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GR Research LGK 2.0 Speaker Review (A Joke)

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 367 87.8%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 35 8.4%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther

    Votes: 7 1.7%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 9 2.2%

  • Total voters
    418

DanielT

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Ha, that may be true, but he's not big on marketing - the way he's sitting in that chair with that expression makes it look as if he's criticising his own creation, ha!
By the standards of time, those 52.2 speakers measured well I should add. If I remember correctly. It's been a long time since I saw measurements on them.How they stand these days, compared to modern speakers, I don't know.:)

Attached picture, measurement (FR at top of graph, distortion curves below)of a couple of his models from the 70s: OA12. Plus picture of a couple of these OA12 with upgrade kits. Kit developed by Ingvar Öhman (disciple of Stig Carlsson). Öhmnan which has its own Ino/Guru speakers:


Or if it was another disciple, Peter Steindel, Bremen speaker, who produced that OA12 upgrade kit. I do not remember.:)


Edit:
Modern sound ideal has probably passed a couple of speakers from the 70s, but I would have liked to listen to some OA12 with that upgrade kit (new speaker elements and crossover filter).:D
 

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Robbo99999

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By the standards of time, those 52.2 speakers measured well I should add. If I remember correctly. It's been a long time since I saw measurements on them.How they stand these days, compared to modern speakers, I don't know.:)

Attached picture, measurement (FR at top of graph, distortion curves below)of a couple of his models from the 70s: OA12. Plus picture of a couple of these OA12 with upgrade kits. Kit developed by Ingvar Öhman (disciple of Stig Carlsson). Öhmnan which has its own Ino/Guru speakers:


Or if it was another disciple, Peter Steindel, Bremen speaker, who produced that OA12 upgrade kit. I do not remember.:)


Edit:
Modern sound ideal has probably passed a couple of speakers from the 70s, but I would have liked to listen to some OA12 with that upgrade kit (new speaker elements and crossover filter).:D
I'm just being light-hearted re how he looks in the photo! But to put on a serious hat, those frequency response graphs you showed me, I don't know how accurate they are or the conditions under which they were measured (anechoic, etc). We've certainly seen better Klippel spins, and a few worse. I don't have any bone to pick with the designer or speakers you mention, and I'm not committed to understanding his history or speakers.....I was literally just making a joke about his advert, lol! (There's nothing you need to convince me on.)
 

DanielT

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I'm just being light-hearted re how he looks in the photo! But to put on a serious hat, those frequency response graphs you showed me, I don't know how accurate they are or the conditions under which they were measured (anechoic, etc). We've certainly seen better Klippel spins, and a few worse. I don't have any bone to pick with the designer or speakers you mention, and I'm not committed to understanding his history or speakers.....I was literally just making a joke about his advert, lol! (There's nothing you need to convince me on.)
I know you were joking.:)

That measurement, okay nothing we for this thread we should drill deeper in so I'm just translating what is written.:) Weird, to say the least. It says:
By the State Testing Institute measured data.

Registration of the loudspeaker's acoustic effect as a function of the frequency in reverberant rooms.
Measuring position in the reverberation room: Speaker standing 5 cm from the back wall and 1.8 meters to the side wall.


The test performed sometime in the 1970s.
Edit:
I suspect the idea was that it would mimic how the speakers were supposed to be placed in a normal living room, listening room. Enough about that.:D
 
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beagleman

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Haha. Fair. However, the Infected Mushrooms track I played in the video has plenty of low bass. Of course, the little driver was not able to translate much of that into acoustic energy, and what it could do probably was not picked up by the mic in my phone. My point in posting was just to show that this little speaker is not the total disaster that this thread has made it out to be…although perhaps there is some variation from one build to the next.

When playing more approachable music (eg., acoustic jazz, vocal, folk, pop), they sound great to me. Nice soundstage. Startling detail at times. Precious little output below 80 Hz but enough to hint at what's there. I do plan to eventually high-pass and add a sub, but my use case is 75% Zoom calls at the moment. For that, they are massive overkill. :)

Great to hear some actual listening from someone that owns them!
Honestly, yours look great, and from the Frequency Response, I would imagine they look quite flat overall.
I get bass will not be one of their strong points, but this driver would make a decent sound over most of the rest of the range.
 

Rick Sykora

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…I get bass will not be one of their strong points, but this driver would make a decent sound over most of the rest of the range.

What is your basis for decent sound?

