KEF LS60 Wireless Just Announced

[nothingman]

This is a lifestyle (LS) product after all.

I think you just made up that definition/acronym, right?

The LS series is named after the commercial LS3/5A broadcast speakers developed by the BBC and licensed out in the 70s. KEF manufactured a version. For KEF’s 50th anniversary they created the LS50, and now the LS60 for their 60th. I don’t see one suggestion anywhere online LS means lifestyle. In fact, before the meta updates to Blade and Reference and addition of the LS60, the LS50 was alone with the Muon and Blade in the “Flagship” category. See screengrab from March 1, 2022.

Sorry to go a little overboard on this, but I thought it was an interesting suggestion on the meaning of LS but I don’t think it holds up.

 

[sifi36]

If it's a voltage limitation thing to avoid over-excursion, it doesn't matter where the dsp is. If it's a dynamic temperature thing like the Kii Threes, probably.

You would need to check with the experts on this.

Based on how the technology is described by Kef in the white paper (on page 9), I don’t think either of those adequately cover what’s happening here.

https://assets.kef.com/product-support/ls60-wireless/LS60W_Whitepaper.pdf

 

[TSB]

I think you just made up that definition/acronym, right?

The LS series is named after the commercial LS3/5A broadcast speakers developed by the BBC and licensed out in the 70s. KEF manufactured a version. For KEF’s 50th anniversary they created the LS50, and now the LS60 for their 60th. I don’t see one suggestion anywhere online LS means lifestyle. In fact, before the meta updates to Blade and Reference and addition of the LS60, the LS50 was alone with the Muon and Blade in the “Flagship” category. See screengrab from March 1, 2022.

Sorry to go a little overboard on this, but I thought it was an interesting suggestion on the meaning of LS but I don’t think it holds up.

I stand corrected!

 

[Absolute]

Based on how the technology is described by Kef in the white paper (on page 9), I don’t think either of those adequately cover what’s happening here.

https://assets.kef.com/product-support/ls60-wireless/LS60W_Whitepaper.pdf

Maybe similar to the Kii Three where they compensate for thermal compression or perhaps driver behaviour where it's no longer linear. Likely there's a clever look-ahead algorithm like Kii to avoid over-excursion as well.

Real clever stuff that keeps the drivers safe and the distortion to a minimum it seems. The whole package of Ls60 seems really smart and clever. I'm not arguing the technical achievements or the easy-to-use approach.

I'm just expressing concerns on longevity and practical considerations if something goes wrong, based on my personal experience (and several others I know). There's no free lunch, pick your poison.

 

[sifi36]

Maybe similar to the Kii Three where they compensate for thermal compression or perhaps driver behaviour where it's no longer linear. Likely there's a clever look-ahead algorithm like Kii to avoid over-excursion as well.

Real clever stuff that keeps the drivers safe and the distortion to a minimum it seems. The whole package of Ls60 seems really smart and clever. I'm not arguing the technical achievements or the easy-to-use approach.

I'm just expressing concerns on longevity and practical considerations if something goes wrong, based on my personal experience (and several others I know). There's no free lunch, pick your poison.

I totally understand your position and especially so given the less than positive experience you’ve had with the Kii Three. There is an interesting debate to be had about the performance and simplicity benefits of integration versus long-term repairability and flexibility of modularity. I would imagine that there are a wide range of opinions in this area; given the rapid proliferation of all-in-one designs, perhaps a dedicated thread might be an idea?

Kef are well known for the service and repair of multi-decade old passive speakers so it’ll be interesting to see how they support their active ones, where long-term availability of electronics may not be as straightforward. The LS60 is their first speaker where all of the electronics are in-house, perhaps this might make a difference?

 

[Absolute]

I totally understand your position and especially so given the less than positive experience you’ve had with the Kii Three. There is an interesting debate to be had about the performance and simplicity benefits of integration versus long-term repairability and flexibility of modularity. I would imagine that there are a wide range of opinions in this area; given the rapid proliferation of all-in-one designs, perhaps a dedicated thread might be an idea?

Kef are well known for the service and repair of multi-decade old passive speakers so it’ll be interesting to see how they support their active ones, where long-term availability of electronics may not be as straightforward. The LS60 is their first speaker where all of the electronics are in-house, perhaps this might make a difference?

The story with my Kiis is a story of how much of a hassle a simple thing can become, even if Kii and the dealer themselves were absolutely glorious to deal with in the whole process.

In short the issues were mostly shipping and customs (supposedly) due to mistakes in the paperwork, but still a real pain. Outside of warranty it would be very expensive as well.

