Online Exclusive: OepPhi Lounge 2

REVIEW
Chris Kelly
Jan 20, 2026

There is no doubt that the audio industry has more than its fair share of very talented designers and engineers, some of whom are spoken of with awe and respect whenever gearheads get together to chat. For me, as a Briton, people like Peter Walker, who founded Quad, Ivor Tiefenbrun of Linn and Julian Vereker of Naim were recognisable as thought and product leaders.

Of course, there are still great minds at work in the industry, one of whom is Joakim Juhl, the Dane who founded OePhi a few years ago. His resumé is impressive and includes teaching engineering at an Ivy League university in the USA. I was lucky enough to make his acquaintance via Zoom calls (remember those?) when we were all in lockdown, and a set of his first cables arrived here for me to review. They blew me away, and since then he has expanded his efforts into the world of loudspeakers, which have been garnering very favourable reviews worldwide. I was contacted by Airt Audio, the UK distributor for OePhi, and asked if I would review a pair of their most affordable stand-mount loudspeakers, the Lounge 2s, along with some of the new Ascendance range of cables. Mr Juhl has obviously been a very busy man!

Lounge 2

The Lounge 2 is a relatively compact stand-mount design, measuring 35cm:18.5cm:30cm (HWD), but weighing in at a meaty 6.5kg per enclosure. I set them on top of the HiFi Racks oak stands that were designed specifically to go under my Harbeth P3ESRs, so I had to make sure that the guests were carefully centred on the stands’ top platform. Initially, I set them up with Tellurium Q Ultra Silver II loudspeaker cables, which were plugged into my PrimaLuna EVO 300 Hybrid amplifier.

Sources were a Vertere Audio DGX turntable with that company’s Mystic 2 cartridge, retrieving music from vinyl discs. The phono stage was my Gold Note PH10/PSU two-box system.

For digital replay, my venerable Yamaha CD-S3000 handled both silver disc replay, and its DAC was connected to my Auralic Aries Mini streamer and our television.

No Frills

The Lounge 2 is what one might call a “no frills” design. There are no grilles, so the drive units are always on display. The main driver is described as a 25mm VC paper-cone woofer, above which, offset to one side, sits a low-energy storage-dome tweeter, developed in-house specifically for use in The Lounge series. Internally, however, everything is wired point-to-point. Detail matters to Mr Juhl, and he has not lowered his standards simply because this is his lowest-cost loudspeaker. There is a circular bass port on the rear panel.

As for the cabinet, it seems very well made and looks really good, with a high-quality veneer finish and mounted on an appropriate stand. I used the ones made for my LS3/5A-sized Harbeths. Measuring 35cm x 18.5cm x 30cm HWD, the Lounge 2s are deeper than the Harbeths, but balancing them on the stand top plate was easy. Each enclosure weighs 6.5kg, so they feel reassuringly solid when being handled. I checked with the UK distributors, who confirmed that in most cases the optimum configuration seemed to have the offset tweeter on the inside. Rooms vary, so I always experiment before settling on a setup, but I did indeed slightly prefer the recommended way round.

Living with the Lounge 2

After letting the Loudspeakers warm up for a couple of days in their new surroundings, I came to them on the third day to start to give them a proper workout. The first sounds to come from the Lounge 2s were human coughing, a lot of it, which precedes the opening riff of Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’.

So not the Pink Floyd version then – no, it was the Easy Star All-Stars on their 2003 release of Dub Side Of The Moon. The bright green vinyl version is terrific, despite its digital recording. As you might expect with this sub-genre of reggae, the bass guitar is prominently placed in the mix, but the Lounge 2s took it in stride and encouraged me to keep increasing the volume on the Prima Luna. I am so glad I write about this stuff rather than put it on YouTube, because nobody should have to watch me dance. But dance I did – probably more than my ancient frame should be asked to do. When the saxophone kicked in, the band was going full pelt, but the Lounge 2 propelled the song while giving me a great insight into what was happening with all the instruments. We were off to a very good start.

To get my breath back, and to get back to my familiar test tracks, I cued up Dave Alvin’s Eleven Eleven, and sat in wonder as this veteran purveyor of classic Americana told his tales of lost love, tragedy and Southern life in general. His baritone drawl was being delivered from the front and centre of the expansive soundstage, his battered Fender Stratocaster cut through the accompaniment provided by his excellent bandmates, and before I even knew it, I had spent the best part of two hours listening to all four sides of this prized album. (Prized? I check record prices online from time to time, and this one is currently going for around £250 used. My copy is going nowhere!

Genre agnostic

From then on, I spent days with the Lounge 2s, and I concluded that they are totally genre-agnostic. They can rock hard, or they can convey real delicacy when required. Choral music was very well served, as was solo violin. The higher frequencies never seemed to harden up, even when I was listening at quite high levels, yet the integration of the two drivers was completely seamless, indicating that the crossover has been well designed and executed. Similarly. I could feel the air when I put my hand to the rear port, but it never made itself felt in the music.

Allow me to mention another recording that impressed through the Lounge 2s. It is a double album on the Analog Africa label and is called Congo Funk, with the subtitle Sound Madness From The Shores Of The Mighty Congo River. If you like Osibisa, Fela Kuti or other similar artists, you will love this. Through the Lounge 2s, it brought the joy of those young African musicians directly to my Devon lounge. Great music played through great loudspeakers. Isn’t that why we are all into this crazy world of audio gear?

Finally, a few words about the Ascendance cables that arrived with the speakers. I was one of the first UK scribes to hear any Oephi cables, and I wrote about them in glowing terms. back in the early days of Mr Juhl’s adventures in hifi design and manufacture. This time around, I was able to swap the speaker cable in for a good part of the review period, and I was frankly astonished by how good they are. Terminated in my less favoured spade connectors, they were a little fiddly to connect compared with the banana-style ones I usually use, but once done, I had to pinch myself. There was no doubt the sound was slightly different, but within half a day of installing them, I was completely accustomed to their sound, and I loved what they did, conveying the joy of music to me with pace, rhythm and timing (remember them?) to die for. They deserve a review of their own, but I wanted to mention them here.

Conclusion

Entry level at £2,700? Well, yes, actually, in the OePhi context, at least, that is the case. The company’s Immanence 2 stand-mounts are a cool £8,495, and when you read about the ingredients, you can see why (and yes, I would love to hear them, hint, hint!). However, I paired the Lounge 2s with an amplifier that costs more than twice their price and with an analogue front end that would not see much change from £10,000, and they more than held their own. The Tellurium Q cables cost more than the loudspeakers to which they were attached. If was in the market for a pair of loudspeakers at around £3,000, the Lounge 2s would go on my short list without a doubt. While I was auditioning them at a dealer’s emporium, I would ask to hear them with Ascendence cables, because I think it is a marriage made in heaven. The cables and loudspeakers are highly recommended. Bravo Joakim!

Technical Specification