Many other comparable drivers do not exhibit the degree of 3rd harmonic midrange distortion as this driver does. If any piece of audio electronics distorted as badly, would get returned for refund.
 

bennybbbx

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By the standards of time, those 52.2 speakers measured well I should add. If I remember correctly. It's been a long time since I saw measurements on them.How they stand these days, compared to modern speakers, I don't know.:)

Attached picture, measurement (FR at top of graph, distortion curves below)of a couple of his models from the 70s: OA12. Plus picture of a couple of these OA12 with upgrade kits. Kit developed by Ingvar Öhman (disciple of Stig Carlsson). Öhmnan which has its own Ino/Guru speakers:


Or if it was another disciple, Peter Steindel, Bremen speaker, who produced that OA12 upgrade kit. I do not remember.:)


Edit:
Modern sound ideal has probably passed a couple of speakers from the 70s, but I would have liked to listen to some OA12 with that upgrade kit (new speaker elements and crossover filter).:D

and http://www.carlssonkult.se/OA52.aspx

intresting and good that you post the FR . there can see the desktop effect. some boost of 350-400 hz. too much 350 -400 reduce clarity. this i not like . reflections and EQ do bad things to transients. I can easy compare it how it sounds in a a b switch where a is the JBL 104 B is focal alpha 65 evtl. when i put the jbl 104 on desktop below the focal JBL sound not good also in stereo image in compare to focal. when i put the jbl on top of the focal it is a little higher as ear height and sound better in stereo image as the focal.

put basotek foam on desktop i try too, but make no diffrence. its also that my desktop is not empty.
 
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Juhazi

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Just for curiosity my Sonab OA-12 measurements. Speakers are not placed symmetrically, but are next to wall. Sound is rather good but a bit dull. I bought these from the original owner 20 years ago. Source is a 25 years old car radio - solar power system...
 

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DanielT

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Just for curiosity my Sonab OA-12 measurements. Speakers are not placed symmetrically, but are next to wall. Sound is rather good but a bit dull. I bought these from the original owner 20 years ago. Source is a 15 years old car radio - solar power system...
Interesting!:)

Not bad for speakers that are around 50 years old. With 50-year-old speaker elements.

The ravages of time may have worn down the bass element. The x-max may have decreased due to hanging like that for 50 years. It can cause unpleasant distortion, if you are unlucky. In a 50-year-old crossover filter, the capacitors may need to be replaced. New tweeters may be needed to get better sound. There are upgrade kits but they are not completely free. Four new model tweeters for $45 each, new model bass driver around $90 each plus new crossover. Whether they are worth it or not, well who knows? :).Certainly an upgrade kit developed by talented, knowledgeable people.

Here are the new speaker elements:



_____
Edit:
Because the thread is about fullrange drivers. Here is a model that seems good::)


Four of these in each speaker box. Mini line array speakers. Placed at a reasonable distance and probably with a little EQ (usually all line array speakers, for home use need that, from what I've seen). Plus some bass modules and crossover around 300 Hz. It can probably be quite a nice sound then.:)
Mounted in a sensible way, on a sensible baffle, in a sensible speaker box and so on of course.:)
(which then won't be full range if they don't take care of frequencies below 300 Hz but still)
 
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Juhazi

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Actually bass drivers have been changed 20+ years ago. I use radio's tone control to boost treble, measurements were done without. Ear tells no distortion at normal spl, and level was too low to show anything. I didn't have time to do more measurements, but perhaps next summer...

ps. my speakers are OA-14 with four tweeters. Step response tells that left speaker has polarity mismatch, but it could be because of different location, wall reflection etc. I need more time to solve this, perhaps next summer...
 

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DSJR

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I wonder how far a big company like JBl/Harman could take a speaker in the box concept? I think maybe a small 2 way in a box. It would be fun to see how they measured and what you could tweak on them to increase performance. As usual, as scary as it is, they would probably come out good enough to fool many people who think they would sound terrible. If I was younger and working, I might have tried a 2 way cardboard box build. One of our esteemed engineers, maybe one with a son should try building one and getting it measured. I know Amir would measure it as it is so interesting! I'm thinking the box could be from high strength heavy duty cardboard (very strong stuff), not just regular weak cardboard. There I go, starting to think about the possibilities! :)
Late reply with apologies. In the UK, it was kind-of already done, but with little more than hardboard rather than card.

