GR Research LS9 Loudspeaker Review

Limitations?

 
There are limits to every design, and this one has a few practical limitations. Obviously, they are quite large and heavy and that will limit their appeal. They will simply overwhelm some rooms. The biggest operational issue is amplifier power. Though these speakers are quite efficient, they aren’t an easy load. The crossover is fairly complex and there are a couple networks that consume power to counteract a couple peaks in the response. This lowers the damping factor of an amp. The lowest impedance is around 5.7 ohms, so the impedance really isn’t challenging. Still, a complex crossover means that your amp will need to have good current capability. Some of the 6C33C triode designs might work fantastically. Though I don’t have the amp anymore, the Ayon Spark should drive these to very adequate volumes, in spite of the modest power. A parallel or push-pull 300B would be very close to the 6C33C amps in power and current. A single-ended design with less than 10 watts is not going to properly motivate these speakers. This tail will wag the dog! All that being said, 10 good clean watts will play with presence. If you are on a budget, the K&K modified Dynaco ST70 would be a great amp for these speakers. Only 15-20 watts, but you’d be surprised how loud they can play. Better transistor amps should sound remarkably good with these speakers. I imagine something like the offerings from Nelson Pass, Bryston, or Sanders Sound Systems would do quite well. You will have plenty of flexibility with amps, but differences will be more audible than most, if not all, of the speakers you’ve heard. Long before these speakers audibly distort, your amp will lose control of its bowels and crap their pants.

That brings to mind another practical issue: These speakers are very revealing of problems with compression, harmonic distortion, TIM, slew-limiting, amps, cables, preamp, recordings, etc. Bad recordings can sound as bad as they actually are, but not worse. My old Maggies would gloss over and warm up the sound of some threadbare recordings. I can think of more than one cartridge, preamp, phono stage, and transistor amp that would sound truly nasty with these speakers. The LS9 are very revealing of limitations in quality and quantity.
 

 

The ultimate American speaker

 
Some facets of the LS9’s sound are as good as anything I’ve heard, and they have no big holes in their performance. Like a five-tool baseball player, the LS9 can do just about everything and perform quite beautifully. These speakers remind me of great American bargains like the original Pontiac GTO (Yeah, yeah, little GTO) and ’65 GT Mustang fast-back. Fast, stylish and affordable were those old cars. The LS9s have good looks, tons of power and they are, relatively speaking, affordable.

Another reason these are peculiarly American speakers, besides value and performance, is that they won’t fit many European and Asian homes. Let’s say you live in Tokyo, and your last name doesn’t end with a chrysanthemum, or Toyoda (the correct pronounciation of the surname) or Honda. Would these even fit through the exterior doors? Perhaps these were born in Texas because land is dirt-cheap here. When we were still building houses, I could build a listening room, with an attached house, large enough for these speakers, and the whole project including land and house would cost less than an entry level property in Paris, London, Tokyo or Hong Kong. Don’t fret though, Danny designs smaller speakers that will play just as big in a small room. Like the LS6.

To put the value of these in the proper perspective, let’s consider one of the great high-end audio bargains, the Magnepan 20.1. The Maggie is approximately 50% more expensive than the LS9. Both require large, massive actually, rooms and wives who are “understanding.” There is a hidden expense with the Magnepan 20.1’s: You’ll need an amp powerful enough to power the CERN Large Hadron Collider and a personal nuclear reactor to power it. Or, perhaps you own a hydro-electric dam. The LS9, on the other hand, will run on a chip-amp, a stock Dynaco ST70, VTL Wotans, or maybe a beefy OTL, though not on flee-powered DHT…a 45 can barely power a single-driver speaker, so forget a speaker like this. To be fair, the load of the LS9 is fairly complex, although the Maggie’s aren’t easy either. I’ve done a lot of listening and reviewing with the LS9’s grandfather, the Alpha LS which is smaller in comparison but with similar load for an amp, and had good luck with low-powered amps as long as I didn’t try to bang my head.

