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Kali Audio has solidified themselves as not only a contender in the pro studio monitor market, but a frontrunner in studio monitor technology and advancement." - Charles Hoffman for Sonic Scoop
The IN-Series monitors have very low distortion. This is the result of unburdening both the woofer and the tweeter, so that both are doing less work; the tweeter is only focused on high frequencies, and the woofer only has to worry about bass. Despite their affordability, the LP6 and LP8 monitors project audio with incredible fidelity, allowing you to mix your music with excellent precision. Featuring integrated Class D power amps, these studio monitors deliver clean, reliable power for their speakers. Also boasting dual-layer, large diameter voice coils, these help to retain clarity and definition without adding distortion. So, if you like to listen to or mix your music loud, Kali Audio's LP6 and LP8 studio monitors can handle higher volumes without sounding muddy or causing ear fatigue. In the second option, which I've called 'Conservative', the port is tuned to 30Hz, which results in an increase in the -3dB point to about 70Hz and a drop in 50Hz group delay to about 5ms (yes, the group delay increases significantly at lower frequencies but they are not so musically significant). The system also rings only for a cycle. This design ensures solid phase coherence throughout the broad midrange and treble regions, avoiding the phase anomalies that plague poorly designed two-way monitors with a mid/bass driver and tweeter at different points on the front baffle. Adjustments are provided for installations on stands or on desks close to a wall (within 0.5 m) or against a wall (as close as possible allowing for cables). There are also curves for placement on a sole bridge or on a desktop with stands or purpose-built studio desk with monitor platforms.Kalis products are designed and engineered in California, and each of our product lines is named after a town or city in California. Lone Pine, our debut line of studio monitors, gets its name from a town in the Eastern Sierra from which climbers disembark to summit Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the lower 48 states. Much like this climb, we felt that our debut line was ambitious, challenging, and a little risky. Mountain View, an accessory for connecting Bluetooth devices with professional audio systems, was named after the town in which several large tech companies, including Google, are headquartered. As these companies insist on removing physical audio connectors from their devices, we thought this name would be a fun way to put them on notice.
Taking up the space in between in the hero of the IN-Series: the 4-Inch, profile-optimized midrange driver. This driver has a lot of work to do. In addition to reproducing midrange frequencies, it also acts as the waveguide for the tweeter. This means that the shape needed to be precisely engineered to provide an ideal dispersion characteristic for the tweeter. One of the features present in the second wave of Kali monitors is a clever Boundary EQ adjustment, which provides several positions to select preset compensating EQ curves depending on where the speaker is positioned. On a stand in free space (the ideal position for the loudspeaker) the EQ can be disabled. Kali Audio produce studio monitorsthat are all designed in California, USA. Created by a team of experienced engineers, many of whom previously worked for leading manufacturers, these high-quality speakers unleash incredible sound.
The power of three
The port tube on LP-6 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. Specifications: It also means that the midrange needs to stay still. In many other co-axial or concentric systems, high excursion from the larger driver causes intermodulation distortion, and degrades the accuracy of the system. The midrange on the IN-Series is limited to less than 1 millimeter peak-to-peak excursion, making it acoustically stationary while still providing midrange to keep up with the powerful woofer and tweeter.
These days, with so many of us capable of producing professional-quality masters in domestic environments, the mid-sized monitor is gaining popularity apace. This is no surprise; far from being an unhappy compromise, the eight-inch driver has the potential to offer much of the low-end heft of larger designs (such as our Tannoy Berkeleys) along with the real-world presentation of music as consumed via domestic hi-fi loudspeakers. The power of three So here we weren’t really expecting that claimed greater sweet spot but we certainly got it, so much so we nearly wore our chair wheels out rolling around the studio space finding its limits. We’ve enjoyed reviewing the IN-8s so much that it almost pains us that we can’t recommend them to everyone. Kali Audio was formed in January 2018, but despite their youth, they are already establishing themselves as one of the leading brands within the affordable home studio market. You can expect pro-grade audio from their LP Series studio monitors. We were extremely impressed with Kali’s LP-6 monitors when we reviewed them a few years ago and, while Kali offers an eight-inch driver in its LP series, the IN-8s build on the LP-8s’ abilities with this unusual design. Although the IN-8s look like a conventional two-way monitors, they are in fact of a three-way design. Situated above the large low-frequency driver, a midrange driver and separate high-frequency driver are housed in a coincident arrangement. This means the tweeter fires from the centre of the midrange driver, or ‘squawker’ as they used to be known when three-way designs were more commonplace.
