KEF LS60 unboxing!

[Purité Audio]

KEF page added to the PA site, I will add to it,
https://www.puriteaudio.co.uk/
I remain hugely impressed with the LS60’s I shouldn’t be surprised because their measurements are state of they are in terms of Sq something of a bargain.
Keith

 

[617]

So, for $7k you get a nice, small sized uni-q in a very slim cabinet with 4 very high excursion woofers with a surface area somewhere around a 10.5" woofer. You also get a huge amount of amplification and wireless connectivity built in. Good deal or not? Seems like a very good system.

How do you integrate this with a center channel or an AVR?

 

[Soundstage]

KEF page added to the PA site, I will add to it,
https://www.puriteaudio.co.uk/
I remain hugely impressed with the LS60’s I shouldn’t be surprised because their measurements are state of they are in terms of Sq something of a bargain.
Keith

Do you think they could hurt more expensive brands sales (Kii or D&D for example)?

 

[Vacceo]

KEF page added to the PA site, I will add to it,
https://www.puriteaudio.co.uk/
I remain hugely impressed with the LS60’s I shouldn’t be surprised because their measurements are state of they are in terms of Sq something of a bargain.
Keith

Looking at graphs and numbers, the 60's are not too far from the Blades performance. Considering they are ready to go after unboxing, the value proposition is quite good.

 

[617]

Do you think they could hurt more expensives brands sales (Kii or D&D for example)

That's an interesting question; I know $7k isn't exactly cheap but it's pretty reasonable compared to Kii or D&D

 

[Purité Audio]

Do you think they could hurt more expensive brands sales (Kii or D&D for example)?

Yes definitely,
@617 I am not really up to speed with AVRs but they connect either by wire or wirelessly, play practically everything,
back panel,


Keith

 

[Vacceo]

Yes definitely,
@617 I am not really up to speed with AVRs but they connect either by wire or wirelessly, play practically everything,
back panel,


Keith

AVR's still have multichannel options and room EQ. If Kef develops a way to expand to more speakers and use Dirac on top, may the AVR's tremble...

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I am not really up to speed with AVRs but they connect either by wire or wirelessly, play practically everything,
back panel,

Right but getting the channel outputs distributed properly and keeping them all in sync are still matters of concern.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Looking at graphs and numbers, the 60's are not too far from the Blades performance.

Let me get back to you on that one.

 

[Vacceo]

Let me get back to you on that one.

I have listened to the Blade Metas, but not the LS60, so I would love to read your take if you have tried both.

 

[Purité Audio]

If all goes well I will get some Blades, although if I thought an active pair were in the wind…
Keith

 

[Tangband]

Let me get back to you on that one.

Im waiting for your review .

 

[617]

Notes on amplification and power consumption -

1400W is for the whole system. 500W for the woofer array (no passive radiators), 100W for the mid and 100W for the tweeter. Interestingly, all modules are class D except for the tweeter. @Purité Audio curious who made the modules.

I saw a review which implied standby power consumption is 32W...that is quite a bit. I would like to see the product consume almost nothing when it isn't doing anything.

I think this is one of the best mass-market audio products I've seen in a while, and I hope other manufacturers follow suit with powered wireless models offering high performance.

 

[kma100]

Notes on amplification and power consumption -

1400W is for the whole system. 500W for the woofer array (no passive radiators), 100W for the mid and 100W for the tweeter. Interestingly, all modules are class D except for the tweeter. @Purité Audio curious who made the modules.

I saw a review which implied standby power consumption is 32W...that is quite a bit. I would like to see the product consume almost nothing when it isn't doing anything.

I think this is one of the best mass-market audio products I've seen in a while, and I hope other manufacturers follow suit with powered wireless models offering high performance.

That seems high. From here: https://us.kef.com/products/ls60-wireless

Power consumption
450W (operating power)
<2.0W (standby power)

 

[Tom Schneider]

Makes me rethink my LS50 Meta/KC62 sub setup Thanks for the great information and it will be interesting to see more LS60 setups.

 

[Mnyb]

Do you think they could hurt more expensive brands sales (Kii or D&D for example)?

Hmm , but the KEF is quite “affordable” you can admire Kii but you can’t actually buy one ?
So maybe more customers compensate for this ?