But it might be completely irrelevant for these speakers that seems to have a back-mounted and ventilated amplifier-module that can easily be disassembled.

I don't like to come across as a negative arsewipe, so apologies to KEF and the readers of this thread that my concerns and experiences have been drawn out and exaggerated.
I won't pollute this thread longer with if's and butts, I'll come back with my opinion on the speakers when I have first-hand experience with them.

 

[Butter]

KEF is shipping me a replacement pair. Honestly, this last week the units worked fine. But it was a couple weeks of the one glitch where L speaker loses connection (wired), and trying things KEF tech support wanted me to test. I'll update if the replacement pair solve the issue.
Family still likes the units and I think they sound good. I agree reboxing and shipping heavy towers is not fun, but anyway, I've had to ship amps before, so I think it's just a part of the hobby, but a rare part.
I think if the family didn't have a strong preference for the look in the family room, I would have done passive speaker, miniDSP, amp, preamp, DAC, Roon as I have my office setup. On the other hand, I'm glad I tried the LS60. They're pretty fun to use.

 

[paudio]

Does Kef release schematics for their integrated amps? Right to repair is a problem across all electronics. Especially with integrated circuits as they are very difficult to reverse engineer.

I've repaired a bunch of active speakers. Usually it's the always on portion of the power supply. Sure does rack up the hours quickly sitting there waiting to be activated via a signal.

With schematics repair is possible as long as spare chips are available. They tend to be if they use off the shelf ones

 

[pierre]

Thanks to @sifi36 who scanned the spinorama, I have added it to the database. Data is a bit smoother than it would be with a Klippel measurement but show excellent property. Score is 8.0 which is reference class. There are close to the Blade in terms of directivity with a different bass profile (likely DSP driven in the LS60).

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

I think you just made up that definition/acronym, right?

The LS series is named after the commercial LS3/5A broadcast speakers developed by the BBC and licensed out in the 70s. KEF manufactured a version. For KEF’s 50th anniversary they created the LS50, and now the LS60 for their 60th. I don’t see one suggestion anywhere online LS means lifestyle. In fact, before the meta updates to Blade and Reference and addition of the LS60, the LS50 was alone with the Muon and Blade in the “Flagship” category. See screengrab from March 1, 2022.

Sorry to go a little overboard on this, but I thought it was an interesting suggestion on the meaning of LS but I don’t think it holds up.

why people care about the '' flagship '' marketing in their website?, the word '' flagship '' is for the top of the line product, maybe the muon or blades. LS50? is the toy mini speaker, not their flagship.

I guess the marketing people just saw a marketing oportunity, as i can see it's important to some people like you, in fact that's a thing from the EEUU WEBSITE not even the UK website, LMAO.

 

[Zvu]

Good God they're awesome

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

Thanks to @sifi36 who scanned the spinorama, I have added it to the database. Data is a bit smoother than it would be with a Klippel measurement but show excellent property. Score is 8.0 which is reference class. There are close to the Blade in terms of directivity with a different bass profile (likely DSP driven in the LS60).

View attachment 229730

That's a lot of bass, the LS60 is impressive technically

 

[sifi36]

@pierre is doing the Lord’s work with his site. It might just be the single most valuable resource for rational audiophiles, seeing as speakers are comfortably the most important part of the chain.

Something bothered me about the KEF data, there is an on-axis drop above 5kHz that I didn’t perceive at all when listening.

So I took a look at the estimated in-room response to get a sense for what might be happening there.

Non-Klippel measurement caveats aside, that is one of the smoothest predicted in-room responses I’ve come across. Whatever the issue is anechoically and on-axis it doesn’t show up in-room. Now the steepness of the slope was bothering me, as it looked a lot steeper than the Genelec 8351b that I am weighing the LS60 against.

The KEF seems to drop about 10dB from 20-20k whereas the Genelec is more like 5dB. The Blade One has almost the same response as the LS60. The Kii Three and Dutch and Dutch 8c are even flatter than the Genelec and seem to prioritise flat on axis at the expense of a smooth predicted in-room response. So I thought I’d try a midfield monitor instead. Turns out the Genelec S360 is much closer to the two KEFs, when it comes to slope steepness.

In conclusion:
- With the caveat of the data being vendor provided and potential bass limiting at high volumes, is there an objectively better performing speaker out there for anywhere near the same money?
-Are some studio monitors with an almost flat in-room response (as opposed to sloping down) less well suited to midfield listening as a result?
-I (and, judging by the length of this thread, many others) really want to see the LS60 on @amirm’s Klippel.

PS you should all check out @pierre‘s site.

