Eminent Technology LFT8b

If you search the speaker forum for Eminent Technology you'll find lots of threads. I owned a pair of the LFT VIIIs five or six years ago. They didn't work for me at all. Johnny Cash never sounded like Johnny Cash should. That's what I remember most about them.
Oh yeah, that and my wife and her friends laughing at those large panels in my listening room when they were touring our new house.

I was considering these a couple years ago but my local dealer was a clown(being nice) so I moved on, your lucky to be able to order direct. Don't worry about the 83db/spl spec, some claim the specs(85db) on the Maggies are jacked up. The latest model(b) is claimed to correct the rolled off treble which was one of the biggest weakness of the previous model. I can't comment on Timrhu's claim of upper bass/lower mid coloration since I've not heard the speaker. I would contact ET/Bruce Thigpen regarding any questions, since he was very polite and informative with me. If you can deal with the "ugly duckling" aesthetics you will possibly have one of the best new speaker values currently available.

If you read Doug Schroeder's review in Dagogo you would find out his preference for the LFT's over the 1.6. I have tried a few other speakers of similar design; Magnepan MG IIIa and MG 1.6 but I preferred overall the LFT8b. Originally I had the earlier version LFT8a and although the mids and upper frequencies were excellent, the lower bass suffered with the woofer bottoming out on certain passages. Bruce Thigpen cleared this issue up with the release of the LFT8b around 2006. The bass is much tighter with the new (now 8+ years old) woofer and he also improved the ribbon tweeter at that time. They have more punch in the lower 32-100hz range than the Maggie 1.6 and I also thought them superior in that regard to the 1.7. They do like power though, I run them with the Moscode 600 at 300wpc and they work very well with that amp. The clarity on well recorded jazz and acoustic music has to be heard and they can rock despite some saying they don't play loud. Some demo discs I use are Jon Anderson "Olias Of Sunhillow", Also Sprach Zarathustra, and Supertramp "Crime Of The Century". The floor shakes.
Oh, by the way, I do think the Sound Anchors are essential.