KEF LS60w - The Ugly Side of the Active Speaker Market

[Purité Audio]

Let’s be real. They’re asking for these kinds of issues due to the piss poor design choice of naked and especially fragile drivers. The issue isn’t active/passive it’s terrible industrial design.

The drivers are aluminium, not that fragile, a cloth grill protects drivers?
Keith

 

[richard12511]

I must be missing something, but I don't understand how this situation is an active vs passive thing. OP mentions that if he had passive speakers that were damaged, he could easily purchase another set of speakers to listen to while his speakers were being repaired, and then sell them later. How is that any different from the situation here? What keeps him from buying another set of cheap active speakers to tide him over while his speakers are being prepared? Am I missing something? There are many cheap active speakers going all the way down to $90 with fairly great performance one could substitute for the KEFs while you wait.

That said, I do kinda agree with the complaint of actives in the more general sense. If the electronics fail, you have to lose both your amp and your speakers while you wait for repair. This can be really aggravating for actives with unreliable electronics. Subwoofers from the early 2000s with cheap class D amps come to mind, as I had a couple of those fail. I've also had a one of my JBL 708p speakers speakers fail due to faulty electronics(luckily it fixed itself after a day of rest ). The 708p problems are well known and a common complaint of that speaker. To counter this, good actives from reliable brands are often harder to damage than passive speakers, as you can't simply damage them by turning the volume up too loud. They're also often built of sturdier finishes like truck bed liner or aluminum.

To me, this just seems like a case of really bad customer service/logistics. 7 months to get a driver repaired is a really long time(too long imo). One good thing I guess about going through a dealer(at least a great one) is that they'll often hook you up with a loaner pair while your speakers are getting repaired.

 

[kelesh]

Yes.

Sad. If they keep this up, the next generation will be unable to tie their own shoes without calling in "a professional".

 

[sigbergaudio]

Sad. If they keep this up, the next generation will be unable to tie their own shoes without calling in "a professional".

I guess. We also don't burn down our houses due to electric fires very often, so there's that. But jokes aside, I agree the regulations are a bit over board.

 

[jhaider]

The drivers are aluminium, not that fragile, a cloth grill protects drivers?
Keith

Again, in the real world - look at any secondhand site. You’ll see a plethora of KEF speakers with damaged woofer cones. Aluminum dents easily. So super fragile cones plus being naked - just really dumb.

Cloth helps, yes, partially because it hides temptation. Grilles with some structure, or wire mesh (see, e.g. Neumann 80/120/150, TAD) don’t detract from appearance (in Neumann’s case IMO the woofer grilles are a design high point) work just fine. Again, look at the measurements of any Neumann 2-way or TAD speaker and tell me the grilles kill the performance!

 

[617]

As others have pointed out, drivers can be damaged in a passive speaker, in fact they are more likely to be damaged since active speakers can have output limiters.

The most delicate and irreplaceable part of a speaker is the transducers. If you change a tweeter it's a whole new design. If they break and the manufacturer didn't buy extras, that's it.

I would feel far better about the long term usability of a pair of Genelecs than almost any passive speaker. Or a small producer like sigberg or d+d. One huge advantage of actives is that if the tweeter does break, and the original is unavailable, the designer would be able to supply a new dsp filter set along with the new tweeter. Not many passive speaker designers can send you a new tweeter and a new passive crossover.

I also agree speakers should have grilles, I think they can look really good and their impact on sound can be mitigated.

 

[richard12511]

No objections in this regard, certainly a totally active design will allow a reproduction quality unattainable with a passive design, simply for me the difference in audio quality is not worth the risk in a home audio context

I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are active speakers that are very reliable from studio brands like Genelec and Neumann that will last 30+ years, and they're even harder to damage than passive speakers since they can actively protect themselves from common sources of damage. How much longer do you really need them to last? And is a speaker that last 40 years but sounds worse for nearly your whole life really a better buy than a speaker that craps out after 30 years, but sounds better over those 30 years?

I could see it if your someone who only ever wants to buy a single pair of speakers in their life time and never purchase another pair ever again, but I would think most people on forums like these probably change gear every 10 years or so, though I could be wrong.

I guess the tough part is knowing which active speakers are built to last, and which have problems. The JBL 708p for example is notorious for failing electronics, which you wouldn't expect from a company like JBL, though they do sound amazing. My oldest set of still working speakers are actually active. They were purchased my freshman year of college, and still work just as well as they day I got them. The pair of more expensive passives I upgraded to a few years later bit the dust 8 or so years ago one night when I got a little too liberal with the volume .

 

[617]

The drivers are aluminium, not that fragile, a cloth grill protects drivers?
Keith

Many metal cone drivers are scarcely thicker than tin foil, and the shaping process could make them somewhat more brittle. Additionally, KEF uses decorative anodized or painted coloration which might scratch off.

No idea how fragile the KEF drivers are, but all drivers are somewhat fragile and that's why I think they should all be covered. The fanciest scans peak Be tweeters have a mesh cover, no reason why a lf or mid transducer can't also have a covering like accuton.

 

[richard12511]

I could conceivably buy a pair of 2nd hand speakers, use them whilst KEF/other company is taking 7 months to do repairs, and then sell them once my primary speakers are returned

What keeps you from doing the same thing with a set of cheap actives? If anything, there are more cheap actives than there are cheap passives.

 

[Danaxus]

What keeps you from doing the same thing with a set of cheap actives? If anything, there are more cheap actives than there are cheap passives.

