Rogers LS3/5a (BBC) Speaker Review

[Tangband]

This is a review, listening tests and detailed measurements of a vintage Rogers L3/5a monitor implementation licensed from BBC with the same name. It is on kind load from a member. New, it costs US $4895 a pair.
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From the outside, there is nothing to distinguish this speaker from cheap bookshelves sold when it was manufactured. Back panel reveals no secrets either:
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Owner kindly gave permission to leave the serial number on the picture for those of you who want to trace its lineage. Owner says it was manufactured between 1980 and 1987.

Searching for measurements, there are a few but are either old and crude, or have issues (e.g. stereophile measurements with incorrect bass response). So this test may be the first true measurement of this speaker.

Rogers LS3/5a Speaker Measurement
The grill can be removed but it wasn't easy to pull off so I tested with it on. From some reading I have done, speaker was designed with it being on to get rid of edge diffraction and such. Let's see the anechoic measurement:
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Well, that is no good. Bass response is clearly wrong. It is uneven and low in level. We also have a pronounced resonance which one manufacturers of these clones claimed was due to age. I have seen the same in just about every measurement of this speaker so that doesn't sound right. It seems like "bog standard" woofer resonance due to it being used outside of its linear range:

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Early window and predicted in-room response predictably don't look nice:

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Owner didn't want me to stress the speaker and asked for distortion at 76 and 86 instead of my normal 86/96 dBSPL @ 1 meter:
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The peak in distortion around 1.5 KHz is another reason to have crossed over the woofer earlier although it is unknown if the tweeter could handle that better.

Directivity is quite rough in horizontal axis:
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Vertically you better point the tweeter at your ear:
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Waterfall shows clear resonance:
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Step response shows an odd discontinuity in the woofer response which may be due to that resonance:
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Edit: forgot the impedance plot:

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Rogers LS3/5a Speaker Listening Test and EQ
Due to low bass output, overall sensitivity is quite low requiring cranking up the amplifier volume. Once there, my first female track didn't sound awful but was rather bright and somewhat rough. Filling in the bass hole completed the tonal range for vocals proving efficacy of our measurement. I then corrected a few other issues and fine tuned to get this:
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Not only was the speaker much more balanced sounding, it also had more clarity. Those resonances were sure hiding detail and ambiance in the music. That last notch filter at 5 kHz was barely audible but the rest were much needed.

Once there, I was impressed with the volume this little speaker could produce and the large halo of sound it created in may admittedly very large space. I could imagine listening to two of them would have been more satisfying.

Conclusions
Much of what I read from companies who have cloned the BBC LS3/5a is around replicating components. Measurements seem to be an afterthought. That is the wrong way to do this as I could care less what components are used. If you want to replicate the old speaker, replicate its audible frequency response. That, is what we listen to, not what the parts do.

Now, it is possible the old BBC had the problems we see here in which case, why reproduce a faulty product and charge so much for it? It makes no sense to me. Get a proper speaker if your goal is enjoyment of music. The history is not going to pay the bills there.

I can't recommend the Rogers LS3/5a speaker/monitor. If you have it, a bit of filtering does it a lot of good, bringing the sound into hi-fi category.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

This is a flawed review in many ways .

1. The elevated frequency response between 1-2 kHz is psycoacoustically right - we need this to fill up the stereo system faults. A flat response here , and the soundresult will sound shut in, in a normal stereosetup.
You are testing only one speaker so your review is only valid for listening to one speaker without a backwall in a very large room.

2. You are testing this speaker without a close backwall, it needs a wall behind it as one can see in the frequency response.

 

[Tom C]

Many thanks to the owner who sent this in. This speaker is an ancient myth that needs busting.
Thank you to Amir for an excellent quality review. The criticisms are not valid. With today’s competition, there is not anything anyone can do to make this worth $5,000. That is highway robbery. For that money, you can get excellence.

