KEF LS60 Wireless Just Announced

[nick-v]

These appear to be very impressive.

Their driver complement and size also make all the sense in the world (for KEF).

I was one that was hoping for 5" mid and 6.5" woofers (and a slightly larger speaker) but that wouldn't have made sense relative to the Blade II.

These are truly a "mini Blade" and I'll be sure to get a pair into a demo system as soon as possible.

 

[Vacceo]

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!

I think that is the key: at moderate volumes the difference is not huge. The price, however, is.

 

[zuli]

I'm wondering if I can replace my current Kef R7s + 2 Kube12 with these new LS60s, in my 5.2 with an Anthem MRX1140.
It looks like the only way to integrate them is through the RCA inputs, right? The MRX has an optical out, but I think is a downmix to stereo, not only a L+R.
Would it make sense, in your opinion?

 

[Snorh]

Had a thought about a potential benefit of these speakers, with the woofers positioned behind the high/mid drivers. Is it technically possible to mitigate SBIR (speaker-boundary interference) with this setup? The cancellation frequency increases as a speaker is moved closer to the wall. Assuming the LS60s are placed right up against the front wall, I calculated the cancellation frequency from the position of the woofers to be ~440Hz and the cancellation frequency from the high/mid drivers to be ~220Hz. If the crossover between the woofers/mid drivers were somewhere between 220-440Hz, it seems that this speaker would experience less cancellation SBIR compared to typical speakers, when placed right up against the front wall.

 

[HeadDoc12]

I can't help but see these as a game-changer that will be talked about in a decade or so as (along with the LS50W) ushering in the era of active speaker dominance. KEF is acknowledging that it is happy to compete with Revel and B & W and other brands in the passive loudspeaker space, but it also sees Kii, Buchardt, and Dutch and Dutch (and others, of course) as the way of the future. This is a big, high-end brand putting their stamp of approval on all-in-one "lifestyle" systems, while still focusing on sound quality. Part of me wishes they were a little wider (and could therefore go lower), but I think the aesthetic and sonic trade-offs were already thoroughly considered by the KEF engineers and designers. I mean, how many Blade owners keep them far too close to the wall, or each other? I suspect a lot, based on the marketing materials of every high end brand. These embrace all the benefits of actives, are priced reasonably (when compared to what they replace and how they measure), and can even be placed close to the wall! We can always nitpick about latency or Purifi amps or looks (like, why have that weird branding plastic thing on top? Not my taste at all), but this opens the door for JBL and lots of others to compete (Perlisten, are you paying attention?), and I am looking forward to it.

 

[voodooless]

So here is the max SPL from the white paper overlayed with a sim of presumably similarly specced drivers (4x). The orange line is probably not the maximum excursion yet so that the blue one is higher is to be expected. I gave it 10mm of excursion and 70W of power handling each. Below 100 Hz, it's excursion limited, above that: power limited. So the 500W is basically just to cover transients, given a bit of crest factor, 280W in total power handling seems reasonable, and comes close to the 111 dB that KEF specifies.

For seriously loud listening this thing will need a sub still.

 

[KMO]

It looks like the only way to integrate them is through the RCA inputs, right? The MRX has an optical out, but I think is a downmix to stereo, not only a L+R.
Would it make sense, in your opinion?

Yes, with most multichannel setups + receivers RCA input will be your only option. But it should work fine.

Bit of DSP delay, but probably similar to your existing active subwoofers, which are doing the same thing.

A pair of these can't output as much low-frequency bass as your pair of KEF Kube-12s though. Maybe they're good enough for you to cope without them, but you'd lose something.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Yes, with most multichannel setups + receivers RCA input will be your only option. But it should work fine.

Yes but it would be nice to know how the A/D conversion is made.

 

[McFly]

I'm wondering if I can replace my current Kef R7s + 2 Kube12 with these new LS60s, in my 5.2 with an Anthem MRX1140.
It looks like the only way to integrate them is through the RCA inputs, right? The MRX has an optical out, but I think is a downmix to stereo, not only a L+R.
Would it make sense, in your opinion?

You still need your subs for LFE. The LS60s wont play the LFE (at usable volume, anyway)

Had a thought about a potential benefit of these speakers, with the woofers positioned behind the high/mid drivers. Is it technically possible to mitigate SBIR (speaker-boundary interference) with this setup? The cancellation frequency increases as a speaker is moved closer to the wall. Assuming the LS60s are placed right up against the front wall, I calculated the cancellation frequency from the position of the woofers to be ~440Hz and the cancellation frequency from the high/mid drivers to be ~220Hz. If the crossover between the woofers/mid drivers were somewhere between 220-440Hz, it seems that this speaker would experience less cancellation SBIR compared to typical speakers, when placed right up against the front wall.

There is the 'distance from wall' setting in their DSP app, designed to deal with this exact problem.

In my opinion KEF have hit a home run here, the only people complaining will be those who can't afford them (me) and those who bought anything more expensive or selling anything more expensive, and those that just love having big ol' woofers and horns and lots of boxes and cables.