People with money may prefer Kii anyway and are not price sensitive and have larger rooms or buy 3 pairs of KEF for several rooms

 

[Purité Audio]

Contemporary measurements led designs share many design aspects the LS60’s aren’t cardioid and don’t have built in parametric EQ, although they are adjustable to a degree and of course you can always use ROON ro EQ.
Unless you have a really large room sit some distance from the loudspeakers and play really loudly the KEFs would be more than adequate imho for the majority of listeners.
Keith

 

[617]

That seems high. From here: https://us.kef.com/products/ls60-wireless

Power consumption
450W (operating power)
<2.0W (standby power)

Thanks for pointing that out. I'm pretty sure I was mistaken.
The idea of side-mounting woofers is not new but it was always hamstrung by three things.

One, good woofers are pretty deep, and you don't stagger them (and even if you do) the cabinet can end up being pretty wide. KEF appears to have made some custom 5.25" shallow woofers and/or staggered them to create a very shallow cabinet. Good job.

Second, the slim cabinet means your midrange can't be that big, and therefore can't have much output. I assume the unit here has decent xmax, but who knows. I would bet this is the weak point of this system (every system has one.) The most typical solution is an MTM of course.

Third, if the midrange is small, that means it wants to cross over fairly high in frequency, which means the woofers have to play higher, which is a problem because they are oriented towards the side. So they need to be relatively small so that they're effectively omni at their operating frequencies. KEF has addressed this by using an array of speakers which, in the horizontal plane, is only 5.25" wide, meaning it will radiate relatively widely at relatively high frequencies. I never considered that before; you get the output of a bigger woofer but the wide directivity of a smaller one.

Putting aside the engineering marketing and meta-materials and so forth, this speaker is a very clever conventional design which pulls off a driver arrangement that few speaker companies have done successfully.

The major drawback of this design - and I see no way around it - is it will be a very wide radiating design. This is not a big drawback, many people prefer designs like this, but I wouldn't expect any sidewall rejection from a speaker which literally has drivers pointing at your side walls. In this way it is decidedly not a competitor to next gen cardioid designs like Kii/Purefi, but is an outstanding hifi product nonetheless.

 

[Soundstage]

Thanks for pointing that out. I'm pretty sure I was mistaken.
The idea of side-mounting woofers is not new but it was always hamstrung by three things.

One, good woofers are pretty deep, and you don't stagger them (and even if you do) the cabinet can end up being pretty wide. KEF appears to have made some custom 5.25" shallow woofers and/or staggered them to create a very shallow cabinet. Good job.

Second, the slim cabinet means your midrange can't be that big, and therefore can't have much output. I assume the unit here has decent xmax, but who knows. I would bet this is the weak point of this system (every system has one.) The most typical solution is an MTM of course.

Third, if the midrange is small, that means it wants to cross over fairly high in frequency, which means the woofers have to play higher, which is a problem because they are oriented towards the side. So they need to be relatively small so that they're effectively omni at their operating frequencies. KEF has addressed this by using an array of speakers which, in the horizontal plane, is only 5.25" wide, meaning it will radiate relatively widely at relatively high frequencies. I never considered that before; you get the output of a bigger woofer but the wide directivity of a smaller one.

Putting aside the engineering marketing and meta-materials and so forth, this speaker is a very clever conventional design which pulls off a driver arrangement that few speaker companies have done successfully.

The major drawback of this design - and I see no way around it - is it will be a very wide radiating design. This is not a big drawback, many people prefer designs like this, but I wouldn't expect any sidewall rejection from a speaker which literally has drivers pointing at your side walls. In this way it is decidedly not a competitor to next gen cardioid designs like Kii/Purefi, but is an outstanding hifi product nonetheless.

Great observations. I am assuming that the side woofers have a high crossover at 400Hz. So we can locate the woofers which is fine because they surround the midrange/tweeter.
The question is: what are the implications for the listening experience of this setup? How well do they accommodate different rooms compared to standard loudspeaker designs? In my listening experience at the shop, comparing them to R3 and Reference 1 and 3, they were completely disappearing in the room. The soundstage was not in front of the speakers but around and behind the speakers. These are casual observations and I would not give them a lot of credibility.

 

[Purité Audio]

KEF’s ‘Uni-Core’ bass

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Keith