So the subject of this review, Kali's new IN‑8, is one we've been anticipating with great interest, not least because, in contrast to the relatively safe and conventional nature of the LP‑6 (and its larger sibling, the LP‑8), the IN‑8 is significantly more ambitious, while still managing to hit a seriously competitive price. That, dear readers, is monitoring in a couple of sentences. You want to hear all the detail, even the mistakes; in fact especially the mistakes so that you can correct them.

Settings wise I used the aforementioned dip switch settings for a monitor on a speaker stand less than half a meter from the wall and left everything else alone… initially anyway. The excellent news is that the response across the frequency range does seem to be largely accurate. The bass is tamed and tight for the most part and not coloured. 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. This much power also makes the WS-12 a capable live subwoofer. Its enclosure is 18mm plywood and it has handles for easy carrying. Kali’s team made sure that it will fit in small passenger cars, so you can take it with you even when you’re calling a ride to get to your gig! The LP-6s deliver a sound that punches well above their price point. If you were to blind test them against speakers a lot higher in price tag, I’m pretty sure you’d be surprised as how well they stand up. Similarly, if you were to do the same against monitors at their price point, I think they’d stand head and shoulders above them.All rooms are subject to a phenomenon called room modes, where bass builds up in certain parts of the room, and cancels in other parts of the room. Room modes can make it hard to make critical decisions about the bass in your mix. This phenomenon can be particularly bad in small rooms, and many people choose to use smaller speakers in these rooms. The thought is that, because the smaller speaker doesn’t play as low, it will be less likely to excite room modes and overwhelm the room with bass. One of the key design specifications for the WS-12 is that it be capable of providing bass management in a 5.1 system where all of the full-range speakers are Kali IN-8s. As such, the WS-12 is powered by a 1000W power amplifier mated to a high-excursion 12-Inch driver. Argentina Australia Bolivia Canada Chile Ecuador India Israel Korea Malaysia Mexico Myanmar (Burma) Nigeria Peru Philippines Singapore Thailand Vietnam 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." Kali Audio’s unique front port is another result of extensive R&D and is a huge boon for small or bedroom studios where you need to place your monitors near a wall. This shape came about from running airflow simulations on a dedicated engineering laptop for four days straight. It fixes many of the issues that front-firing ports face, eliminates noise and lets you position your speakers anywhere in your studio space without worrying about unruly bass frequencies. The innovative waveguide design is another product of Kali Audio’s meticulous research process and ensures that the sound is spread out in an ideal way. This gives you a clear and detailed stereo image that you’d usually find on a much more expensive monitor. Best-in-class Woofers

When it came to listening, as usual I fed the IN‑5 with a diet of Pro Tools sessions and favourite CDs. I’ve experienced some high‑end monitors recently, and while the IN‑5 perhaps doesn’t, unsurprisingly, provide the extraordinary detail and natural clarity of some of those models, it nonetheless made a positive impression. While I found the IN‑5’s inherent tonal balance slightly dull, its midrange emphasis provided a good dose of useful mix detail. There’s not so much mid emphasis that it risks mixes not translating well though, and the slight dullness can also be effectively ameliorated using the +2dB HF EQ option. The benefits of the midrange/tweeter dual‑coincident format are very clear, with the IN‑5 showing strong image focus and really good consistency at different listening positions. Protective limiters prevent harmful voltage from ever reaching the drivers, so there is no risk of blowing these speakers. These have been updated for the 2nd Wave, allowing for 3 dB higher output.Kali's latest speakers demonstrate some serious electro-acoustic know-how — and represent remarkable value for money. On most port tubes, air leaves at different speeds from different points of the opening, creating noisy turbulence. This turbulence can be heard as “chuffing,” or an audible air sound coming from the monitor. This sound will add to the noise floor and obscure the details of the low end. These compact monitors from new company Kali Audio strike an enticing balance between performance and affordability.