Also - the HD is going to be high on this design and everyone here is going to light torches and grab pitchforks. But the IMD wont. And they will sound fantastic.

These will be copied and cloned and followed.

 

[abdo123]

Had a thought about a potential benefit of these speakers, with the woofers positioned behind the high/mid drivers. Is it technically possible to mitigate SBIR (speaker-boundary interference) with this setup? The cancellation frequency increases as a speaker is moved closer to the wall. Assuming the LS60s are placed right up against the front wall, I calculated the cancellation frequency from the position of the woofers to be ~440Hz and the cancellation frequency from the high/mid drivers to be ~220Hz. If the crossover between the woofers/mid drivers were somewhere between 220-440Hz, it seems that this speaker would experience less cancellation SBIR compared to typical speakers, when placed right up against the front wall.

That’s a pretty good point actually!

 

[KMO]

Yes but it would be nice to know how the A/D conversion is made.

Presumably someone with LS50 Wireless (II) knowledge can chip in here. I imagine nothing significant has changed since the LS50 Wireless II in that area.

 

[zuli]

Yes but it would be nice to know how the A/D conversion is made.

In the Anthem I've a stereo scenario (2.2) (i.e Anthem + ARC room correction -> pre out to -> Benchmark AHB2 -> R7s, Anthem -> subwoofers). Playing Apple Music via Airplay2.
Do you think that I can get better results playing music directly via Airplay2 to the LS60s, using the internal DSP and EQ?
I'm assuming that for movies through the AVR via RCA doesn't make much difference.

 

[McFly]

Presumably someone with LS50 Wireless (II) knowledge can chip in here. I imagine nothing significant has changed since the LS50 Wireless II in that area.

If I were to guess I'd say ADC to DSP with FIR and IIR filtering to DACs to amps out. The in app option 'phase correction' can be turned off to bypass the FIR filtering (but still keeping the IIR filtering and nice frequency response) and allows for less latency and less video/audio lip sync issues.

 

[Trouble Maker]

I'm wondering if I can replace my current Kef R7s + 2 Kube12 with these new LS60s, in my 5.2 with an Anthem MRX1140.
It looks like the only way to integrate them is through the RCA inputs, right? The MRX has an optical out, but I think is a downmix to stereo, not only a L+R.
Would it make sense, in your opinion?

I've got a similar question.

Has anyone integrated the LS50W2 into a home theater setup through an AVR?
I'm wondering if there's an 'easy' way to do it via HDMI out of the receiver.
Then maybe the speaker could turn on to the HDMI in at a specific volume level via CEC commands whenever the AVR turned on.
It seems like any solution that works on the LS50W2 should work on the LS60 as the I/O seems to be the same.

I came to the conclusion with LS50W version 1 that there were two equally unacceptable options. Manually meaing turn it on and set the input and volume every time I wanted to use the AVR. Or 'make' a (raspberry pi or Arduino) box, using the RS232 or 12V trigger out of the AVR and into the Eth on the LS50. The former being too much incremental time and frustration and the later being too much time all at once and may or may not finally work.

I like the LS50W and a separate 5.1 sound bar setup for the TV. Any next system will integrate the two setups. So the W2 and LS60 combination of lacking more capable room correction and reasonable way to integrate into a home theater are non-starters.

 

[KMO]

I'm wondering if there's an 'easy' way to do it via HDMI out of the receiver.

The easy way is to use the RCA inputs attached to the receiver's pre-outs, in exactly the same way as an active subwoofer, and never touch their controls after initial calibration.

Reading the manual, they do have auto-wake-up functionality for the analogue input.

 

[zuli]

You still need your subs for LFE. The LS60s wont play the LFE (at usable volume, anyway)

Ah, I've forgot that I still need the subwoofers for movies! My idea to sell to my wife the possibility to replace the R7s and the subwoofers with new very nice speakers is definitely gone

 

[Pearljam5000]

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

Ah, I've forgot that I still need the subwoofers for movies! My idea to sell to my wife the possibility to replace the R7s and the subwoofers with new very nice speakers is definitely gone

XD lmaoo lol

 

[Clab]

For those of us who can only dream about getting the LS60, KEF is so nice (so evil) to add a AR function to test putting the speaker in your own room! How considerate....

 

[Trouble Maker]

The easy way is to use the RCA inputs attached to the receiver's pre-outs, in exactly the same way as an active subwoofer, and never touch their controls after initial calibration.

Reading the manual, they do have auto-wake-up functionality for the analogue input.

I think myself, and many people, might tend to want to use the LSxx in 2.0 (or 2.x) with built in streaming when listening to music. Then want to go 5.x.x+ when watching TV/Movies via the AVR. At least that should be an option without having to fiddle around too much every time the different scenario happens. I'm also wondering why some digital input isn't an option in your scenario, maybe it's a (downmixing) issue in upstream devices. Anyway, if set it and forget it RCA is the only option then the streamer and other inputs are 'worthless' functions in that setup, kind of a waste especially when the streamer seems to have some much capability.