Rogers LS3/5a (BBC) Speaker Review

[ROOSKIE]

I got a killer deal on the L52 as well at a time when shipping was pretty pricey to return the unit. But I couldn't adjust it to get the right balance. When I brought the highest frequencies down, it brought down the moderate-high frequencies down too low.

it always lost to the JBL XPL90 in A/B comparisons. I do have several classic JBLs and had the JBL 4319 with the L-pads at the time as well.
+1 on L-pads, especially if they have detents to allow you to return them to neutral.

Sure, the L-pad in the L52 is a tilt control.
It will tilt/pivot the responce down from around the crossover point toward the very high highs.
However it doesn't take much of a turn to get it the way I wanted. A big turn of the dial will make a really
excessive adjustment.
Also to get a 'perfect' measured match the dial on both is not in exactly the same spot.
I used 10,000hrz as the reference and that is where the effect is strongest on the L52. I looked at my notes, I actually set them so 10k was .9db down.
That adjustment was
-0.9db @10k
-0.7db @9k
-0.7db @8k
-0.5db @7k
-0.4db @6k
-0.2db @5k
0 effect @4k and below
Above 10k it stays around -0.7db to -0.8db
So PEQ might be a better fit for say only adjusting @10k and above or any other narrow band/high q.

I suppose if latency is an issue then a 31band graphic EQ would be a good fit where tone controls are overly broad.

In any case my post is a bit off topic though in terms of ability to adjust tonality I suppose every speaker review should have some info so folks get inspired to dig into that part of the game.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Yes. But we need measurements of that speaker as well. Obviously.

I had to check because the names are so similar. ;-)

 

[3125b]

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.

Where are you going to find those 4000-10000 people (depending on the configuration)?
Well maybe there's a secondary market with some serious discounts ...

Whoever is making and selling these speakers for 4900$ though is a genius, just one pair a month would suffice to live off the margin.

 

[ROOSKIE]

View attachment 328449
Fun thing is, in room they're way flatter than some other "flat" speakers.
The more I listen to different speakers the more I think that most of the people (and me ofc) actually like room-engaged bass response.
We just fool ourselves thinking that we prefer "flat" response because it's not flat in room

Not a lot can be really gleaned from in room steady states, they just are not granular enough, yet off the cuff both of those curves look like something I would not want in the farfield. Awefull really. Looks like a lot of extra energy in the upper mids and lower trebble. Be interesting to hear those famously pricey speakers. I have never heard a Harbeth.

Yah, a lot of folks use 'neutral' and 'flat' interchangeably in hifi and it makes it confusing I feel.

According to the best objective research we have, speakers should essentially measure 'Flat' +/-0db in an anechoic chamber or the Klipple Near Field Scanner(not anywhere else really).
The off axis response in the chamber should also be smooth and match the on axis well. A monopole design will lose energy off axis as the frequency response climbs and as you move further off axis but this loss should be smooth and the amount varies with the design's engineered dispersion character.

Said speaker will result in a 'neutral' in room sound. It will not measure flat in room at the listening position because in room it is made up of both the direct and indirect sound(room reflections) You can see how this will and should yield an in room tilt with dropping measured energy from bass to high treble since larger/deeper frequencies reflect more off the walls and higher ones don't(plus they also actually lose energy to air friction). This drop while tilted down, ideally will still be smooth and you could draw a fairly straight tilted line through it.

The amount it tilts and yet still remains subjectively+objectively 'neutral' over a wide range of playback material depends on the listening distance, the speakers dispersion character, the playback SPL, the room shape, the room size/volume, the listening position in relationship to boundaries, room furnishings, and personal tastes which vary.
Generally, a great measuring speaker can have a measured in room tilt or a drop with an even cadence of between -0.3db to -1.3db per octave from 200hrz-20,000hrz. Below 200hrz most folks prefer some extra bass even up to 10db extra but at least a few db. Playback level will deeply affect this as our hearing is not linear and the bass region is extremely nonlinear subjectively vs SPL to humans.
A 10db increase in the mids sounds about twice as loud to people
but only a 5-6db average increase in the bass sounds about twice as loud.
Plus some bass frequencies are not even audible at all until 70db or more and they have even more extreme non-linearity in perceived SPL.

 

[Karl-Heinz Fink]

Whoever is making and selling these speakers for 4900$ though is a genius, just one pair a month would suffice to live off the margin.

No...it's not. The manufacturer gets the smallest margin. The distribution is expensive and eats most of the money.

 

[Hart]

This speaker is easily outclassed by other designs costing exponentially less. I wonder if people buy it because they could not afford it when they were younger? I restored a 71 Porsche 911T, it's not particularly fast and does not do anything as well as a modern car but I did covet it when I was younger. I think there are a lot of things like that. People have fond memories of things from their earlier days.

 

[NiagaraPete]

Wow. That speaker must have a strong reputation and lineage to command such a price.

