Rogers LS3/5a (BBC) Speaker Review

[Pecrobet]

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/

I want to personally thank you for all the in-depth analysis you provide on audio components and devices. It must be very time consuming to perform the tests, measurements and analysis. In addition, you offer an objective review based of facts.

Nowadays, it's difficult to find trusted sources for information who haven't been influenced by advertising and/or brands. Even some of the most credible audio sources have been tainted by advertising dollars.

The ASR Community should be grateful for your dedication and hard work!

Robert

 

[thewas]

The FR isn’t very neutral, but we have to recognize that this was 51 years ago. To put things in perspective, 1972 is when Formula 1 decided that seat belts should be mandatory…

Sure, although on the other hand in those times some Hifi loudspeakers existed which measure even with today's standards astonishingly good:

(measurement with and without the grilles)

Those measurements are from a Braun L-710 which was released in 1969 and you can get in the country where they were sold still for less than 300 bucks a pair and eat those later unfortunately hyped "first white van loudspeakers?" for breakfast (I have owned and heard several pairs of both). Still I have a big respect and am thankful for the research that the BBC did back in those days, it is not their fault that most audiophools didn't understood what they were and made this hype around of them.

 

[Videopac]

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

It was 1700 dutch gulden (aprox 765 euros) a pair at the end of the '80. BTW: this is a fairly old one. Later ones have an impedance of 11 ohm.

 

[Pecrobet]

Sure, although on the other hand in those times some Hifi loudspeakers existed which measure even with today's standards astonishingly good:

(measurement with and without the grilles)

Those measurements are from a Braun L-710 which was released in 1969 and you can get in the country where they were sold still for less than 300 bucks a pair and eat those later unfortunately hyped "first white van loudspeakers?" for breakfast (I have owned and heard several pairs of both). Still I have a big respect and am thankful for the research that the BBC did back in those days, it is not their fault that most audiophools didn't understood what they were and made this hype around of them.

I totally agree with you about hard work BBC did back then. They spent hundreds of hours on research and development on LS3/5a speakers. There work started new way of thinking for designing and building small two-way bookshelf speakers.

 

[GXAlan]

Those measurements are from a Braun L-710 which was released in 1969

But until we see the L-710 on a Klippel NFS, we really don’t know the real performance, right?

 

[Thomas_A]

Sure, although on the other hand in those times some Hifi loudspeakers existed which measure even with today's standards astonishingly good:

(measurement with and without the grilles)

Those measurements are from a Braun L-710 which was released in 1969 and you can get in the country where they were sold still for less than 300 bucks a pair and eat those later unfortunately hyped "first white van loudspeakers?" for breakfast (I have owned and heard several pairs of both). Still I have a big respect and am thankful for the research that the BBC did back in those days, it is not their fault that most audiophools didn't understood what they were and made this hype around of them.

There were other deisgns in the end of 1970s that would be rather good today and are sought after in the second hand marker. Below the Audio Pro A4-14.

 

[thewas]

But until we see the L-710 on a Klippel NFS, we really don’t know the real performance, right?

Why shouldn't we, the measurements I posted are also anechoic/windowed.

 

[theREALdotnet]

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

Excellent recap, thank you! I might like to add that the new crossover, designed by Rogers in the early ‘90s for the 11 ohm version, has no electrolytic capacitors. The 11 ohm version became a necessary redesign, because KEF couldn’t keep the SP1003 version of their B110 mid-woofer in spec, so the new design settled around the SP1228.

Here’s a photo of the crossover from a 1992 Rogers that I repaired:

 

[theREALdotnet]

I understand that, but in time almost all L-Pads become problematic. Some better speakers have a rotary switch which cuts and boosts incrementally, like 0.5dB.

The 11ohm LS3/5a has solder bridges on the crossover:

 

[theREALdotnet]

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.

That’s an audio antique collector‘s price that only the 15 ohm version can achieve, simply because far fewer of them were made than of the 11 ohm version and folks in Asia go crazy over them. A pair of modern LS3/5a, BBC certified and from an accredited maker, can be had for 1800 Euros.

 

[DSJR]

The Quad 303 is a 1968 class AB design with bipolar transistors, so it's output impendance is relative high and damping factor relative low to modern amps. This is the electric schematic i got from a repair I did long ago:

It will enchange the bass a bit, not like tube or class A amps, but neutral sounding is certainly not the right description for this little amp. It does sound well altough, and the 15R nominal impendance of the LS3/5A will reduce that bass boost a bit.

edit: btw: I just found this: https://rubli.net/classic_amps/files/amps/quad/33and303/test.htm

As an aside, the now recently defunct Hi Fi World magazine (another with definite favourite products and reproduction styles) used to regard a 'damping factor' of 40 as high This used to amuse me as I came into 'higher end' HiFi in 1974 where the Crown D series was favoured (we were one of three only dealers selling these to domestic consumers) with 'DF' of 400+ in bass and midrange

My own Quad 303 does 'sound' absolutely charming though, but ruthlessly neutral it most definitely ain't!

