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KEF LS50 Bookshelf Speaker Review
- Thread starter amirm
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Love the smashing orangey bit, someone at Kef must like Jaffa cakes.
I've not seen that target before, it has a very shallow slope to 10k.
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It's from a Arcam Dirac Live and was posted in a discussion about the Revel 206 or 226. I tend to prefer it in my room to the other Harman ones I used before.
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Oh wow! That looks gorgeous!
Do you have a collection of these curves? If so do you mind sharing them.
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Sure, I had posted some there, but the one I am using currently is attached below.
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Thanks for the link, very cool to see people producing quality spins without an anechoic chamber. This one actually appears to be highly accurate and matches very closely with my in room measurements when I had them, most notably the emphasis in the 2k region and the dip just before that.
Very inteeresting to see what he used to make that. Basically anyone who can afford a Umik, a cake turntable, and a microphone boom and REW can pretty much do the same--though there is a learning curve.
Yep! As I implied on reddit, my setup is basically identical except I placed the turntable and stand on my kitchen island as I had high ceilings.
The LS50 is a good one to start with as it's symmetrical horizontally and vertically. With standard non-coaxial speakers, the hard part is usually turning the speaker on its side for doing vertical measurements and rotating the speaker about its reference axis.
Finding a way to support the speaker when its placed on its side is the most annoying part, especially as you can't just mirror the positiive and negative angles for the verticals. It becomes much more difficult with towers that usually have the reference axis at the tweeter and their center of gravity somewhere way different as I'm sure @hardisj can attest to
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While the results are helpful, there is a practical limit to how accurate they are. His farfield gating results in the lowest measurable frequency before reflection as being 500Hz. This also means an accuracy of 500Hz; a data point every 500Hz. So, if there is a mild-Q dip or bump at 800Hz, his measurement method is hardly going to show it. And it definitely won't show a high-Q resonance like the Buchardt S400 has.
The problem in measuring accurately is the midrange. In his case, he merges farfield and nearfield between 350 and 550Hz. IOW, IMHO, that data is only valid above maybe 1kHz (which still is only about 1/3-octave resolution with a step every 500Hz) and below 350Hz. Everything else is a "best guess". Not trying to be mean about it at all. That's just the nature of that kind of measurement. That's how I measured for years. So I know. If it were more accurate than this, trust me, I would be using that method. Because it is a hell of a lot easier than doing what I have to do...
It becomes much more difficult with towers that usually have the reference axis at the tweeter and their center of gravity somewhere way different as I'm sure @hardisj can attest to
No joke.
To say nothing of less expensive.
Indeed. What I've found useful (if tedious and sloppy) for finding lower midrange resonances is just taking close (like 1 foot away) measurements in a few different positions such that the room reflections are not high in amplitude and you can isolate what's from the speaker and what's from the room. So far I haven't seen any that don't show up in the woofer/port sums though. But yeah, it's also important to investigate further because sometimes there are reflections from the stand or setup itself that might appear to be from the speaker... Measuring speakers is messy.
Alas, my new back yard is not big enough for ground plane measurements, though I do plan on doing a few of those in front of my building to further test how close nearfield summation+baffle step sims get to ground plane.
In any case, the more the merrier! Here's to more measurements we can reference.
So how do you like the LS50W? I use three passive ones as my fronts but planning on getting a wireless pair now that new model has come out and price has dropped a bit.
killdozzer
Major Contributor
I've experienced something similar the other day, I just wanted to ask you... I've read a lot about the importance of positioning and I understand the basics, but I've noticed I never managed to find a straightforward data on how big of a difference it can be. How much can you achieve, how audible it could be. And I somehow miss that info to fully grasp what we're dealing with.
Some very unpleasant harshness completely disappeared after moving speakers just 1 foot further appart.
IN DETAILS: I've changed some furniture in my listening room and chucked out the old huge TV stand for a smaller one, finally moved my bookshelves to stands and got a thick, fluffy carpet. Even though the current piece of furniture my system rests upon is smaller, I expected my system to play better bc of the stands and the carpet.
Yet, it didn't at first. Some horrible harshness came about. Even Bob Dylan's harmonica became razor sharp and unbearable (it played nice before).
I wrote it of as "less furniture - more harshness". But it got me thinking; the difference was not that big and there was an extra carpet... I've noticed that in the process, the equidistance was affected. My speakers were close to one another. Former TV stand was so huge that they were actually further appart in that setup than they were on the stands after that.
I wanted to move them further apart simply to respect the rule of thumb on the equilateral triangle. Not bc of the harsness, nor did I expect such a difference.
Ther result was, the harshness went away (????). I didn't do tests and honestly don't think it's necessary in this situation, it's night and day; from "for the love of god, don't play Bob Dylan" to "well this Bob Dylan guy has such a lovely and laid back harmonica solos". (same files, same system, same room... just a foot further appart)
Can it really be such a huge difference?
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