Rogers LS3/5a (BBC) Speaker Review

[sam_adams]

These are mine.

Thanks for being brave enough to send them to @amirm for testing.

 

[GXAlan]

As noted in an earlier post, they are really good for chamber music and vocals. For performers like Sade, Frank Sinatra and Irma Thomas, you can really feel like you are right there, in a smoke filled club. You can feel the timbre of the vocals, and the performers fingers sliding on the strings of the stand up base. Wind instruments are great too.

I liked them more than two modern speakers from reputable brands, but I never got that “smoke filled club” effect that I read about. The Magnepan midrange magic is more impressive in my mind.

I didn’t love the sound, but part of the reason to send in these speakers is to “characterize them”. What if the magic vocals is actually the defect and dip?

We do see that the dip hits the core vocal frequencies and so called “box” region.

For those that LIKE the LS3/5a sound, I wonder what a modern speaker would sound like if you put in that dip?

 

[CleanSound]

I have heard Brits call these speakers "legendary," "ground breaking," "standard bearer" amongst other terms of accolade.

Well. . . that's a disappointment.

 

[sam_adams]

I wonder what a modern speaker would sound like if you put in that dip?

Since your example is forty years old, it's almost certain the various non-linearities of the original drivers and enclosure—the result of materials and methods of the time—that contribute to the unique sound signature, could be replicated—exactly—using drivers that are available today. Although, given the advances in DSP technology, one could probably get close. But would a replica be indistinguishable in a true double-blind test with the original?

 

[Dennis Murphy]

The old LS3 "BBC dip" I have heard of is far more dramatic than I would have ever thought.

`The infamous BBC Dip is much higher up--in the 2-3 kHz range. I'm not sure what the dip observed here is supposed to accomplish. the rationale behind a "BBC" dip is to reduce harshness from poorly recorded music in the region that humans are most sensitive to. Equalization would obviously be a better solution.

 

[Bridges]

Plastic Speaker Cone History

Mike Klasco explains the evolution of speaker cone materials, from paper to the first experiments in plastics and finally to Polypropylene (PP), which became the preferred resin sheet material for thermoformed speaker cones. The article also discusses recent trends in woven composite cone...

audioxpress.com

What about paper cones coated with liquid bextrene?

 

[GXAlan]

Thanks for being brave enough to send them to @amirm for testing.

The only brave part is packaging them so that they don’t get damaged in transit. The LS3/5a are like gold bullion or loose diamonds in the audiophile world. They are easily converted to cash with value based primarily on scarcity not actual performance/value.

I don’t love the sound of these, and I was worried that I got a dud or something. Looking at this measurement from the ‘net we can see the weird 100-1000hz dip in these measurements with the person doing the measurement thinking it was a problem with the room. If anything, my specimen has a lower 1 kHz peak.

Sometimes, you run into something like the Bose 901 which sounds way better than you would predict from the measurements and sometimes you run into this, which I think probably reflects the true LS3/5a sound but doesn’t gel with my preferences.

That said, both the Focal Vestia and JBL L52 Classic were jarring to my ears whereas these did not sound transparent and I knew I was listening to a recording but was happy to finish a song or album. The Vestia and L52 were in home trials where I took a big hit on shipping costs.

 

[Jimster480]

Quite a big price for not very impressive performance.

 

[sam_adams]

The LS3/5a are like gold bullion or loose diamonds in the audiophile world.

I know what you mean. I have been tempted to send these to @amirm, but . . .

 

[GXAlan]

But would a replica be indistinguishable in a true double-blind test with the original?

I don’t think you need to replicate everything. In fact, people like the Falcon Gold more than the Falcon Silver, when the Silver is the true original and Gold is the true prototype original.

That said, even among those who appreciate neutral speakers, there are those who also express a preference for the LS3/5a sound knowing that it’s not as neutral.

I am curious why that is. Does our brain fill in the vocal region with our preferences more? Is it all sighted bias? At least we now have the first full spin on a Klippel NFS.

 

[MacClintock]

Wow, extremely dissapointing for the hype and the price, shocking.

 

[Bridges]

`The infamous BBC Dip is much higher up--in the 2-3 kHz range. I'm not sure what the dip observed here is supposed to accomplish. the rationale behind a "BBC" dip is to reduce harshness from poorly recorded music in the region that humans are most sensitive to. Equalization would obviously be a better solution.

"Reducing harshness from poorly recorded music in the region that humans are most sensitive to." This is still very appreciated design goal for home hifi, if not for monitoring purposes, the Kef B110 driver was used for this reason in many great speakers like Kef ,IMF, Rogers, Harbeth and others. Most Rock records are over produced and contain lots of guitar distortion desired by artist and producers. For this reason I still use this type of British signature sounding speakers. On my more resolving monitor speakers, I can't listen to a whole album. The other solution is fill your music library with content labeled "well recorded albums" by audiophiles and used for demonstration at audio shows. Not my choice.

 

[restorer-john]

The Harbeth P3ESR response looks pretty similar. Clearly deliberate.

