, “how bad could it be” and gave it a spin. For those who don’t know, ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ is about some cowboys who have to deal with some aliens; this movie does what it says on the tin. The LP-8 speakers did a good job of sound presentation for this movie. These two speakers delivered a big-screen sound, and again I was impressed with their low-frequency strength. The inclusion of a subwoofer would have doubtlessly given the low-end a bit more heft, but the LP-8s were able to produce a full sound on their own. This became evident early on when a team of horsemen came riding into town, and their collective galloping was telegraphed by a strong rumble. Music and dialogue were rendered with clarity, and effects noises such as explosions and alien ray guns had a good amount of oomph. Imaging was good, and, in the ‘sweet spot,’ I didn’t miss the center channel at all. Watching ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ left no doubt that you could use the LP-8s as home theater speakers very successfully.

 

Kali Audio LP-8 Monitor Measurements & Conclusion

 

The Kali Audio LP-8 speaker was measured in free-air at a height of 7.5 feet at a 1-meter distance from the microphone, and the measurements were gated at an 11-millisecond delay. In this time window, some resolution is lost below 250 Hz and accuracy is completely lost below 110 Hz. Measurements have been smoothed at a 1/12 octave resolution.

 

The above graph shows the direct-axis frequency response and other curves that describe the speaker’s amplitude response in a number of ways. For more information about the meaning of these curves, please refer to our article Understanding Loudspeaker Measurements Part 1. The first thing to notice is that it is a terrifically flat response overall. There is a high-Q dip around 800Hz, but existing research has shown is that narrow dips like that one are not very audible. The response rises to a bump past 15kHz, but there isn’t much content in that range, and many people’s hearing isn’t very good in that range either, so that bump is not very consequential. The listening window curve and early reflections curve have a very good correspondence to the on-axis response, so the LP-8 should have the same sound over a wide angle from the on-axis direction. This graph depicts what I had heard in listening to these speakers: neutrality. They are a balanced, accurate loudspeaker, and that is exactly what you would hope to see in a studio monitor.

 

The above graphs depict the speaker’s lateral responses out to 100 degrees in five-degree increments. More information about how to interpret these graphs can be read in this article: Understanding Loudspeaker Review Measurements Part II.

Looking at the horizontal axis in individual measurement angles, we get a close look at just how superbly the LP-8 waveguide is controlling directivity. This waveguide is excellent. There is also outstanding directivity matching between the woofer and tweeter. I can’t even see a hint of the crossover point in here. This speaker will sound the same at any reasonable listening angle in front of it. Another advantage of such good directivity behavior is that any acoustic reflection will resemble the direct sound at the listening position, so this speaker should work well in a wide variety of acoustic conditions. You shouldn’t need to resort to using acoustic treatments to get these speakers to sound good. It is apparent that a uniform dispersion pattern was taken very seriously as a design goal in the LP-8s. 

 

The above polar map graphs show the same information that the preceding graphs do but depict it in a way that can offer new insight regarding these speakers’ behavior. Instead of using individual raised lines to illustrate amplitude, these polar maps use color to portray amplitude, and this allows the use of a purely angle/frequency axis perspective. The advantage of these graphs is they can let us see broader trends of the speaker’s behavior more easily. For more information about the meaning of these graphs, we again refer the reader to Understanding Loudspeaker Review Measurements Part II.

Here we can better see how far off-axis the listener can be in before we start losing output versus frequency. What can be seen is that you could be listening out to a 50-degree angle from the front axis while still getting a full, even sound up to 15kHz. This adds up to a 100-degree angle of a good tonal balance and loudness in front of the speaker. Probably not many people will be listening at a 50-degree angle, but, with the LP-8s, you could, and they would still sound good. There are advantages to this sort of dispersion pattern even if you only listen directly on-axis; the early reflections are a major contribution to what we perceive as sound quality, and for the best sound, they should have as close correlation to the on-axis sound as possible. These speakers do that admirably well.