I had the Chartwell version for about 30 years. I paid 300CDN for the pair and was given a 3rd which I used as a centre now and again. in hind sight I really don't know why I kept them so long. I wasn't using them.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Maybe it was optimized to work together with the tube amplifier? Taking into account the impedance curve, the amplitude response of the speaker/amp lineup would be more linear. So the losses in the tube amp transformer might help to smoothen that 1.1kH peak (Impedance has a dip at 1.1kHz) and slightly boost the 500-900Hz region (high impedance)

It was optimised to work in Outside Broadcast trucks which were relatively small (often wall mounted on brackets) and acoustically dead. They could be driven down dodgy roads and across grassland etc. In that context, the LS3/5A worked well.

There were absolutely no tube amplifiers involved. As others have said, the Quad 303 was used (as explained by @Willem . But the majority were driven by a small mono-block power amplifier known as an H|H am8/12 (AM8/12 is a BBC designation, like LS3/5A). There's a thread about them here: S.O.S on the AM8/12 I wonder how they measure!

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I never owned a set of LS3/5As. A friend bought a pair in the early 80s and spent mid 300s for them which was broadly a similar price to a 2 or 3-way stand mount at the time. This was not a stupid price at all then, but it did look a bit like you didn't get much box for your money! When the pair under test were made, the price was rising, but this may not have been the best time to buy due to QC issues.

 

[ROOSKIE]

No...it's not. The manufacturer gets the smallest margin. The distribution is expensive and eats most of the money.

Whoever is making and selling these speakers for 4900$ though is a genius, just one pair a month would suffice to live off the margin.

We end up staring at the whole money makes the world go around thing.

Absolutely not advocating for this design @ this price but ultimately hopefully some incomes are created for a few people and the folks who make money on these speakers in various ways are coming to your restaurant and paying you to do their taxes, ect. Hopefully they are not just laughing all the way to the bank and counting their numbers for a lifetime of hoarding the 99%.
Luxury items are frustrating but in a lot of cases a way to make money.
I sell a few products and have to provide a unique or bespoke or rootsy or 'Etsy' or heritage or other type of 'beautiful' or interesting experience for my buyers. I just can't compete on the ultimate price unless my side hustle is being a bank robber or a trust funder.
That Chinese manufacturer's version I linked here earlier is $600, I see you can spend over $6k. What to do?

@Karl-Heinz Fink hoping to hear your EPOS ES14n someday. Beautiful design you made, very striking to my eye. I used to work for USA midwest based Audio King. The passive speaker margin there was massive back in the 90's(50-75% between cost and suggested retail on most speakers) and with full commissioned sales practices. Place still went out of business due to the insane costs of running showrooms and paying staff and a period of decline before the new hifi resurgence. Money was eaten for sure.

 

[slavedata]

The proof of these speakers is shown by how many people have bought a set at some point and chosen to keep them ever since. I have a pair of early Spendor LS3/5A in my study against the wall in a bookcase. They work well to reproduce small scale music realistically. What one can expect from a speaker designed for monitoring radio output in small scale control rooms. You may not like how they measure but in a suitable setting they are very easy to live with.

 

[SMJ]

I may find it difficult to be impartial here, but it might be useful to put the cards on the table first. I worked in the BBC for 35 years as a sound mixer, sound editor etc. A large part of my life was in Outside Broadcasts trucks (small vans really - Commer FC Van ) using the supplied 3/5a as my daily speaker. The ear to speaker distance was about 3 feet max and the speakers were normally mounted with their backs towards the rear doors of the vehicle with the mixer/operator facing the rear - there was no sound deadening, only a simple cloth curtain to pull across the doors at the back.

The design brief of the LS 3/5 was to match where possible the mid-range sound of the BBC's larger 'studio' speakers such as the LS 5/5 and later LS 5/8 and the larger Outside Broadcast speaker in use, the LS 3/7. As DSJR has pointed out the amplification was either Quad 50D, Quad 303 or the HH mono amps. It's important to note that the equipment was left in the van in all conditions, never removed, no matter what the temperature or humidity was doing and travelled on the wall mounts in position (never buy a secondhand BBC 3/5a). There is some thought that the decision to use a plastic (Bextrene) for the B110 cone was the alleviate some of the problems with humidity and temperature found in a paper cone based driver. Because swapping out a spare from stock was a possibility, keeping minimum variation in production samples was essential as it was impractical to rely on 'matched pairs' coming from stores when out on the road. For that reason, production tolerance was part of the BBC Spec for the 3rd party companies.

Its primary role was to monitor speech or dialogue based audio intended for FM reproduction (15kHz bandwidth) with a restricted dynamic range of about 20dB - most speech if manually mixed was only 10dB or so. I was told informally that the reason for the bass 'bump' was to make it easier to identify mic plosives, bumps & wind noise rather than give an illusion of extended low frequencies on music. So yes, they were 'posh' Auratones.

