KEF LS60 Wireless Just Announced

[Sancus]

Ah, I was right about the woofers after all

So the reason the blade comparison didn’t work was because the Uni-Q is smaller

Well that's that, us 5"ers were right Makes the most sense. 4" Uni-Q is interesting though!

That extension is lower than the Blade Two and comparable to Blade One, despite the much smaller drivers. It’s probably not quite so good when played louder, still crazy though!

It is, honestly, a bit silly when people talk about "extension" for active designs. You can EQ the extension to whatever you want, and manufacturers always EQ the extension to some degree. Comparing F3/F6 to passive designs has no meaning.

To determine LF output of an active design the max SPL/limiter needs to be measured.

 

[Jukebox]

Any chance KEF will add Dirac? Build in room correction and I have no need for any other audio components.

I discussed with their engineering team about the possibility of adding in the future PEQ or maybe auto EQ....but those are only discussions so far. Time will tell.

 

[sifi36]

Well that's that, us 5"ers were right Makes the most sense. 4" Uni-Q is interesting though!


It is, honestly, a bit silly when people talk about "extension" for active designs. You can EQ the extension to whatever you want, and manufacturers always EQ the extension to some degree. Comparing F3/F6 to passive designs has no meaning.

To determine LF output of an active design the max SPL/limiter needs to be measured.

That’s a fair point, it’ll be interesting to see how low they can go at high levels. I’ve a feeling that based on what we’ve seen so far in the specifications, it’ll satisfy my needs for a living room TV and music set-up.

 

[Gil]

LS60 Wireless

The Future of Wireless HiFi Celebrating 60 years of acoustic innovation, LS60 Wireless is our vision of high-fidelity sound for the future. An all-in-one speaker system that allows you to stream from any source and connect to any home audio devices with audiophile-grade power. The iconic slim...

us.kef.com

The Future of Hi-Fi Is Here: Introducing the LS60 Wireless

Celebrating 60 years of innovation in technology, performance and design, LS60 Wireless is KEF’s vision of high-fidelity for the future.

us.kef.com

 

[thewas]

And the first "review" comes from...

KEF LS60 Wireless review

KEF takes all-in-one hi-fi to a whole new level

www.whathifi.com

 

[sifi36]

White paper (spinorama is on the last page). Directivity looks to be controlled down to 400Hz.

https://us.kef.com/pub/media/ls60-content/LS60W_WP.pdf

 

[thewas]

White paper (spinorama is on the last page). Directivity looks to be controlled down to 400Hz.

https://us.kef.com/pub/media/ls60-content/LS60W_WP.pdf

Here are the spinorama plots from it

and a product short video

 

[MZKM]

Secion 3.2.4 shows the bass compression:

 

[Matias]

Having a PC as source, I would probably use the digital coax input (and get an USB to coax DDC), but I wished the LS60 USB would work instead.

 

[thewas]

From the white paper I also find interesting the analysis they did on music for the crest factor and their amplification choices based on that:

One important advantage of an active loudspeaker is that the amplifiers for each driver may be specially designed according to the specific signal characteristics each will see. To gain a better insight into the requirements, KEF R&D performed a statistical analysis on an extensive library of more than 40,000 pieces of real music. This study provided new data on the spectral amplitude and crest factor in different frequency bands. Crest factor is the ratio between the peak and average amplitude of a signal. Low and midrange frequency content tends to be continuous with a low crest factor. As frequency increases the crest factor raises considerably.

Figure 25 shows an example calculation of the crest factor across five midrange and high frequency bands for a sample of 1800 music files.