 

The above graph shows the LP-8’s response behavior along its vertical axis where zero degrees is directly in front of the tweeter, negative degree values are below the tweeter, and positive degree values are above the tweeter. The LP-8s make a good showing here for a two-way speaker of their design type. They maintain a full and even response down to 20 degrees below the on-axis angle and 10 degrees above. This is a bit better than normal, and most listening positions will fall within this angle. Nulls from crossover cancellation don’t really kick in until outside of this angle. This means that for the best sound, as always, try to listen around tweeter height, but the sound won’t change much if listened at a somewhat lower angle as well, so you don’t need the speakers aimed directly at you if they are mounted at a slightly higher elevation than your listening position.

 

The above graphs show the LP-8’s low-frequency responses that I captured using groundplane measurements (where the speaker and microphone are on the ground in a wide-open area). Again, we see an admirably flat response, here down to 50 Hz with a strong response down to 40 Hz. These things have real bass, and it is accurate bass. This bass extension covers almost any kind of acoustic music with a few extreme exceptions such as some pipe organ music. This is enough to handle much of the range that electronic music uses as well. Even the rowdiest dubstep music rarely reaches below 40 Hz. Most music listeners could easily get by without subwoofers using the LP-8s. 

The above two graphs exhibit a few of the changes that can be made to the response using some of the dip switch toggles on the amp plate (note the “LF Trim” graph has a much tighter Y-axis window than preceding graphs). There are a lot of different ways to alter the response, and these are just a handful of some of those altered responses. For those using these speakers for applications where accuracy is a must such as mixing and content creation, there are a bunch of different boundary compensation settings that can be used, but it is strongly advised that the response is verified with measurements in situ, as no two acoustic settings are exactly alike, and they will impact the low-end frequency response in different ways that can’t be perfectly anticipated. 

Conclusion

Like I always do, before wrapping up this review, I will briefly go over the strengths and weaknesses of the product and, as usual, I will start with the weaknesses. The Kali Audio LP-8 does have one shortcoming and that is the background noise present when the speakers are turned on. As I mentioned before, it is a soft noise, but for near-field monitoring it is audible. I wasn’t annoyed by it personally, but some others might be. However, these speakers are overkill for near-field monitors. I should say that by near-field, I mean on a PC desktop or a small mixing console, so about a meter away or less. In my home theater room, which puts me about eight feet away from the speakers, I could hardly hear it, as I said before.

Aside from the very soft noise that the speaker emits, I really have nothing to complain about, especially for the price, so let’s go over the strengths of the LP-8s. First and foremost is the sound; these do their job in recreating sound accurately, and they do it well. The LP-8s boasts a superbly accurate response on and off-axis. Some people complain about accurate sound with criticisms like “it sounds too clinical,” but to me, having heard so many speakers, these things just sound plain old good. Accuracy means a balanced sound, and a balanced sound is a good sound. They are not ‘voiced,’ although users may be able to alter the response to something they might favor more with the multitude of settings that can be changed on the dip switch toggles.

Another strength of the LP-8 is their dynamic range; they can get loud without running into audible problems. I think they could be used for a mid-sized home theater with no problem. If you like to rock, they can do that. A large room may require beefier speakers, but these would kill it in a bedroom or an average-sized living room. They have excellent bass extension as well with real bass down to 40 Hz. If you aren’t blasting the latest Hollywood effects-fest, and if you don’t normally listen to those particular types of music that have really deep bass or really loud bass, there isn’t much need for the addition of a subwoofer.

What I admire the most is the performance for the cost: I don’t see many traditional passive home-audio speakers with baseline performance this good in this price range, and if there were, I would recommend them all the time. And the LP-8s come with their own amplifier. This is a true high-fidelity speaker system, and it can be had for around $500. If this is what active speakers can do at this price point, the question becomes why are passive speakers still so prevalent in home audio? The Kali Audio LP-8 speakers are, in my opinion, an outstanding value. If you are on a tight budget but want a great sounding and accurate system, these should be on your shortlist whether you are making music or just listening to it.

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Build Quality
Appearance
Treble Extension
Treble Smoothness
Midrange Accuracy
Bass Extension
Bass Accuracy
Imaging
Dynamic Range
Fit and Finish
Performance
Value