Eminent Technology LFT-16 loudspeaker
There is much to admire and to enjoy in this idiosyncratically charming hybrid loudspeaker. Eminent Technology has been around for about 25 years. Founder Bruce Thigpen was a pioneer in air-bearing technology, and ET's first product was…
search
Those looking for a successor to the old Fried Q near its inflation-adjusted price of $1050/pair should be happy with Renaissance Audio's MLP-403.5 or Eminent Technology's LFT-16. Those whose speaker budgets reach as high as $2000 have many more options, including an LS3/5a descendant such as Harbeth's HL-3PES-2.
Sidebar: Contacts
Eminent Technology, Inc., 225 East Palmer Street, Tallahassee, FL 32301. Tel: (850) 575-5655. Fax: (850) 224-5999. Web: www.eminent-tech.com.
Fried Products Corporation, PO Box 680, Gladwyne, PA 19035. Tel: (610) 649-8774. Web: www.friedproducts.com.
GutWire Audio Cables, 9251 Yonge Street, Suite 8267, Richmond Hill, Ontario L4C 9T3, Canada. Tel: (905) 947-8410. Fax: (905) 947-8736. Web: www.gutwire.com. US distributor: May Audio Marketing, Inc., 2150 Liberty Drive, Unit 7, Niagara Falls, NY 14304-4517. Tel: (800) 554-4517, (716) 283-4434. Fax: (716) 283-6264. Web…
Fried Products Corporation's Compact 7 is a two-way, standmounted loudspeaker with a 1" ring-radiator tweeter and a 7" woven glass-fiber–coned mid-woofer in a "line tunnel" enclosure. Its cabinet is substantial and well made, with handsome real-wood veneers. The speakers come in mirror-imaged pairs, the tweeters offset toward the inside. The Compact 7 is unusual in that its mid-woofer is above its tweeter, which is likely related to the line-tunnel bass loading. Fried insists that the speakers be placed at least 28" above the floor, which dictate I followed.
I had originally not…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-way, stand-mouunted loudspeaker with "line-tunnel" woofer loading. Drive-units: 1" ring-radiator tweeter, 7" woven glass-fiber–cone woofer. Crossover: series type, first-order slopes, at 2.0kHz. Frequency Response: 45Hz–22kHz ±3dB. Sensitivity: 90dB. Impedance: 4 ohms. Recommended amplifier power: 10–100W.
Dimensions: 16" H x 99.5" W x 10.5" D. Shipping Weight: 30 lbs.
Finish: Cherry, Walnut, Maple.
Serial numbers of review samples: DF0061 & '62.
Price: $1795/pair. Warranty: Five years, limited.
Manufacturer: Fried Products…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
In "The Fifth Element" in this issue, John Marks expresses his disappointment with the sound of Fried Products' Compact 7 two-way, stand-mounted loudspeaker. "There was...something that struck me as a bit off," he writes. "Certain parts of [Brian] Cheney's range sounded a bit veiled or hollow (the singing term is covered), while others did not. What crystallized the problem for me was listening to Attention Screen's Live at Merkin Hall [CD, Stereophile STPH018-2]. The applause at the end of 'Mansour's Gift' sounded hollow, as if the audience were clapping with…
Manufacturer's Comment
Editor: We appreciate the consideration to review the Fried Products Compact 7. We were surprised by the review and measurement comments, as this is not our experience with the speakers, nor the comments made by many other critical and enthusiast listeners.
Your measurement of the frequency response shows a dip near the crossover point. The speaker is not designed to compensate for today's hot recordings, and this dip would indeed result in the hollow or veiled coloration described by John Marks. This frequency-response dip is not present in our…
John Marks wrote again about the Compact 7 in December 2008 (Vol.31 No.12):
In my October column, I "non-recommended" Fried Products Corporation's Compact 7 loudspeaker ($1795/pair) because of an obvious hollow-clapping coloration in the pair the manufacturer submitted for evaluation. John Atkinson's measurements (October, pp.184–185) confirmed what I had heard: the frequency-response graph of the original samples of the Compact 7 is the worst-looking I can remember in more than 30 years of reading Stereophile.
I expect that controversialists may have second-guessed my decision,…
Sidebar: Sample 2 Measurements
In the October issue (p.46), columnist John Marks was disappointed with the sound of Fried Products' Compact 7 two-way, stand-mounted loudspeaker ($1795/pair). It turned out, as I reported in that issue's "Follow-Up" section (p.184), that the woofers of both samples of the pair (S/Ns D50057 & '58) had been wired in the wrong polarity, which Fried's David Finley confirmed in his "Manufacturer's Comment" (p.201). We asked Mr. Finley to send us a second, correctly assembled pair for Follow-Up coverage in this issue; John discusses their sound in his column…
"Physical discs seem so 20th century!" That's how I ended my eNewsletter review of the Logitech (then Slim Devices) Squeezebox WiFi music server in April 2006, and it seems that increasing numbers of Stereophile readers agree with me. In our website poll of January 5, 2008, we asked, "Are you ready for an audiophile music server?" The response to that question was the highest we have experienced: 32% of respondents already listen to music via their computer networks, many using home-brewed solutions, and 44% intend to. We've published a lot of material on this subject in the last five years,…
Another advantage of getting the audio data out of the box in digital form is that the noisy PC can be placed as far away as possible. While a USB cable is limited to 5 meters in length, this can be increased with hubs. Optical TosLink S/PDIF is also limited to not much more than 5m, though the electrical AES/EBU connection can be used up 10 times that length. My preference is for the optical link, however, as this electrically isolates the noisy computer chassis from the owner's audio system. We have found that sending uncompressed digital audio data from a PC to a high-quality standalone D…