KEF LS60 Wireless Just Announced

[jtongret]

There are plenty of customers who appreciate the R line, myself included where we want traditional passive speaker set that isn't budget nor TOTL. And personally I'm not a fan of the looks of the LS60. I like the LS50 but the shape just looks very odd carried over into a tower format.

Also everybody on here automatically equates wider dispersion = better which is not always the case and certainly a matter of taste as there are trade offs here, especially in a surround speaker setup. I really think that is where the R series shines, in a mixed-use music/HT living room setup. Even though they are boxy they still have a "lifestyle" look to them with the sleek design of the front baffle and woofers.

I agree with you. A lot of people seem to view wide dispersion as being "better" than a tighter controlled dispersion. In my opinion which one will suit you best will vary from person to person and room to room. I also agree with you about the looks of the ls60. It's not to my personal taste based on the product images.

 

[Sancus]

they are NOT peer reviewed and approved scientific papers.

Nor is any of the data collect by Amir or posted on this forum any of those things. It's what we have, and it's better than nothing. Of course, Kef's claims would be best confirmed by independent measurements, but to date, their measurements published in white papers/spec sheets have been reasonable if not always the highest resolution.

 

[pablolie]

Nor is any of the data collect by Amir or posted on this forum any of those things. It's what we have, and it's better than nothing. Of course, Kef's claims would be best confirmed by independent measurements, but to date, their measurements published in white papers/spec sheets have been reasonable if not always the highest resolution.

I totally agree. I just caution. Measurements... design goals... all awesome. But ultimately we have to make sure we translate the relevance into our use case, our priorities, our environment.

I trust Amir's measurements more that a vendor's white paper, by the way. That said, I do dissect Amir's measurements and conclusions into what is relevant to me... and what is not.

I do read KEF's WP in general, and enthusiastically applaud their approach to not spready voodoo magic, but clearly state engineering priorities and the results those drove.

 

[Mnyb]

Same for loudness.

Or brightness, or harshness

 

[Pearljam5000]

Would a pair of LS50 meta+2 KC62 subs be better than LS60? And probably cheaper too

 

[Mnyb]

Nor is any of the data collect by Amir or posted on this forum any of those things. It's what we have, and it's better than nothing. Of course, Kef's claims would be best confirmed by independent measurements, but to date, their measurements published in white papers/spec sheets have been reasonable if not always the highest resolution.

I’m quite sure that KEF’s white papers are more or less factually correct, that honest approach is part of kef’s mo and yes their marketing ( it’s seems to work on me, I’m positively biased by now ) .

The big bias in the papers is that it is a good idea to design the product the paper describes in the first place.
Another team could have come up with something else given the same time and budget.
In the case of LS60 I tend to agree this product is a very good idea.

There migth also be sins of omission, there can be factors not mentioned at all .

And they make the value judgments over which compromises they deem acceptable for the product they describe in the WP . These parts are not science . Example if they made the design with 6 bass drivers instead of 4 of them or 2 .
They make their own constraints .

Hmm I’ve designed 2 new products for them LS66 with 6 bass drivers and LS62 with two drivers now I want my consultation fee as I as a random forum poster knows better

 

[Arnas]

i don't disagree (i own a pair of R7s myself), but most customers don't as afaik the LS50 outsells the R3 by a considerable margin, and i expect the LS60 to do the same to the R11. it totally makes sense for them to replace the segments occupied by the R line with the LS line, as it's comparatively more commercially successful.

if they release a passive model with performance comparable to the LS60 in a comparable price bracket, i'm definitely saving up for them (while i fully acknowledge the superiority of well designed active speakers in principle, i'd consider the LS60 if i had more faith in KEF's reliability regarding electronics. too many bad stories about the KCs and LSs floating around. 2 years warranty is nowhere even close to enough in a product like this at that price point)

Same here, thats why i rather save up for Ref 1 meta.

 

[Axo1989]

But I see this in the white paper

'' The attenuaton in cabinet vibraton is an astounding -20 dB broadband. This is equivalent to increasing cabinet mass in a non-force-cancelling system by a factor of 10. ''

I'm familiar with the force-cancelling concept. It doesn't provide extension per se. It does help if you want to push the drivers hard.

