I think I was in the first grouping to order an LGK 2.0 kit and I've had mine together for about 2 months now and have been enjoying them. I'd imagine a number of prospective GR-Research kit buyers stop in here for a bit before actually making a purchase so I figured this might help somebody make a better decision. I'm not means "done" with my setup, but I'm at a place where I llove how it sounds and further efforts will be minor tweaking.
My Use Case and Starting Point
Before reading anyone's review, I think it's important to understand where they are coming from and their vantage point. I love music. I've been into music since I was 10. This is not the first GR-Research kit I've ordered -- I built a set of speakers about 20 years ago as well. I have always been fascinated by full-range or wide-range designs and wanted to try something out.
My listening room is within a large bedroom, where my seating position is about 7.5 feet from the speakers and they are about 7 feet apart. I'm actually thinking this might be similar to a lot of listening rooms out there. I bought the LGK 2.0 kit w/SoniCap upgrade + pre-assembled enclosures and finished them off myself with a Rustoleum textured finish in black.
Associated Equipment
I started off using an old "GainClone" amp I had built in college. With ~20W of power it just wasn't enough. The clarity and resolution was excellent, but the amp didn't have juice to work with the LGKs, which are are a bit hungry. Like a number of people have mentioned on here, I decided to buy the Emotiva TA-1 integrated amplifier / DAC. IMO, this is not a good match for the LGK 2.0s. It made them sound very dynamic and exciting, but also unrefined and imbalanced. Neutral, it is not. I ended up finding a deal on a demo Audiolab 6000A for just over $700 -- which felt a lot more nuanced, detailed, and a much flatter tonal response. I think the internal DAC is also quite a bit better. The bass speed and control is astounding, too. I have my phone hooked up and stream using the Tidal app.
A Tale of Two Speakers
THE LGK 2.0s ARE NOT A SPEAKER FOR EVERYONE. As I mentioned, I went into this with a particular interest in wide-range drivers. Not only are these speakers not for everyone, I think there are really two main use cases:
1. As a desktop monitor for nearfield listening. I tried them next to my computer and they sounded great at < 1M. The amount and quality of bass (if your desk backs to a wall) is wonderful for something so small.
2. In a small-ish room for *critical listening* where you are seating < 10ft away played at moderate volumes or lower.
Since my case is #2, I'm just going to talk about that...
I'm going to start off with the negatives and tell you the things these speakers are NOT good at. They are not good at making music for parties. They are not good for sharing music with others -- even a few inches from the center greatly affects the imaging and frequency respond. This is audiophile music for one. So if you are looking for a speaker that sounds great for individual listening and also for filling your home with sound -- buy the X-LS Encores. It's not these. But, there are some things this speaker has the *capability* of doing EXTREMELY well, magically, even.
Danny is not overstating the quality of vocals. They not only have excellent tonality and clarity, but there's a holographic palpability that is something I've only ever heard on mega-buck systems before. But it's not just vocals, when setup right, there's a beautiful depth and layering to the soundstage. And it's up and down the frequency response because there's no driver handoff where the timbre changes. These speakers get piano "right" in way that is very difficult to do -- those resonances span several octaves.
Now I'm going to say something very controversial. IN MY OPINION, IF YOU ARE NOT USING THESE AS DESKTOP NEAR-FIELD SPEAKERS, YOU NEED TO 1. HAVE A SUBWOOFER AND 2. FILTER OUT LOWER FREQUENCIES. I listened to them without a sub and filtering for over a month.
My first iteration of this setup was with the backs of the speakers about 18" from the back wall with some toe-in towards the listening position. They sounded good, no doubt, but there were moments where the center image with vocalists would get a little wobbly. SPL at my listening position (just over 2M) was about 80dB. I initial that that perhaps I had made a mistake assembling the filter network between both channels. There were also moments the speaker would lose some clarity. I wanted to try out a full-range option so I ended purchasing an L12 subwoofer from Rythmik. The Audiolab 6000A has pre-outs. The extra octaves were greatly appreciated and the I'm very pleased with the performance of the Rythmik but integrating it was a lot of trial and error.
I remembered something Danny said in the videos about being able to play them much more loudly with a high-pass filter. I didn't really know how to build one so I looked into active filters ($$$ for good ones) and decided to buy those inline Harrison Labs line-level filters and bought a pair marked at 70Hz. They are a 12db/octave. So I changed up my setup a bit. I installed the filters. I also moved the speakers farther from the backwall -- about 24". I aligned the sub voicecoil to match.
OMG...the clarity shot up as well as the texture on the voices. The imaging that would go a little wobbly was suddenly rock-solid. The level of detail overall went through the roof. I've never heard such a difference before. Really, they are every bit as wonderful as you are hoping they are...and probably then some. But like I said, they really need to be relieved of the burden of trying to handle the low frequencies.
Some stand out tracks for those of you who have already built them:
Night Moves -- Bob Seger
Tiny Dancer -- Elton John
Anything Eva Cassidy has ever sung
Sinnerman by Nina Simone
The album Another Stoney Evening by David Crosby and Graham Nash
Anyhow, these are all just my opinions, but hopefully it helps some of you out there.