Just found a pair of LSI7s

gmjungbluth

I ran across a pair of LSI7s in the rosewood on Saturday and brought them home. They were a little scuffed on the wood panels but some Howard's cleaned them up quite well.

I set them down next to my Klipsch CF-4s for a quick demo. I thought that they would likely be nice monitors but not in the league of the much-larger Klipsches with their dual 12" woofers and 2" horn.

Boy, was I wrong! I had the LSIs hooked up to a NAD 7100 monitor receiver - 50wpc rated, but with peak wattage much higher. I wasn't expecting the sound I got. Wow! These are smooth across the range, offer wide imaging and very clean sound. I was also surprised by the bass - my listening area isn't huge and these were well away from the back wall so acoustics helped. All in all these speakers are amazing, in particular for their current used price point.

With the right system I think the Klipsches are still on top, due to their incredible efficiency and dynamics, and very good imaging. But they're so huge that placement becomes an issue in many spaces - for example in my HT room, one is wedged into a corner and the other is against a back wall with no corner. This placement doesn't give them the room from the back wall to improve the imaging and the corner placement in effect amplifies one channel. I'm almost tempted to switch them out with the LSIs for a while and use them as my front channel mains. I'd have to hook my B&W ASW 600 sub back up however.

At the same time I opened up a Marantz NR1403 HT receiver I ordered factory refurbished from Accessories4Less. I've read only glowing reviews of the sound quality of this receiver. But in the weekend I played with it the old NAD blew it away in clarity. Even with all the settings defeated I couldn't get a high-quality sound out of it. Movies were fine (but the dynamics were dull) but for music, there was no life in the sound - my Pioneer VSX-823 much much nicer. I'm thinking there's something wrong with the unit because I've been having some HDMI output issues too - video cutting out, no sound moving from my Macbook pro to the receiver, etc. Needless to say it's going back to Accessories4Less. I hope the next one will be nicer.

I've been reading the threads on LSI7 mods and was going to perform on on these but now I like them so much as-is that I may just leave them unmolested for a while.

Pics to come.

ZLTFUL

You sure they are "Rosewood"? The LSi7s were only available in ebony and cherry...

Anyway, grats on your purchase.

gmjungbluth

These must be the ebony then because they're definitely not cherry!

tonyb

DSkip wrote: »

Imaging is one of the things I don't like about horns - I find them lacking heavily in that department. Just an observation I found interesting when I read this thread.

Have you gotten an ear on some higher end Horns ? The Adventguards come to mind, thought they were exceptional....on the right gear. Not as cohesive top to bottom as I would have liked though.

gmjungbluth

I've also had Klipschorns which I found did not image well. These CF-4s have the best imaging I've encountered so far. They are really special. If you're interested Google them and take a read. They were a bit of a departure from the norm for Klipsch and very special. They're not too picky with placement but do need a bit of room to breathe and do their best. And they're not as big as the Klipschorns but are still not small - 19"x17"x48".

But right now I'm really into the LSI7s. Especially for my space I'm very impressed with the full range of output. Perhaps I'm a bit fooled by a midbass bump or some resonance in my living space but I would almost say that for music there's no need for a subwoofer! Maybe I would need one for HT however.

Mystery

From what I read, you have to step up to CF-3 and above.
CF-1 and CF-2 are not that great compared to their bigger brothers.
Those are very deep so space is a big concern.

cnh

Congrats. NAD and LSis, a no brainer, great synergy there! And I still think the unmodded 7s are better than 9s with no mods. But that's just my opinion. If you have a small enough space, the bass is adequate. Actually it can be surprising considering this is not a big speaker and that's only a 5" or so woofer in there!

Horns? Not a fan. But I do believe I might like mhardy's Altec variety.

Enjoy!

cnh

rooftop59

Yep I agree about LSi7s and NAD, I really like the combo. If I had the money/space to just keep several setups lying around (ehem CNH!) I would definitely have that combo in the regular rotation. But alas, some of us have other concerns keeping us grounded!