Audio Physic started using opposed bass drivers in push-push configuration on cabinet sidewalls from 1988 (KEF claim first use in their 104/2 but that was vertical axis in-cabinet modified bandpass) and continued until recently (I listened to Tempo and Virgo a fair few times before eventually getting Codex with a different bass concept). They were all narrow-baffle, but none of them—or similar design by others—had such tiny drivers and cabinets as the LS60. Passive/analog solutions to that mean crossover wizardry and likely low sensitivity, really you want/need DSP to get flat extension close to 20 Hz at decent output levels with small drivers in a small cabinet.

DSP can be outboard/upstream for sure, but then you need to sell your passive speaker with that system, which makes for messy multi-box marketing to domestic/lifestyle consumers compared to an integrated design.

 

[Axo1989]

Not to mention that sub 60Hz Is pretty irrelevant to music. Unless you obsess about mixes with artificial bass overload or you have a high quality recording of a concert that recorded one. of about 2 dozen organs in the world that generate those bass levels (and which imo musically make zero difference).

Honestly the bass extensión discussions are lost on me. get a cheap sub and turn it up all the way. oh yeah. FX stuff. but crap for music.

when you listen to real music (including Stanley Clarke's bass, which I am a fan of) boosting the below 80 bass is a distortion and a caricature of the truth of the sound...

You don't listen to electronic, or other modern music with sub-60 Hz bass? Anything with a Roland 808? That goes back a fair way now. There's no accounting for taste, and I'm not criticising yours, but characterising stuff you don't happen to listen to as "artificial bass overload" or not "real music" is ignorant at best. Even relatively genteel stuff like London Grammar lays out some low notes: if a composition includes them, I prefer to hear them.

 

[Pearljam5000]

Not to mention that sub 60Hz Is pretty irrelevant to music. Unless you obsess about mixes with artificial bass overload or you have a high quality recording of a concert that recorded one. of about 2 dozen organs in the world that generate those bass levels (and which imo musically make zero difference).

Honestly the bass extensión discussions are lost on me. get a cheap sub and turn it up all the way. oh yeah. FX stuff. but crap for music.

when you listen to real music (including Stanley Clarke's bass, which I am a fan of) boosting the below 80 bass is a distortion and a caricature of the truth of the sound...

Any bass is irrelevant to music
The first thing i do when i buy new speakers is to disconnect the woofer.

 

[Tangband]

Would a pair of LS50 meta+2 KC62 subs be better than LS60? And probably cheaper too

No way , the ls50 meta must then be crossed at 100 Hz and thats to low to avoid doppler effect ie the variable waveguide IMD distortion. The ls60 tries to avoid the problem crossing at 390 Hz with dsp crossover, Genelec style.
That fact alone probably gonna make ls60 better sounding .

Ls50 meta is also a passive loudspeaker and Kef writes in the ls60 white papers that active is a big advantage, soundwise.
Read more here :

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

”Modern passive loudspeakers can give remarkably high performance. One could even argue that the HiFi market’s fondness for passive loudspeakers has led manufacturers to develop drivers with extremely refined behaviour as a direct result of the limita�ons and restric�ons of the passive format. Nevertheless, in terms of both absolute performance and flexibility, ac�ve has a significant advantage.”

 

[Tangband]

Having the 4 subs at the sides of the ls60 cabinett seems to be very clever. At 390 Hz the wavelengths are getting shorter so the distance from the subs from the uni-q driver must not be to long. Iˋm very curious to listen to this loudspeaker.

 

[ROOSKIE]

This is something you just can not do in a passive.

"But in an active system, there’s a lot more going on, so we developed a system with a two-pronged attack. Firstly, we don't use a conventional amplifier; it's an amplifier with a special feedback loop where we positively feed back some of the voice coil current, which has the effect of cancelling some of the driver distortion.”
Secondly, as the benefit (and sometimes downfall, if executed poorly) of a digital active system is being able to manipulate the output to suit the design via digital signal processing trickery, Oclee-Brown was able to do just that by adding distortion into the DSP to cancel the distortion from the driver: “By doing those two tricks, it’s clean and you can have a lot more bass extension when it's playing quietly; it doesn't sound strained.” -What HiFi, https://www.whathifi.com/features/t...antages-blade-influence-and-the-next-60-years

 

[NYfan2]

question for people saying a version with bigger drivers would cannibalize Blade sales: really? why? it never happens in the real world. as already explained by a fellow who worked in sales much earlier in the thread (or was it the Ref1M review thread?), nobody with the money to go out and buy a Blade (2) is even considering something in the <10k bracket as worthwhile of his/her time. the world does not work like that. if it did, KEF would've already discontinued the Reference line as nobody would've bought it considering the R line exists