 

[nothingman]

why people care about the '' flagship '' marketing in their website?, the word '' flagship '' is for the top of the line product, maybe the muon or blades. LS50? is the toy mini speaker, not their flagship.

I guess the marketing people just saw a marketing oportunity, as i can see it's important to some people like you, in fact that's a thing from the EEUU WEBSITE not even the UK website, LMAO.

You’re coming at me awfully hard over nothing. I mentioned the flagship category designation as an example of how KEF doesn’t consider the LS series to be a “lifestyle” product. To the extent that any of these marketing terms mean anything, one is distinct from the other.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

You’re coming at me awfully hard over nothing. I mentioned the flagship category designation as an example of how KEF doesn’t consider the LS series to be a “lifestyle” product. To the extent that any of these marketing terms mean anything, one is distinct from the other.

I understand your point but the whole point itself is pointless, in the same image you linked for example, there is no '' lifestyle '' category

 

[Sancus]

-Are some studio monitors with an almost flat in-room response (as opposed to sloping down) less well suited to midfield listening as a result?

Based on those measurements, the Kef LS60 are not flat anechoically, they are very clearly tilted down. This is easy to see by comparing to the "with EQ" graph which tries to fix the tilt. That means they will sound a little dark on average to most people out of the box. The Genelec 8351B are definitely not "almost flat", how do you get that from those graphs? They are -6.45dB @ 10khz and the LS60 are -7.65dB. But be careful about overreliance on the PIR, it is a major oversimplification of what a speaker sounds like in a room.

In any case, amount of tilt is not very important as you should be able to adjust it to taste. If you can't, then you have very important capability missing from your system. Different people prefer different amounts of bass and treble, and recordings vary substantially too. It's very easy to change the tilt of Genelec GLM speakers, I don't know about the LS60.

there is an on-axis drop above 5kHz

All of these variations are very small, to be clear, but it looks like the on-axis sound dips to compensate for widening dispersion from 5-15khz.

 

[sifi36]

Based on those measurements, the Kef LS60 are not flat anechoically, they are very clearly tilted down. This is easy to see by comparing to the "with EQ" graph which tries to fix the tilt. That means they will sound a little dark on average to most people out of the box. The Genelec 8351B are definitely not "almost flat", how do you get that from those graphs? They are -6.45dB @ 10khz and the LS60 are -7.65dB. But be careful about overreliance on the PIR, it is a major oversimplification of what a speaker sounds like in a room.

In any case, amount of tilt is not very important as you should be able to adjust it to taste. If you can't, then you have very important capability missing from your system. Different people prefer different amounts of bass and treble, and recordings vary substantially too. It's very easy to change the tilt of Genelec GLM speakers, I don't know about the LS60.



All of these variations are very small, to be clear, but it looks like the on-axis sound dips to compensate for widening dispersion from 5-15khz.

If you ignore the on axis dip 7-12k, it would be flat. The size of the dip is causing the algorithm to draw the line with a downwards slope but you could just as easily draw it as a straight line with a deviation in that area. (That trendline is horrifically misplaced, but it’s the best I could do on my phone and it gets the point across)

I’m pretty certain I’ve read somewhere that the tangerine waveguide on KEF coaxials displays this behaviour when measured dead on axis, but it disappears when even minutely off, hence why the dip cannot be seen in the listening window or early reflections. The same artefact was in the KEF data for the Reference 1 Meta, which Erin could not reproduce on the Klippel.

Thank you for the correction on the slopes of the PIR, they’re basically the same upon another look The LS60 has a bass and treble control in the app, though something more robust like a PEQ wouldn’t go amiss.

 

[Sancus]

If you ignore the on axis dip 7-12k, it would be flat.

There is in fact a gentle tilt to the on-axis response starting from around 200hz. Just put a straight line on the graph and you can see it.

 

[sifi36]

Drawing trendlines is obviously subjective, the line you’ve drawn touches the actual curve for a pretty small fraction of the actual response. You could move it down a dB or two to show what I have in my post above.

 

[Tangband]

Today I had the oportunity to listen to Kef ls60 again in another store. Soundsource were TIDAL and Apple lossless.

Listening impressions that stands out :

1. Integration to each speakers 4 subwoofers is perfectly done with no audible problem heard . Integrating a standmount speaker to a subwoofer gonna have bigger problems in most cases .

2. The stereoimage L/R is really good .

3. The bass is NOT super deep , but it plays down to about 30 Hz .

4. The sound in the midrange sounded this time a little more analytical compared to my Genelec 8340 ( but listening impression were in a different room ) .

5. Again - these floorstanders are visually stunning and feels smaller in real life .
The small 4 inch uniQ driver is really small