The little HH amps often used are sought after and prices are high now, but these are what should be obtained, restored and tested with the 3/5A really.

I'd also suggest the 3/5 siblings that aren't 3/5A's (Spendor S3/5 and Stirling interpretations for example) don't 'sound' anything like the originals to me and I feel they're trading on the reputation despite improving on it. At least Harbeth called their vastly superior alternative the P3 and not a P3/5. I had a direct comparison of the Harbeth LS3/5A (finely tuned KEF-Kit in reality as all of them were by this time in the early 90's) with the P3 in original form and the subjective difference in imaging between and behind the speakers was clearly audible, the Harbeth product offering a tangible feeling of a 'room the performers were playing and singing in' on a suitable recording where the BBC effort smeared it rather (I know the sense of imaging and soundstage is recreated in one's head, but some speakers help this aspect more than others.

---

Is Dynaudio imported into the US? What we need is a full blown evaluation of the BM5A the BBC now seem to use in general continuity use (I think they use Genelecs for higher quality programme monitoring as many now do judging by pictures I've seen, but could be wrong here).

 

[ocinn]

I purchased a pair of these at a flea market for $150/pr in 2013 or so. All original and genuine.

I was elated and then the second I plugged them in, I had already started writing the Craigslist listing for resale.

I understand the appeal of these as “B” monitors (like the NS10), but it is wild to me people used these as main references.

Another one bites the dust.

Pic of mine:

 

[Waxx]

Is Dynaudio imported into the US? What we need is a full blown evaluation of the BM5A the BBC now seem to use in general continuity use (I think they use Genelecs for higher quality programme monitoring as many now do judging by pictures I've seen, but could be wrong here).

Vintageking (a big US pro audio dealer catering studio's) does sell many of them, but the BM5A is out of production i thought and replaced by the BM6A. They are very high rated in studio's for decades altough, especially the BM5A as nearfield active monitor. BBC bought tons of them in 2003- 2004 i thought, to replace their standard monitors at that time. Genelec is a more recent aquisition, and used for live on air concerts and so, while the BM5A is the go to radio monitor in studio and in the remote trucks, much like the LS3/5 (remote vans) and the LS5/8 and LS5/9 (their studio speakers) was in the 1970's and 1980's to the early 1990's. From the late 1990's on they started to use commercial brands like Dynaudio and others as Kef could not supply drivers anymore to keep producing them. From 2004 they decided to standardise to the Dynaudio speakers.

 

[AudioSceptic]

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.

December '23 issue, Winning!
View attachment 328560

Comparing products with a 6:1 price range? How useful is that?

 

[AudioSceptic]

The Rogers (nor the other commercial variants) is not the same as the BBC design. I heared both original BBC builds and a pair of Rogers from the 1980's side by side and the difference in bass is quiet big. But they were never hifi speakers, never ment to be. They were designed to be used in BBC trucks for remote tv and radioshows and were ment to replicate voice very well in a very small space, not music.

The original had the original Kef B110-A6362 woofer, the later versions, made by Rogers had the Kef B110 SP1003 woofer, wich is a very different driver (that they still use), the orignal cone was made of a rudimentary version of polypropylene, the second version of doped bextrene.

The original tweeter was a Kef T27 (A6340) which was a rebranded Seas H086, Rogers (and later BBC Models) used the KEF derrivation of that H086 tweeter but with a mylar dome in stead of the original coated fabric of the H086 that they called the T27 SP1032. Funny enough, Seas later called the variations of that H086 the T27 tweeter, after the Kef models that they OEM build... That H086 (1") tweeter and it's bigger (1.4") variation, the H087 are still one of my favorite tweeters ever and were used in dozens of speakers of that era, including the famous, Dynaco A25, many B&O speakers of that time and the Goodman Mezzo SL

BBC used the original models of drivers that were OEM build, altough KEF had discontinued them for general use and called the monitor the BBC LS3/5 (without the A). Rogers, Harbeth and Falcon commercialised those speakers as the LS3/5A with the newer Kef drivers, and some of them were used at the BBC in the later 70's and early 1980's also.

Btw, i got this info from a former BBC Engineer who helped design the original (as young starting engineer), that later moved to Belgium to work in the infamous Philips speaker factory in Dendermonde. He is the man that learned me most about loudspeakers and their design.

"infamous Philips speaker factory in Dendermonde". Please explain. I haven't heard about that before.

 

[AudioSceptic]

I've seen those measurements though mine are the early "regular" version so I'm not sure if they measure exactly the same. However those "SE" version measurements seem to track fairly well what I hear from my S3/5s.