 

[amirm]

1. The elevated frequency response between 1-2 kHz is psycoacoustically right - we need this to fill up the stereo system faults.

No you don't because whoever mixed your music has the same hole in their system. I tested that with my EQ and it absolutely sounds better without it. Also, there is no way that is intentional in this speaker.

 

[DudleyDuoflush]

My dad worked in the BBC studios in the 80s. They were giving some speakers away and he had the choice between a pair of these and the Studio 1A. The Studio 1A were far, far better for music so he chose those.

 

[amirm]

2. You are testing this speaker without a close backwall, it needs a wall behind it as one can see in the frequency response.

Speakers are used in many locations. No way you can rely on any specific placement and distance from a wall.

 

[Karl-Heinz Fink]

Obviously, I would look at the speakers with a different eye. I can tell you what I see:

Bottom end: the Q of the speaker is pretty high, so that's the bump at 100 Hz. I'm sure this was chosen to compensate for the fact that nothing was happening at the lower end. It uses the trick of your brain reconstructing the fundamentals from the harmonics. Or maybe they simply did not get more BL into the woofer (there was no Neodymium around). The cabinet is clearly too small for the woofer.

Midband 1: If you mount a driver that measures flat on a large baffle into a cabinet, you will get a 6dB loss of bottom end level, beginning in the midband region - it's often called the baffle step. It's up to the designer to decide if he wants to compensate for the baffle step (for placing the speaker in free space) or leave it in for a speaker that goes to a wall or is used in nearfield (you don't "see" the baffle step in close nearfield) or something in between. On LS3/5, it is obvious that they left the baffle step in, so the speaker must go on a wall or be used in the near field.

Midband 2: The peak at 1.2kHz might partly come from the baffle step, but in this case, it's clearly more of a problem with the KEF woofer. It's the typical first-mode problem due to the "wrong" termination of the cone with the surround. Don't forget this driver was made before PP without help from modern FEA/BEA analysis programs. Later, KEF made an improved version with a high-damping surround (Rubber/ PVC compound) that measured better but had a lot of hysteresis and sounded awful. In the end, the old driver was used again. Unfortunately, this peak is inconsistent and changes from woofer to woofer.....a well-known effect of KEF B110. The distortion in the mid band goes together with this problem.

So, from a designer's point of view, I can see the idea of the monitor when it was made.
I like it from the historical point of view, but I never understood why so many companies started to introduce it again.....but that's another story.

 

[Karl-Heinz Fink]

Speakers are used in many locations. No way you can rely on any specific placement and distance from a wall.

But in this case, the speaker was designed that way. It makes no sense to create a speaker for Freefield if you use it close to a wall.
So BBC did it the way they needed the speakers to work.
What Hifi people made out of it is a different story.

 

[DavidMcRoy]

The first and last times I ever heard the LS3/5A were in the late 1970s and early 80s. They were the Rogers version being sold in North American hifi shops. Their frequency response peculiarities were pretty well documented at the time, as I recall. The 150Hz bass bump was said to have been intentional so that such a tiny speaker would have a "semblance of bass response" when used without a subwoofer. (Subs were pretty thin on the ground back then, certainly so in a remote production van.) BTW, could that dip just above that region be for desk bounce amelioration? An elevated top end might have been welcome in a production truck with noisy generators and multiple 2" and 1" VTRs buzzing along.

My impression back then was that they seemed like a useful tool for their intended application, with reasonable tradeoffs having been chosen. Taking off my broadcast audio production hat and reacting as a consumer, I thought they might be viewed as a parlor trick speaker, managing to sound as nice as they did given that pretty much every other very small speaker around was pretty cheap and junky and with no aspirations toward high fidelity, just cheapness and compactness. And the levels they could muster without undue distortion impressed me...given their size. They were "the first serious mini monitor" in my world at least. The U.S. video production vans I worked in were always fitted with rugged but smallish Electro-Voicees or JBLs, and I couldn't imagine something that dainty and delicate would last long in rough and tumble remote broadcast use. So, a very nice little bookshelf speaker for background listening for the middle aged pipe smoker, my then early twentysomething self thought.