The bextrene and surround will have aged with time - there is a known problem with cone sag, the BBC used to have a maintenance schedule to rotate the drivers through 180º every few years. The dampening dope applied to the cone also ages - can change colour to white too. Who knows was the caps in the crossover measure now.

In the case of the reviewed 3/5a, there is no way it is still going to be near it's original designed spec, so it has to be reviewed like buying a secondhand car - not even a restomod. It also very likely that the original design spec does not tally with today's requirements or tastes too.

What @amirm is doing is reviewing a 40 year old speaker and seeing how it stacks up against modern competition - a bit like comparing a late 1970's GP car against today's Red Bull of Max Verstappen. Both have four wheels and an engine and go around a race track. You would still have to pay a significant amount of money for Jody Scheckter's Ferrari 312T even though the Red Bull RB19 will be significantly quicker.

I'm sure the original members of the BBC Loudspeaker Design committee would be having a chuckle at this discussion though what they did at the time was very serious and ground breaking. I was on the distribution list for the minutes of the committee and some of the minutiae and detail was bewildering at times. The only design tools they had was simulation, scale modelling and listening tests and a slide rule or two. The general quality and consistency of off the shelf loudspeakers at the time was pretty dire. The commercial sales of the 3/5a potential was never a thought - I don't think.

I do have a set of 3/5a kept original and not used and a modified pair with the crossovers removed and the T27 tweeters replaced by SonAudax HD12d25, actively driven via a MiniDSP and Musical Fidelity power amps (inspiration from the Siegfried Linkwitz 1977 Wireless World system) the bottom end is provided by an original Rogers LSB1 subwoofer. I have no intention of changing things as it suits my very small living space.

 

[Karl-Heinz Fink]

@Karl-Heinz Fink hoping to hear your EPOS ES14n someday. Beautiful design you made, very striking to my eye. I used to work for USA midwest based Audio King. The passive speaker margin there was massive back in the 90's(50-75% between cost and suggested retail on most speakers) and with full commissioned sales practices. Place still went out of business due to the insane costs of running showrooms and paying staff and a period of decline before the new hifi resurgence. Money was eaten for sure.

Still trying to find a good distributor for EPOS in the US.....not so easy right now, as distributors or dealers are not investing money. Yeah, the distribution cost is still high. I'm not saying too high; I just wanted to point out that the money is not in our pockets.

 

[SuicideSquid]

That is the wrong way to do this as I could care less what components are used.

Not to be horribly pedantic but I think you mean "couldn't care less".

I can see why a speaker that measures like this might have stood out in the 1970s - compared to a modern monitor the response isn't great, but it's pretty flat relative to many speakers of the time. For almost $5k today, though, it's a total waste of money.

 

[anmpr1]

To get an historical idea--from 1978. Also attaching Arny Nudell's (Infinity Systems) reply about his QLS speaker, that references the LS3/5A.

 

[ROOSKIE]

The proof of these speakers is shown by how many people have bought a set at some point and chosen to keep them ever since.

Hmmm, I am taking you slightly out of context but consider...

my father layed on the couch every evening after work for years in agony because his knee was so bad. After 5 years of this he finally got surgery and the world famous surgeon told him it was amoung the worse he'd ever seen in someone concious. (not to mention he is still with his 2nd wife, that is an even more painful story)
Friend drove a car with a 100 issues for years, needed a magic trick to get it start, regular jump starts, constant breaking down. Total POS that was so poorly engineered but he loves xbrand of cars. Couldn't part with. Finally bough another model from the same brand this year to replace it. Shrug.

Folks stick with all sorts of stuff and situations. Not sure what it is proof of to do so.

 

[NHL99]

December '23 issue, Winning!

 

[HarmonicTHD]

December '23 issue, Winning!
View attachment 328560

Wonderful. And as opposed to 4 to 5 stars (whatever that means), thanks to @amirm we have some actual facts and don’t have to rely on marketing outlets disguised as hifi magazines.

 

[DSJR]

December '23 issue, Winning!
View attachment 328560

That's a pretty motley selection I must say.

If the ASR and Erin tests are to be believed, you can do FAR better than these for a grand the pair or less. Thing is, said speakers so well loved here can't be got from dealers, so one needs to trust to Klippel and dive in

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Still trying to find a good distributor for EPOS in the US.....not so easy right now, as distributors or dealers are not investing money. Yeah, the distribution cost is still high. I'm not saying too high; I just wanted to point out that the money is not in our pockets.

Back in the day (like '70's - 80's) the going dealer cut was a gross margin of 40%, i.e. on an item with a retail price of $100, the dealer would pay $60 wholesale. So in other terms, the markup over wholesale would be $40/$60 = 2/3. You don't have to mention any specifics, but as an economist I'm curious about whether this has changed over the years.