Figure 25. Calculation of mean crest factor by frequency band on statistical sample of music

For an active loudspeaker, this means that the LF amplifier must be capable of providing continuous power output. A HF amplifier, however, needs to provide only very low levels of continuous output, but still be capable of outputting extremely high instantaneous power peaks. KEF have developed a sophisticated software simulation tool that mimics the end-to-end signal path in the loudspeaker, including details such as the DSP processing, the frequency response of the drivers and the complex load that the drivers present to the amplifiers. Using this tool the exact power requirements for each section can be calculated for a range of different musical genres. This provides detailed power statistics for each driver that can then be used in the design and specification of the corresponding amplifiers. The result of this analysis on the LS60 Wireless was that a 500W amplifier was required for the LF portion, 100W for the MF and 100W for the HF. Based on the bandwidth and signal statistics a hybrid amplifier class arrangement was selected. The LF section of the system demands high amplifier power to deliver clean bass output. The MF section also requires high continuous power output on certain demanding tracks. Along with the constraint of housing the electronics in a separate enclosure at the bottom of the cabinet, this requires thermal efficiency to be a priority and hence Class D amplifiers were selected for these sections. Class D amplifiers are highly efficient due to their high-speed transistor switching design and their sound quality can be at a level required for high-fidelity reproduction. The HF section has very different power statistics. Only low continuous output is required but the amplifier must have the ability to deliver sudden large peaks. High bandwidth is also an important consideration for true High-Res support. For this reason a class AB amplifier was selected. Class AB amplifiers have a much lower efficiency than Class D, but the thermal power generated is reasonably low under these signal conditions. Class AB has the added advantage of wide HF bandwidth and of not requiring an output filter. The reason behind the high-power specification for both MF and HF amplifiers, especially the HF one, is due mainly to the crest factor of music at the intended frequency passband. Ensuring the amplifiers have the rail voltage available to supply the power to amplify a sudden sharp peak in the signal is crucial to avoid harmonic distortion. The KEF Class AB design was revised from LS50 Wireless II to further reduce distortion.

 

[digitalfrost]

Damn, if I was in the market for some towers these would be #1 on the list. They tick a lot of boxes.

 

[Matias]

Damn, if I was in the market for some towers these would be #1 on the list. They tick a lot of boxes.

Yes, I agree.

How is your dream speaker like?

Based on this interesting thread about dream DACs, I decided to make a similar one for speakers, as I was thinking about this earlier today. So how would your dream speaker be like? Since dreaming is still free :), my ideal speaker is more like a system which I describe below. Let me know what...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[thewas]

Damn, if I was in the market for some towers these would be #1 on the list. They tick a lot of boxes.

Same here and wish I had the money for them.

 

[Ciobi69]

It looks like kef nailed it again

 

[nerdstrike]

From the white paper I also find interesting the analysis they did on music for the crest factor and their amplification choices based on that:

The result of this analysis on the LS60 Wireless was that a 500W amplifier was required for the LF portion, 100W for the MF and 100W for the HF

700 watts! Per speaker? Good grief. A kitchen sink speaker, with granite worktops for good measure.

 

[Vacceo]

I still have some of the Andrew Jones-designed "KEF KAR" speakers. I liked them enough that I still have them.
I think the first audio-related email I ever sent was to KEF about enclosures size for these in my doors. Andrew answered it.

That lineup included a 6.5" Uni-Q and a 6x9" Uni-Q. The tweeters were, I believe, shared with the then-current Reference line. There was a later effort to license the KEF brand and technology by a company called Coustic. These had blue impregnated poly cones, and I believe their designer came over from Infinity. They also had a 5.1-channel upmixer under the KEF brand. I'm not sure how long they lasted.

It'd be great to be able to buy what they are installing on the Lotus.

 

[Daka]

Dang I would love to hear them. Is just me or it does have wider dispersion than reference 1 meta ?

 

[windwolf447]

Dang I would love to hear them. Is just me or it does have wider dispersion than reference 1 meta ?

The dispersion is wider due to the smaller (4inch) Uni-Q.

 

[MZKM]

From my digitization, I calculate a Preference Rating Score w/ sub of 8.5.
The bass extension is so deep that the LFX is <20Hz, only other speaker I have done that also did that was the D&D 8C.

Here's the Spinorama in my typical format (note graph only goes down to 30Hz as usual, for formatting):

 

[Emlin]

Supports MQA. But I don't want to support MQA. Bummer.