Stereophile Aug12 2010 review by JA:

Harbeth P3ESR loudspeaker

Everyone wants something different from a loudspeaker. Some people value midrange neutrality above all, while others will sacrifice some of that accuracy to get extended lows or a speaker that will play immensely loud with only a few watts of power. Some want stereo imaging that is sufficiently...

www.stereophile.com

 

[Dennis Murphy]

The Harbeth P3ESR response looks pretty similar. Clearly deliberate.

Stereophile Aug12 2010 review by JA:

Harbeth P3ESR loudspeaker

Everyone wants something different from a loudspeaker. Some people value midrange neutrality above all, while others will sacrifice some of that accuracy to get extended lows or a speaker that will play immensely loud with only a few watts of power. Some want stereo imaging that is sufficiently...

www.stereophile.com

View attachment 328427

Not really. That looks pretty darn good. The bass bump is an artifact of the near-field measuring technique that John uses. The actual response would be almost dead flat. So the only issue is the elevated upper frequencies, that I suspect a lot of people would prefer.

 

[restorer-john]

The actual response would be almost dead flat.

A good friend of mine has a pair, which we listened to when he first got them a year or two ago. They are not remotely flat and have virtually no bottom end at all. What they do have is one-note.

I had to say nice things about them of course, but I was struggling to hear where the money went.

 

[Rja4000]

In the early 2000s, I bought a pair of used Rogers LS2 for around 100€.
Not too bad a speaker for the price, with some tone control.
I never tried this one, though.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

A good friend of mine has a pair, which we listened to when he first got them a year or two ago. They are not remotely flat and have virtually no bottom end at all. What they do have is one-note.

I had to say nice things about them of course, but I was struggling to hear where the money went.

My remarks weren't directed to your friend's speaker. I was just trying to point out that John's nearfield measurement spliced to a quasi-anechoic plot at around 200 Hz will always show a bass peak of 4 dB -6 dB if the actual response is flat. At some point, I think we all need to chip in $10 to buy John a Klippel machine that will put and end to what are very confusing frequency response plots.

 

[IAtaman]

These speakers were designed by the BBC to give them something to use as monitors to listen to production of live broadcasts in small sound booths or even remote production vans. They are intended for near-field listening and are designed to give producers some reasonable idea of the sound going out over the air, with an emphasis on intelligibility. Radio production is different from home hi-fi listening. I have a pair and I rather like them, for polite listening in my dining room. I paid $1,500 and they tend to sell for more. Listening to vocals and string quartets is quite nice. They are not rock speakers

Isn't base frequencies of vocals and most string instruments live in the muted 200Hz to 1KHz range?

 

[thewas]

Very interesting, thanks Amir!

I don't know how they measure, but I'll never part with my Spendor S3/5s, which I've had for 23 years or so. I absolutely love how they sound in my system.
I bought the S3/5s to use as L/R speakers in my original, modest, plasma-screen based home theater. Dialogue always sounded superbly natural and human, and they did such a great job of spreading the sound such that no center channel was needed. Even from off axis the sound didn't seem stuck in the speakers, but seemed to come from the TV image.

Now I just have them in the bedroom and sometimes put them in my main audio system for a while. I find them utterly addictive.

The Spendor S3/5 SE had been measured by Stereophile

https://www.stereophile.com/content/spendor-s35se-loudspeaker-measurements

and measure smoother than most "original" variants (but all have no real deep bass) which variate also quite:

BBC LS3/5a loudspeaker 1989 Measurements

Sidebar 2: 1989 Measurements I estimated the voltage sensitivity (using 1/3-octave pink noise centered on 1kHz) and measured the change of impedance with frequency, while the nearfield low-frequency response of each speaker was assessed with a sinewave sweep to get an idea of the true bass...

www.stereophile.com

BBC LS3/5a loudspeaker Harbeth Measurements

Sidebar 2: Harbeth Measurements The LS3/5a's impedance magnitude and phase are shown in fig.1. Dropping to 6 ohms only in the top treble octave, it shouldn't give the partnering amplifier any hernias. The sealed box is tuned to 76Hz, the impedance reaching 31.2 ohms at that frequency. There is a...

www.stereophile.com

BBC LS3/5a loudspeaker Stirling Measurements

Sidebar: Stirling Measurements

www.stereophile.com

Falcon "Gold Badge" LS3/5a loudspeaker Measurements

Measurements, from May 2021 (Vol.44 No.5)

www.stereophile.com

Falcon Acoustics LS3/5a loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

Gini Systems "LS3/5a" loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 2: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

A friend of mine used to have an even more expensive limited edition and I even had auctioned once a pair of the cheaper but same drivers using KEF 101, when listened with some typical "audiophile music" they didn't sound bad but wouldn't want to listen to them to music with bass content without subwoofer as the lower octave content is painfully missing to me.

 

[milosz]

Well, mister refined palette, I'll have the Pork Chop Sandwich and the Polish with everything on it from Jim's Original in Chicago.

Oh, by-the-way, @amirm, nice review of a classic design.

That food would go well with "Blues from Maxwell Street 1960 & 1965" Blues sounds pretty good on these speakers too. Again, not as a main system in a big room, but they do bring out certain aspects of the sound. Their imaging is quite good, too- something Amir doesn't evaluate.