These compact monitors from new company Kali Audio strike an enticing balance between performance and affordability." - Sound on Sound 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. Full output specifications, along with maximum listening distances, can be found in our user’s manual. The IN-8s avoid anything that could be described as showy, instead finding the fine balance between useful detail and tonal integration. The coaxial arrangement of the midrange driver and tweeter is undoubtedly responsible for the smooth nature of these monitors, allowing the majority of audio to be heard as a cohesive whole, leaving the hefty eight-inch woofer to take care of true bass frequencies. This design, say Kali, delivers a “stereo soundstage that presents the listener with a hyper-realistic level of detail. The soundstage that you hear will have every detail that’s present in the mix”. Convincing imaging is a major plus-point of this phase coherence. The stereo imaging is excellent, presenting a wide, cinemascope-like soundstage with first-rate left-to-right separation. Similarly, central images – lead vocals in particular – are tightly focused with no sense of vagueness or drift. Another dimensionFounded by some former JBL staff, Kali arrived on the scene in 2018 with a range of inexpensive US‑designed and Far East‑manufactured monitors. It’s been an impressive effort so far. The subject of this review is the first of what Kali have christened their ‘second wave’, characterised by a host of technical improvements. These are said to comprise 12dB less amplifier noise, re‑profiled and lower‑mass driver diaphragms, improved cabinet construction, more precise DSP, revised EQ presets and, finally, a little less input sensitivity. The first of these improvements is particularly welcome because one of my criticisms of the IN‑8 was that amplifier hiss was audible. I may as well confirm straight away that this problem has been fixed. The IN‑5 is effectively silent when idling. Let’s Get Physical While the recently reviewed ribbon-tweeter-equipped ADAM T8Vs impressed with their incisive treble response and snappy transients, they do not produce the cavernous image of the IN-8s. While the smoother-sounding PreSonus Eris E8XTs excel with more organic, natural-sounding music, they don’t quite manage the focus and projection of the IN-8s’ central image.

Both models use 40W for the 1” soft dome tweeter. The LP-6 uses 40W for the 6.5-Inch woofer, and the LP-8 uses 60W for the 8-Inch woofer. EASE OF USEI was always impressed by the level of bass the Ayras could produce given their small driver and cabinet and that holds true to this day, though there’s no doubt the Kali LP-6 has the edge. More so than the extra inch of cone surface would suggest. The larger cabinet helps, but no doubt the efficiency of the driver and the clever port design are major contributors. Not to mention the more modern amplifiers, a total departure from the fully analogue, archaic class AB amps of the RCFs. The fast roll‑off above 120Hz or so is partly a measurement artefact and partly the bass driver’s low‑pass crossover filter doing its job. What isn’t an artefact, however, is the sharp dip in the response at around 43Hz: that’s the port resonance locally reducing the driver output. So we know now that the port is tuned to 43Hz which, while being a relatively low frequency for such a compact system is also, coincidentally, close to bass guitar bottom E (41.2Hz in concert pitch). In some respects having the port tuned in such a musically significant region is a good thing, in that it reduces the workload of the bass driver. At the same time, however, the port tuning frequency is likely to be the point at which low‑frequency latency is most significant, and similarly, where port distortion and compression effects will be most apparent. Part of the skill in electro‑acoustics, especially on a tight budget, is knowing how best to manage this kind of compromise. Specs wise the LP8 frequency response is rated at 39Hz – 25kHz (-10dB) and 47Hz – 21kHz (±3dB). Max SPL is 115dB, and system distortion is rated at <3% (80Hz – 1.7kHz) and <2% above 1kHz, reference a 90dB output SPL at a distance of 1 m. The crossover point is 1.5kHz. You rarely see such a usefully low crossover point in a monitor of this price. They’re usually somewhere around the 2-3kHz range, where the ear is most sensitive to crossover distortion, phase and timing errors. On-axis response measured on a ground plane with 1/6th octave smoothing We know. We keep harping on about the “hyper-realistic” imaging of the IN-Series. What does that mean?