Eminent Technology LFT-VIIIa

There are reviews here and at audioasylum. Even the nitpickers have good things to say about them. One of the principals at audioadvisor used to own, sell and like them a lot. Maybe you could just phone up and ask if he's still there and willing to talk.

They are not like Apogees in that those who are sensitive to discontinuities will hear the dynamic woofer. Never bothered me.

They are not like Innersounds in that they have somewhat wider horizontal dispersion. The Innersound sweet spot is too small for me. The ET vertical dispersion is quite narrow, however.

One person can put them together, but it's a bit of work. (Prop square spined magazines under the front brackets to line them up vertically as you screw them to the woofer cabinet.) Looks are so subjective. I thought they were handsome in a Popular Mechanics kind of way. Friends liked their transparency - that you could literally see through them. But they are undeniably chunky and made with an engineer's visual aesthetic...there's certainly no fine woodwork on that woofer box.

They don't need a sub for most music listeners. Even for home theater they might be okay, but we're not talking vmps Larger here.

I agree with the substance of Plato's remarks about the VIIIa's, but maybe don't downgrade them as much. He says they lack immediacy and detail; I ask compared to what? It seemed true for me that the VIIIa's rolled off at the high end, and so were softer than a lot of speakers. The broad midrange had plenty of detail for me.

The Monsoon computer speakers are considerably less good than the VIIIa's, so that tells me something about the requirements of the situation. The good vmps are more expensive than this price range, unless you go for the ribbon monitors, the Newforms don't have the low end of VIIIa's, and the Selah line array is more expensive than $1500, I am pretty sure.

If you don't like the looks of the ET, you might consider the upcoming, less brutal looking Status Mini from av123.com. It's a hybrid arrangement. Will go a bit lower than the Newforms, reportedly, but won't go to really high spls or so low as the ET. You might have trouble knowing where to look for info on this product, so you might want to call them.

Agreed on the connection you write about, but even though we seem to essentially agree on the character of the speaker I just seem to like it a bit better than you.