Value vs accuracy
The RCF monitors are very sweet-sounding. They’re not wholly accurate and one has to become accustomed to their signature sound before any mix will translate properly in the real world. It’s one of the reasons I now use them exclusively for listening, or for non-critical monitoring. They sound wonderful, but nothing beats the instant familiarity of a truly accurate terence monitor. Though not without its quirks, there's no denying the IN‑8 is a huge slice of monitoring bandwidth for the money, and its dual‑coincident driver is exceptional. It's very much worth hearing." Setting them up is a breeze though. Kali say they are designed to be as easy to use as possible. There’s the flexibility of a trio of input types: RCA (for consumer grade inputs) plus TRS and XLR for more pro devices. To test the speakers, I put them on Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizer platforms and then switched between them and my Event Opals, after setting the gains to get a similar level from each. This isn’t a fair comparison, of course — the Kali monitors cost a fraction of what the Opals do — but it proved useful nevertheless in showing how the Kali LP‑6s performed. With the EQ controls set flat, the mids and highs from the LP‑6s came over as smooth and detailed, with excellent stereo imaging. The low end didn’t come close to what the larger Opals are capable of delivering, and it didn’t sound quite as focussed, but for a six‑inch monitor the bass extension is perfectly fine and in a small room even preferable to something that over‑emphasises the lows. If you have a larger room, the eight‑inch version has a little more bass extension and might be a better choice.
We tried it with the IN speakers and the attention to detail down there is astonishing; not that you don’t get a great response already with the IN range, but this subwoofer presents you with an extra few Hz of detail and a more accurate picture. This means that anywhere within that listening distance, you can listen for long periods of time at reference volume, and momentary peaks such as bass drops or explosion effects will come through clearly and with minimal distortion. The LP-6 has enough output for most 1-2 person setups, and the LP-8 can handle larger setups easily. Kali Audio’s opening salvo in the speaker market is a great one. The company set out to design an accurate speaker at a very low price and they have gone and done it with the LP-6s. They really are some of the best monitors you can get at this price and can easily out punch models twice their price or more. Kali Audio only launched at the start of 2018 but it already has big ambitions, a great naming philosophy and a debut monitor that seems, on the face of it, to be incredible value for money. The Southern Californian’s first release is the LP-6, the ‘LP’ standing for ‘Lone Pine’ (which is actually a small town in the Eastern Sierra that is the first port of call for climbers wishing to scale Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the United States outside of Alaska, fact fans). Diagram 2, just for interest, shows the output from the IN‑8 port captured by a microphone placed a centimetre or two inside. Even though the port data typically captured by this type of measurement is unavoidably 'contaminated' by the bass driver output (especially when the bass driver is so close) it can still reveal if there's any undesirable 'organ-pipe' resonances going on in the port. As revealed in the curve though, the IN‑8 port looks completely clean. A very good, and surprisingly unusual, result.Note that the bass unit needs to be located on a desktop, as it is not designed to be floor‑standing and will most likely sound wrong if placed on the floor. It can, however, be set up either horizontally or vertically, so you can choose the arrangement that suits your desk layout. Combined with the LF and HF trims, this will ensure that the speakers sound their best no matter what room you’re mixing in, or where the speakers are placed.
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