With a sub and some EQ, I'll bet they could still impress. But that price tag. Yikes. If I were outfitting a production van today, it would be stuffed with JBL LSR305s or 305P MKIIs. The Adam Audio T5Vs sound better, but their snowflake volume controls, hanging onto a circuit board for dear life with a few spots of solder and no additional mechanical support are a non-starter.

 

[martin900]

The LS3/5A is another of those speakers that can sound absolutely amazing despite the age and measuring bad.
Also not sure what the price is on about, a TRUE 15-ohm version commands around 1000-1500 euro depending on who built them (Spendor, Rogers, Chartwell and the likes).

Even the newest, Falcon Gold Badge costs about €3000 new.

 

[Purité Audio]

Whats the deal with British hifi culture? We all know what I mean. @Purité Audio whats with all retro outfits recreating the early 70s.

At least retro American hifi encompasses big horns and altec coaxes, why would you want to relive the bexetrine woofer transcriptor skeleton era.

Honestly I don’t know why but the majority of British audiophiles are stuck in a 70’s time warp, they use the same equipment, even listen to the same music the rest are stuck in the 1950’s.
Keith

 

[Galliardist]

Honestly I don’t know why but the majority of British audiophiles are stuck in a 70’s time warp, they use the same equipment, even listen to the same music the rest are stuck in the 1950’s.
Keith

I may be making progress since I moved half way round the world - no British components in my system any more... but yesterday I was listening to Byzantium, and that's about as cult 1970s as you can get.

 

[amirm]

But in this case, the speaker was designed that way. It makes no sense to create a speaker for Freefield if you use it close to a wall.

Was it really? If so, they would have had to spec exact dimensions of said rooms, distance from the wall, etc. Do such specs exist? If not, I say it is justification after a fact. Today, in those exact situations we use flat response speakers, ergo those assumptions were not sound.

 

[Sokel]

Every time I had a listen to the likes of it I was thinking that their popularity is maybe one of the reasons people didn't listen more classical back then.

It's really not good through them (I know the same goes to a lot of small speakers but these are worst)

Thanks Amir!

 

[DSJR]

I'm just going to repeat that this is NOT a domestic speaker and never was intended to be. The mesh over the already 'lively' T27 tweeter further lifts the extreme hf I was told by a design team member (that's why it's there) and the upper mid peak got a LOT worse in the 80's due to to KEF having to change the driver surround until a complete redesign using a slightly different KEF driver was announced. There were two resonances in the B110 driver, one at 1.5kHz or so and another at 5kHz, both magnified by the mid 80's.

The BBC designed for THEMSELVES rather than the industry at large and it was used initially at least as a distortion and hiss monitor in OB vans and a good number found their way as general continuity noise boxes into broadcast studios due to their size. To the very best of my knowledge, it was NEVER intended or used for proper quality monitoring, merely to check for faults. The BBC always had the best 'centre line' ones and these were fussed over rather more and had XLR sockets on the back.

I have the HiFi Choice reviews as evidence, one below and others from earlier. This is from 1985 -

 

[tw99]

I'm going to predict that this thread is used as an example on every subjectivist forum of why ASR is wrong about everything

@GXAlan they are well matched because that's part of the original BBC design spec. You're supposed to be able to blow up an LS3/5a in your BBC van and replace it with any other one you can find, and they will sound identical.

 

[Galliardist]

Was it really? If so, they would have had to spec exact dimensions of said rooms, distance from the wall, etc. Do such specs exist? If not, I say it is justification after a fact. Today, in those exact situations we use flat response speakers, ergo those assumptions were not sound.

I guess we could find the measurements for the Outside Broadcast vans that these speakers were first used in... but the main purpose of a review of these today is to warn about the issues that a 21st century music listener is going to find, not to replicate the conditions and usage they were first meant for.

