KEF LS60 Wireless Just Announced

[Powerbench]

kef ls60 at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

Sweet!

 

[tifune]

KEF LSX wireless loudspeaker system Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

48ms is already plenty to cause lipsync problems and will get even worse from upstearm room correction in an AVR or whatnot. If your AVR can output the front's coax/optical then you'd be good.

IME, it wasn't the connection type. It was wired vs wireless between L/R. Granted, like most AVRs my denon only has RCA out so there could be more to the story.

Kef support told me, in passing, LS50W II has similar latency for same reasons. I don't own those so I didn't look deeply into it

 

[MZKM]

I wonder how the bass management is (or isn't) designed to handle this.
If someone setup a sub around 96dB (brown line) and chose around 50hz, all would be good there.
View attachment 206218Then When they went to the black (normal) line listening level all would be fine there, since the speaker will low/high pass to send to the speaker/sub.

But what happens if they then go to the orange (very high) listening level? Will there be some (small?) hole from around 50hz to 80hz?
*not that anyone listens that high on average but I imagine dynamic peaks could go that high.

View attachment 206219

You‘d use the sub-out of the speaker itself and set the low/high pass frequencies in-app, so that’ll help a bit (rather than connecting the subwoofer upstream). But yeah, the higher the crossover the better but the speaker will still auto-compress the frequency response.

 

[E-Lint]

Darko has a very short *unboxing* teaser on his channel that shows a fully exposed LS60 Wireless.

 

[Alexanderc]

I know it would be fairly simple and inexpensive to add room correction, but imagine if they had DIRAC on board. Just plug in a source or two and you’re set.

 

[TSB]

I‘m just not a big fan of boycotting every products that’s happens to have MQA support.

You would have to boycot anything that supports Tidal, i.e. pretty much any streamer worth it's salt..

 

[Pearljam5000]

Darko has a very short *unboxing* teaser on his channel that shows a fully exposed LS60 Wireless.

Full Unboxing

 

[retro]

I made a similar simulation with @voodooless 's Tang Band W6-1139SIF. It's a small sized bass driver so it should perform more or less similar to the drivers KEF are using (if not a bit worse).

4 drivers wired in a 2 || 2 configuration (no impact on impedance) yield a sensitivity of about 93 dB/2.83V. If we take baffle step into consideration we're looking at a speaker that is more or less flat to 60Hz with 82dB/2.83V sensitivity. With a -6dB point at around 40Hz. With excursion for days. We're not even exceeding 5mm with 500W @ 4Ohm.

View attachment 206223

View attachment 206224

abdo123,
There's no speaker wizard, alive or dead, that can make a passive version, same box, same drivers, as great as these seem to be from the released papers. Note I safeguarded myself with seem to be..we need testing from hardisj or amir to confirm, naturally..

 

[digitalfrost]

Does anyone know high the Uni-Q is off the ground?

e: 1090 x 212 x 394 mm (42.9 x 8.3 x 15.5 in.) with plinth 1042 x 130 x 321 mm (41.0 x 5.1 x 12.6 in.) without plinth

These are a lot smaller than I tought. It seems the chassis sits fairly low then.

 

[thewas]

4 drivers wired in a 2 || 2 configuration (no impact on impedance) yield a sensitivity of about 93 dB/2.83V. If we take baffle step into consideration we're looking at a speaker that is more or less flat to 60Hz with 82dB/2.83V sensitivity. With a -6dB point at around 40Hz

So a 16 dB drop already at 40 Hz which is even 20 Hz higher than the one of the LS60. Also baffle step has no real impact at the low frequency range but higher.

With excursion for days. We're not even exceeding 5mm with 500W @ 4Ohm.

It should be kept in mind that high excursion in a very small enclosure increases distortion significantly due to the highly non-linear spring characteristic of the inner air volume which can be seen also at the several countermeasures KEF takes against it like the SDCT.

Concluding, a passive version would be rather a normal and highly compromised 3-way loudspeaker (bass depth, adaptive limiter, radiation pattern) compared to what they engineered now.

 

[diablo]

I know it would be fairly simple and inexpensive to add room correction, but imagine if they had DIRAC on board. Just plug in a source or two and you’re set.

I have a system in my bedroom with LS50 Metas and a KC62. The little sub is quite good - but only after I spent a long time finding the best place for it (ten feet away) and using EQ, I won't be buying the LS60s.

 

[DMill]

The fact that these speakers look to be so good doesn't surprise me. KEF is on a roll. I think the only thing that really shocks me is they don't come in gloss black.

 

[Powerbench]

You have to figure this is a “high-end” consumer oriented gadget with sprinkling of “audiophile” all over it.
KEF knows to make money on its products so yes the reviews and stats and graphs will come but this is not aimed at ASR or even Stereo-pile per say but masses who may not be interested in DSP but WAF, “honey look I got rid of the stack, rack and cables!”” Wouldn’t this look good in the living room and in the family room?

The “WAF” was what built the middle class household ie. Washing machines, dishwashers and now wireless slim cute speakers.

 

[AOR]

Does anyone know high the Uni-Q is off the ground?

e: 1090 x 212 x 394 mm (42.9 x 8.3 x 15.5 in.) with plinth 1042 x 130 x 321 mm (41.0 x 5.1 x 12.6 in.) without plinth

These are a lot smaller than I tought. It seems the chassis sits fairly low then.

Hi Digitalfrost,

The Uni-Q height is ~80cm. This is the same as R5.

 

[peanuts]

cant find info on xo. if its in the middle of the midbass then a puny 4" has to do to much.

 

[voodooless]

cant find info on xo. if its in the middle of the midbass then a puny 4" has to do to much.

390 Hz. Plenty for the 4". 2 mm of excursion get's you to 112dB at that frequency. Given that in music content the signal is already way down from bass, so much will usually not be needed anyway.

 

[KMO]

The Uni-Q height is ~80cm. This is the same as R5.

I just did my own photo analysis before seeing this and got the same answer. Also virtually the same as the LS50 Meta on the matching S2 stand.

 

[Pearljam5000]

They're too slim for me
They look soundbars

 

[Powerbench]

PS. To me this is an innovation of two my favourite speakers the Totem arro and Kef 104.2 Reference.

Slim towers point source imagery coupled with bass drivers coupled and modern tech. Yes not reference like the 104.2 but a somewhat significant compromise.

Time will tell.

 

[E-Lint]

I had some experience with the Sunfire (nee Carver?) small ~one foot cube in the mid 90's (a demo). It was always an amazement to me. The excursion was something to behold. Can't recall its accuracy or other characteristics.