Yesterday, after the LS60 KEF demoed the new Blade 1 Meta so I have a good comparison and to be honest the Blade 1 is absolutely ToTL, pricewise it's a crazy comparison € 35000,- for the Blade 1 without Dac and amplification or € 6500,- for the LS60 but pure for the sound the Blade 1 wins this anytime. Maybe it has to do with the voicing of the Uni-Q drivers or difference in the Uni-Q drivers and maybe with some eq the difference will be smaller but out of the box it is an easy win for the Blade 1.

 

[voodooless]

The amount of bass is amazing, KEFF claim it goes down to 26Hz and a maximum spl of 114db for the LS60.

Please don’t conflate these two numbers! They are not related to each other. It will not do 114dB at 26Hz. Best case it’s something like 20 dB less.

 

[harkpabst]

But the blades have a kind of '' shadow flare '', is not like the blades have just the UNIQ into the MDF, blades have that huge black thing in their UNIQ

Well, first off the Blade is not and never has been made of MDF (but you probably know that). And while they have that black thingy around the Uni-Q it's simply not a shadow flare.

If I was nitpicking (or very sarcastic) I could say it isn't by very definition because KEF don't call it so but let's rather look at the facts: It's a totally different shape for a different purpose targeting the same goal. Blade baffles don't have any edges, they don't even have baffles in the traditional way. Still the vertical full circle shape.of the Uni-Q driver must be matched carefully to the horizontal half circle of the cabinet. Providing a smooth transition is the task here.

That's very different from Reference and R series (2018) shadow flares. They are really designed to make sound waves disengage from the cabinet und not follow its contour.

Force canceling woofer arrangements are not new (as has been already discussed by @Axo1989). Blades had that, too. Uni-Core in the first place aims at reducing cabinet width. It may also provide even better structural rigidity than two drivers bolted together, but KEF don't stress that topic, so maybe my speculation is all wrong.

The major difference in concept between Blade and LS60 is simply the bass alignment: Large volume bass reflex layout here, small volume closed box there. You simply cannot do the latter without active EQ and ideally with additional closed-loop control (as they did with LS60). Thus, any passive version of LS60 would have to be a very different speaker, indeed.

 

[harkpabst]

Would a pair of LS50 meta+2 KC62 subs be better than LS60? And probably cheaper too

No, you would at least need a pair of KEF LS50 Meta plus 2 Lyngdorf BW-2 plus Lyngdorf TDAI-1120 crossing them at 200 Hz to end up better and cheaper, too.

Hint:
I am very biased concerning this very setup.

 

[thewas]

just a reminder that anyone that thinks a white paper is a scientific truth... don't.

white papers are (ideally) good guides about design goals and the key differentiators that were targeted.

they invariably get mixed with less definsible marketing magic dust.

they are NOT peer reviewed and approved scientific papers.

please stop using white papers as unquestionable sources of truth. they are technical marketing documents with bias. informative...but biased 100% because that is the goal of every white paper in existence.

On the other hand, they are currently the best resource of facts about these loudspeakers we have right now and in the several years I haven't seen really anyone with knowledge in that field showing gross errors, inconsistencies or deviations from later 3rd party measurements, so of course they should be questioned if there is an argued founded basis but the opposite, just automatically dismissing them, is also not expedient.

 

[thewas]

You don't listen to electronic, or other modern music with sub-60 Hz bass? Anything with a Roland 808? That goes back a fair way now. There's no accounting for taste, and I'm not criticising yours, but characterising stuff you don't happen to listen to as "artificial bass overload" or not "real music" is ignorant at best. Even relatively genteel stuff like London Grammar lays out some low notes: if a composition includes them, I prefer to hear them.

Doesn't need even to be electronic or "modern" music, jazz, symphonic, classic rock, anything with large instruments like drums, piano, bass guitar has content below 60 Hz and sounds "dead" when highpassed at that frequency compared to the playback with a system that goes linearly down to 20-30 Hz.

 

[BoredErica]

I just find it funny pablolie's trying to tell others that their music with sounds under 60hz is not real music. It's just so obviously absurd it made me chuckle.

MY MUSIC is REAL MUSIC. Yours ain't!