I guess it really depends on your own local market. What I personally would do, if I knew I had to wait half a year+ for repairs, is buy a pair of 2nd hand speakers. I know I could sell them for more-or-less what I buy them for, so it's like a free loan until my good pair are returned. Active speakers just aren't that common on 2nd hand sites here, whereas passives are everywhere, but ymmv. I suppose if you're from somewhere that's got cheap Genelecs popping up daily, it would be a different story. Still however, there are other considerations. If your actives are hooked up with hdmi to arc, then your replacement actives would need to fit into your setup somehow. If, like me, you have floor-standers, then you may have to cough up for a pair of stands and get bookshelves.

Ultimately you're right - actives can be found and you can make it work. It's not quite as straight forward and switching in a pair of passives however.

 

[restorer-john]

Two times damaged. Damaged in transport or otherwise DOA parts? This sucks, surely, but if it was transport damage KEF can only do so much.

That's the difference between companies committed to after sales service and worldwide spare parts distribution and those who are not.

The drivers are likely manufactured/delivered in bulk. No bulletproof packages for individual drivers to survive shipping and handling. The spare parts guy just makes up a bespoke package each time for whatever one, two or three drivers he is sending. And that shows in the rate of damaged spare parts arriving at the service/repair centre.

I've dealt with that before in both furniture (spare part panels/glass etc) and HiFi spare parts. The best packaging of HiFi spare parts was Sony- everything had a box. Speaker drivers had custom boxes with amazing interior foam mouldings, that could withstand significant abuse. No one size fits all or drivers thrown in a box full of foam peanuts. I had two tweeter diaphragms sent from B&W in the UK- they unpacked a bulk box of about 20, left 2 in the box and sent me that. They made it OK. Jamo on the other hand had individual designed spare part foam clamshells for each diaphram, sleeved. You could stand on the package and not damage it.

 

[kemmler3D]

Let’s be real. They’re asking for these kinds of issues due to the piss poor design choice of naked and especially fragile drivers. The issue isn’t active/passive it’s terrible industrial design.

It's really nice industrial design as long as you don't have kids in the house. It's not like kids randomly sneak into houses and poke out tweeters in the night.

 

[jhaider]

It's really nice industrial design as long as you don't have kids in the house.

Or pets. Or friends.

 

[Chrispy]

Seems if anything happens to any piece of gear and you don't have a backup/spare you're in the same predicament. LOL it'd take a lot of failures to run thru my backups/spares. If it were the one system I have my one pair of actives in I'd still be able to keep music playing in that room with spare gear. I do this with a lot of things, i.e. having spares/backup,, repair parts etc. I did take out one of my dad's two diy speakers with my 4 year old fist way back when, he just flipped the switch to mono (and most of his records at the time were mono anyways ).

 

[restorer-john]

Or pets. Or friends.

Gotta agree. Exotic and fragile/easily damaged speaker drivers are just irresponsible design and likely fall into the "not fit for purpose" classification IMO.

Sony put crystal alumina domes behind domed mesh screens.
Magnat put their plasma tweeter behind a screen.
Yamaha put berylium domes under mesh screens
Most sensible manufacturers put soft metal domes under at least half an acoustic 'lens' and/or a grille.

 

[kemmler3D]

Or pets. Or friends.

So far the cats haven't wrecked the speakers (although they've come close I admit) and my friends have been surprisingly gentle with them no matter how many cocktails I give them. But... granted, not many kids have come through yet, maybe it's just a matter of time.

I'm not disputing that the design is unnecessarily delicate, but I don't think it's a universal concern either. If you're worried about it, you won't buy them, it's a self-correcting problem.

 

[Ktacos]

One of my cats hates that I spend time with my speakers, like she knows that it occupies a good chunk of my time that could spent on her (as if she doesn't get all the attention in the world already). She is scary smart, she knows exactly where the drivers are and targets them. Pretty much have to take her out for a walk at the point.

One day I'll get some genelecs again lol.

 

[MattHooper]

That’s a bummer of a story. Sorry, OP.

I’ve been lucky I guess with my channel stuff. I haven’t ever needed any of my many passive speakers repaired. Nor any of my electronics (the exception of a blown fuse on one of my tube amps). (but when it comes to my Home Theatre equipment….OMG! Different story)

And now that somebody mentions it, I realize I have seen quite a number of photos showing up on various audio sites of damaged KEF drivers. Though I’d think much much of those do simply to the current popularity of KEF speakers. I wouldn’t fault them for choosing a delicate driver material. Drivers are delicate, and they’re not supposed to be touched anyway.

 

[samysound]

Let’s be real. They’re asking for these kinds of issues due to the piss poor design choice of naked and especially fragile drivers. The issue isn’t active/passive it’s terrible industrial design.

Amen! Foolish design choice with no option for driver covers. I was close to purchasing a pair of ls60 but this is the main issue that held me back

 

[jhaider]

I'm not disputing that the design is unnecessarily delicate, but I don't think it's a universal concern either. If you're worried about it, you won't buy them, it's a self-correcting problem.

That’s one way of looking at it. The way I see it, the ****** industrial design is an insult to the superb engineering team Mark Dodd has assembled. KEF’s acoustic engineering is on an elite level, easily in the top rank not only of home speakers but of all speakers.

KEF speakers from the current team, from a sound quality perspective, are first rate. But their design people are compromising that work and basically making their speakers disposable with this naked driver fetish. And for zero practical reason, given that companies such as TAD and Neumann, as I mentioned before, can offer superb objective and subjective performance and still maintain a layer of abstraction between the wobbly bits and the music. I guess at least there’s KEFs CI stuff, though they haven’t really modernized their ceiling line for immersive yet.