Now, are they really American on the inside? I don’t know if anything in these speakers was made in the U.S. They are assembled in California, and were designed in Texas. I spent five seconds thinking about researching the parts and decided that you can do that if you want. Even if you wanted to purchase all USA produced parts for a speaker, you’ll have a tough time finding everything you need and keeping it affordable. That’s not to say you can’t find some parts here.

Line sources aren’t perfect. If I had the money, I’d have huge ‘stats, preferably direct-drive tube powered ones, super efficient single-driver horns, and these line-sources. All three speakers tell you something fundamentally different about the music, and all three are correct. Forget about the hypothetically “perfect” speaker. Until everyone listens to the same music, in the same room, with the same acoustic treatments, and with the same ears, it’s not gonna happen. The LS9 can tell you truths that 99% of other speakers can’t: The sound and fury of the Shostakovich 7th, Metallica, The Flaming Lips (Yoshimi), The Who, Duke Ellington, The Allman Brothers, Widor..etc. And the LS9 should do a good job of the touch-feely audiophile stuff, too, such as Mrs. Elvis Costello for instance, though I have none of her recordings to verify that supposition. Most systems I’ve heard can do only some of the job. The LS9 can acquit themselves well with jazz and vocals and vanquish other speakers with the heavy stuff. Good deal? No. Awesome deal!

Now, hypothetically speaking, if you had budgeted $50,000 for speakers and you equate big money with good sound, you can still spend $50K. Here’s the solution: just so you can drop all that dough on audio, why not have Tom Tutay build a custom active tube crossover, or maybe buy the crossovers from Marchand, then buy twice the amps and cables? Voila, massive money spent on speakers. Or, you could have the passive crossovers built with the most expensive parts from Dueland, Audio Note UK and/or Mundorf. You could have a custom finish for the cabinets, made of the finest rare veneers, perhaps with inlays depicting great events in history. There is enough real estate on these speakers to do an illustrated history of the world. Or have the cabinets made entirely of stainless steel or bronze, or for good measure, you can use solid gold fasteners to drive up the price.

On the other hand, what if you can’t afford these speakers? You can buy the kit and plans from Danny for considerably less. But unless you are a skilled cabinet builder, just save the extra dough and buy them already built. Without reservation, I think it’s worth saving, selling, and/or borrowing to have these speakers. Just make a plan, like successful people do, and make it happen. Regardless of price, the value is off-the-charts, and the sound is fantastic.
 

GR Research/Angel City Audio’s Comment:

 
Under “Limitations”, Phillip says, “The crossover is fairly complex and there are a couple networks that consume power to counteract a couple peaks in the response. This lowers the damping factor of an amp. The lowest impedance is around 5.7 ohms, so the impedance really isn’t challenging. Still, a complex crossover means that your amp will need to have good current capability.”

The crossover for these is not really all that complex. The woofer uses only a second order slope and to match it the tweeter has a quasi third order. It is actually fairly simple.

There is also only one notch filter that adds resistance and it is centered at 13kHz and is only a slight resistance load. So at those frequency ranges the amp is unaffected. The other notch filter is part of the bass management system and is in shunt with the woofers. This does not add resistance, but reduces it with a more purely resistive load. Neither of those filters consumes power, and the bass management actually makes the load to the amp an easier load.

The LS-9 is not really a complex load either. As the impedance curve shows it is a fairly easy load. Because of the number of woofers, and amount of air that these woofers can move, an amp with good driver control will be needed to really push them. After all, a pair of LS-9’s has the same surface area as four 15″ woofers.

We had played the LS9 with Melody AN211 which is an SET integrated amplifier with 16W Class A and at reasonable sound level, the SQ is marvelously lush. Dependent of your power amplifier, we at Angel City Audio recommend 16W to 500W.

Danny Richie
GR Research

Hugh Nguyen
Angel City Audio