The one advantage here as noted was tight pair matching: something that a few of those 3/5a licensees might have learnt from when making their own models.

 

[DSJR]

I'm not sure if I have ever heard "genuine" LS3/5As. But I have had a pair of their slightly more advanced relatives, the Rogers JR149s, for decades, and they were (coupled with subs) my primary speakers for many years. I wouldn't be surprised if they measure more or less like these. If you don't feed them deep bass, they will handle quite a bit of power, and I always thought their imaging was very impressive. I still use them as nearfields in my home office. Nostalgia has its place.

All that said, there is no way in hell I would pay thousands of dollars for this level of performance.

JR`149's were like 3/5A's but without the bass hump and calibration , so even more squeak and tinsel in tone (i sold many for small bookshelf use). I suspect the crossover caps really will have gone off on these now.

 

[Willem]

I don't think this is a quite appropriate review, as it ignores historical context, but admittedly I am a historian. The design is the product of one of the first if not the first serious modern and properly documented scientific research on loudspeaker design because the BBC was dissatisfied by what was commercially available. Of course, research has moved on, but that is no reason to dismiss the quality of the design. Similarly, this actual speaker is also many decades old. What we should realize is that this model was designed for a very specific purpose. That purpose implied near field listening in confined spaces, and for that the LS3/5a was quite a breakthrough. It also implied that speakers should be as near identical to each other as was practically possible. Manufacturers were therefore held to very close tolerances, but that proved to be difficult, particularly as the woofers tended to go out of spec after a while. So the speaker was redesigned in the late 1980s, with a new woofer surround, and a new crossover circuit. This is the later 11 Ohm version that measures far better than the original 15 Ohm version tested here. Oddly enough it is that 15 Ohm version that audiophools drool about and pay crazy prices for even if probably not a single surviving one still meets its original specification.
I bought an 11 Ohm pair in 1990, because I often spent longer periods on sabbaticals abroad and obviously could not take my Quad ESL 57s with me, and to be used as desktop speakers when at home. At the time I thought these were just about the best one could get for that use case, and I have always enjoyed using them. One thing for which they stood out was driver integration at near field distances.
I think spending big money on them now is just crazy (particularly for the early 15 Ohm version), but that is not to deny that they were an important design at the time. I similarly think that the modern imitations (because that is what they are) are an obscene waste of money, and quoting those prices is irrelevant (they are not even the same speakers). Personally, I have replaced them with the Harbeth P3ESRs. Those follow the design tradition, but unlike many imitations they were designed with modern technology (and in a larger/deeper box) and much much better performance. You may like them or not, but they are a completely different speaker.
Many here like car analogies. Well, judging the handling of a 1950s Porsche by e.g. the standards of a current Ferrari does not make sense. So let us enjoy that technology has moved on, but also let us not look down on the design giants of the past.
See here for the 1976 BBC report on the design: https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1976-29.pdf
And here for some history: http://www.g4dcv.co.uk/ls35a/history.html

 

[DSJR]

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

Well. . . that's a disappointment.

I never did

Remember that in the UK, miniature domestic boxes were first the Goodmans Maxim, which the BBC tested and sadly found too variable and then the slightly taller Celestion Ditton 15, which had plenty of ABR assisted bass but sounded incredibly coloured by the mid 70's when I got going. The 3/5A was a dinky little box in comparison and very much a novelty. Not much of any profit in making them either as every one needed individual attention if it was to meet spec and some batched needed severe attention too. Unlike other makers, if a driver failed, Rogers would simply send out a replacement with absolutely no guarantee it would exactly replace when came out, where other makers would ask for the speaker back to re-test and adjust as necessary (first hand experience here!).

 

[Rosenbloom]

I remember after Rogers was sold to a Chinese firm, they made another replica (replica of replica?). The price was about USD 1000-1500 in Hong Kong. I always think they were selling history and stories, not sound.