As to what some audiophiles see in these speakers: Speaking only of the version I own....and I tend to listen to them pulled well out in to the room, and about 6 or so feet away from me, the first thing is that I always find the surprisingly satisfying and large sounding for their size. Every time. That canny boost does help out, and on my speakers I find them to have a beautifully balanced sound. I don't notice any "look at me" frequencies and it seems to make mixes feel..well.."balanced."
They are just amazing in terms of disappearing and imaging, a real magic show. Yet the important thing for me is that they do not produce to my ears a lightweight "see through" airy-fairy presentation; what's there has a sort of density and texture. Like you could cut synth pads with a knife, or vocalists have a sense of density and body, even if they are not as ultra vividly detailed as on more modern speakers. They seem "soft" at just the right places to flatter the human voice, and so I find them among the most "human" sounding speaker I've heard, and hold up very well when I close my eyes and compare the sound of well recorded vocals through the Spendors vs real voices in my home. (I have to add: helped even more in those respects when they are being powered by my CJ tube amps).

And then they have just a bit of forward in the highs which doesn't sharpen the sound, but seems to add a nice shimmer and sparkle for instruments that benefit from that - e.g. the harmonics of an acoustic guitar picking, drum cymbals. So if I'm playing a track with a female vocal with accompanyment, the singer will sound right "there" fleshed out, soft, organic without the sibilance being emphasized or artificial, and yet cymbals, floating synth bits, guitar parts, will pop with a nice bit of sparkle and vividness. It makes for a sort of luxurious sonic quality, to my ears.

Though I actually like playing any music through the Spendor S3/5s, including rock and major symphonic music, after a couple of weeks...yeah I do get a little weary of the bass bump leaving it's signature, and yes I do start to crave the full range sound I'm used to. So out they go. Wonderful place to visit, though, as they do things none of my other speakers do.


I've never heard the original LS3/5a, and it seems they measure more wonky. However when it comes to these "what in the world does any audiophile see in this? Aren't they just being duped?"...I wonder if it sometimes comes down to what one person is looking for vs another. I can imagine an ASR member listening to the Spendors and noting some frequency deviations, lack of bass etc and just writing them off, because that person isn't paying attention to, or as interested in, certain characteristics of sound that I may be interested in and appreciate in the design. And perhaps something similar is happening with the original LS3/5as: that some audiophiles ARE using them, in their own set up, in the way that hits their particular buttons.

I suspect that I would like these (I still have my BCIs, bought in 1976), but how do they do with stuff like the Alabama 3 <

>? As for the LS3/5a, isn't the issue the current price/value rather than the SQ in absolute terms?

 

[sergeauckland]

My own Quad 303 does 'sound' absolutely charming though, but ruthlessly neutral it most definitely ain't!

Apologies for the thread drift, but I wonder why you say this, as there's nothing in the 303's specification or measurements that would account for it provided it's used within its specification. That means a minimum load of 4 ohms. If using loudspeakers where the impedance drops below that, then the amp is being used outside its design specification.

S.

 

[Waxx]

"infamous Philips speaker factory in Dendermonde". Please explain. I haven't heard about that before.

Philips had a speaker factory from 1970 to 2007 in Dendermonde (Hoogeveld quarter), when it was sold with the Leuven Amp factory (where Bruno Putseys from Hypex and Purifi a.o. worked before) to D&M Holding (Denon, Marantz) who sold it again to Value Enhancement (an investment funds) in 2016 as an independent company called Premium Audio Solutions.

Its an OEM car audio builder now for brands like Loewe, B&O en B&W and car companies like the Volkswagen group (Audi, Volkswagen, Porche, Cupra, Seat, Skoda), PSA Peugeot-Citroën, General Motors, Jaguar-Landrover (Geely) and BMW. It's still an important OEM builder for car speakers, one of the bigger ones in Europe. Production is still partly in Dendermonde, altough they also got factories elsewhere, including China. You may not have heared of the company or the factory, but the chance is big you heared speakers from them.

Their website: https://www.premiumsoundsolutions.com/

 

[anmpr1]

As most understand, you have to really consider this little box in its own time. But it's like that for most things. C/D recently revived their 1998 era 0 to 150 to 0 mph test with a variety of cars. One of the moderns was a Kia 'hot hatch'. Selling for high, but not really high dollars. His quip: ...if the EV6 had been there in 1998, it would have beaten every stock vehicle we tested, including the Dodge Viper. Not bad for a car with zero cylinders.

Kia EV6 GT AWD at the 0-to-150-to-0-MPH Speed Test 2023

If we could send it back to the 1998 test, the EV6 GT would have beaten all the stock vehicles. Viper included.

www.caranddriver.com

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

Comparing products with a 6:1 price range? How useful is that?

Theory: The second row in the "stars" table is Value (for the money).
Practice: Value for Falcon LS3/5a is 4 stars (should be 1 star). In the first row (Sound) full 5 stars for the same speaker is very questionable, to say the least (should be 1 star).