The Mission 70 used very thin panels which fit together front and back rather like a cardboard box with removable lid, the front part covered in the speaker cloth and slipping partway over the rear, making an attractive styling feature (old memories but I'm sure you can find it by searching). Innovative in the early eighties to keep a sub £100pr British made price point (far eastern manufacturing wasn't part of the UK audio scene so much then). Martin Colloms tested both versions and they did well, although at the time I wasn't a particular fan of the overall tone of the things (they still look good though looking at the pic below)

dff4c9a0-a556-4654-abcc-774eaf9cd7e1.jpg


In th elate 90's, KEF developed a low cost Coda series, the award winning Coda 7, the larger fruitier toned 8 and (rather nice still) floor standing Coda 9. Again, very thin panels, plastic moulded front baffle glued on with screwed on plastic back panel and where the box resonances acted as a radiating area in the lower midrange, the whole artfully blending so well in the '7' model. The 9 may not have been so 'even, but I loved the sound overall, the whole being greater than perhaps the sum of the parts (where the art comes in in more compromised pre-Klippel speaker design (KEF did have an extremely advanced computerised testing facility though for the times, as did B&O I seem to recall, but the aims were different).

kef-coda-7-29034.jpg
images


Coda 7 crossover -
kef_speaker_2_way_crossover_1516347078_10eacf8f.jpg
 

bennybbbx

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Just for curiosity my Sonab OA-12 measurements. Speakers are not placed symmetrically, but are next to wall. Sound is rather good but a bit dull. I bought these from the original owner 20 years ago. Source is a 25 years old car radio - solar power system...

when have such a frequency response the amp treble knob is optimal to correct it. you can try out set treble to 2 o clock and hear and measure
 

ctrl

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it is possible to import the spl horizontal.txt spinorama data from this thread into REW . choose "import-> impulse response" and there can see the group delay . I check because speaker is because of wide band speaker simular to avatone mix cube. the best group delay is the avantone speaker. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ube-monitor-review.42817/page-12#post-1517193

This works only for minimum-phase systems. For a CB single driver wideband loudspeaker it works, for all other concepts no (not even for BR single driver wideband speaker), because you can only calculate the minimum phase from the frequency response and you have no possibility to get the excess phase - only both together result in the "real" phase of the loudspeaker, whose negative derivative then provides you with the real group delay.

A loudspeaker whose f3 is at 300Hz, like the Avantone, which is basically a midrange driver, almost always has a relatively low group delay. But the necessary subwoofer (to listen to music normally with it ) leads overall without FIR to no better result than well-designed speakers - very likely even to worse GD than from 2-way speaker with the usual 2-3kHz crossover frequency in the frequency range below 400Hz.
 

ctrl

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there is solution with spinorama. Need before choose in REW get minimum phase to see the excess group delay,
I did not thought excess group delay change so much. in excess group delay the yamaha HS 5 is the best. i try to remove all grpahics i post so far and add new with excess group delay. then best is when @amirm post excess group delay too ?.

You got it wrong again.

The Spinorama files of measured speakers Amir offers contain only frequency response data (no phase response data). The phase frequency response that REW shows you (after importing Amir's data) is already the minimum phase, because only the (amplitude) frequency response data was available (and REW probably calculates the minimum phase from the frequency response via Hilbert transformation).

From the Spinorama data published by Amir it is impossible to generate the excess phase frequency response or the complete phase frequency response of the measured speaker. So the group delay generated from the Spinorama data is not correct either - the only exception where this difference hardly matters are CB single driver full range loudspeakers.
 

bennybbbx

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Let's not derail this thread further please.

ok, i delete all about this group delay thing now. I ask REW autor and link him this spinorama files. he write https://www.avnirvana.com/threads/i...-in-group-delay-and-excess-group-delay.11849/

those files are not impulse responses, they are columns of SPL values at different angles. REW cannot import them correctly as it assumes the third figure in each line is a phase value, it is actually a repeat of the frequency value for the next set of data. There is no phase data in the file so nothing to use to generate group delay. Producing a minimum phase response from the SPL values doesn't tell you anything about the measured phase.
 

JLGF1

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Compared to the Ascend Sierra-1 @ $950 (ie lower cost finished) with excellent cabinet & performance, I would think the LGK is a joke indeed.
 

Rick Sykora

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Spkrdctr

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It is one of Amir’s female vocal test tracks - Too Much In Love To Care by Claire Martin.
Rick, I hate to have to ask this, but can you build a speaker in a cardboard box? If you have a good relatively full range driver (6 inch?) and a purchase of some very strong cardboard would be all it takes. Then your building skills and high strength glue would come into play. No crossovers to mess with. Then Amir could test it. Just still thinking if a 5 or 6 inch driver in a cardboard box could do better than the LGK2 from GR Research.
 
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