KEF LS50 disappointment :(

[Vladimir]

Are they under £1,000?

The heels?

Yes more expensive floorstanders can be better depending on your room.

You need the same space to get standmounts working well as you do with floorstanders. Unless we are considering these.

 

[shkumar4963]

@skhumar

I'd rather get a pair of B&W 805s. Unless you insist on a pair of KEF 107/2. *biggrin*

@matthewpiano

Reduce the bass tone controls on a floorstander and you get the same effect. 

Vlad: I respect your opinion and will audition them soon. Will report how I find them compared to LS50.

 

[shkumar4963]

I agree, some floorstanders are terrible, cabinets vibrating, boomy bass etc. I don't think I would touch any under £1,000. Just because drivers are in a larger cabinet, which due to physics causes more problems than smaller cabinets, will not necessarly make them better. More drivers more crossovers, more difficult to integrate. There maybe more bass from the larger cabinet but in some rooms that can cause problems.

Dude...?

Checkout the measurements from the R500s and R700s. They are immensely better than the standmount. Those darn laws of physics mess with audiophile small form factor fetish as usual.?

Just look at these photos. Why would you want the LS50 over this?

 

Comparing LS50 with R500 or R700 is not fair. They are not same price.

But hiw do you compare LS50 with Q500. They are similar price. Would you prefer Q500 over LS50 and by how much? Would the sound quality performance difference enough to compensate for the large size for you?

 

[BigH]

Are they under £1,000?

The heels?

Yes more expensive floorstanders can be better depending on your room.

You need the same space to get standmounts working well as you do with floorstanders. Unless we are considering these.

Lovely.

Seriously though some floorstanders do need more space around them, if in your room you have to have the speakers within 1 foot of the front wall then some floorstanders will not work.

 

[matthewpiano]

There are some things, such as imaging, that small speakers do better than floorstanders.

Why do you consider small speakers to be better at imaging?

Less phase distortion due to there being less cone breakup (see my post above) and the smaller narrower enclosures suffer less from edge diffraction than larger wider enclosures.

This, and personal experience.

 

[BigH]

I agree, some floorstanders are terrible, cabinets vibrating, boomy bass etc. I don't think I would touch any under £1,000. Just because drivers are in a larger cabinet, which due to physics causes more problems than smaller cabinets, will not necessarly make them better. More drivers more crossovers, more difficult to integrate. There maybe more bass from the larger cabinet but in some rooms that can cause problems.

Dude...

Checkout the measurements from the R500s and R700s. They are immensely better than the standmount. Those darn laws of physics mess with audiophile small form factor fetish as usual.

Just look at these photos. Why would you want the LS50 over this?

Comparing LS50 with R500 or R700 is not fair. They are not same price.

But hiw do you compare LS50 with Q500. They are similar price. Would you prefer Q500 over LS50 and by how much? Would the sound quality performance difference enough to compensate for the large size for you?

I think Tannoy do the same drivers, one standmount and the other floorstander but the floorstander is almost twice the price. Precision 6.1 and 6.2.

 

[Vladimir]

Comparing LS50 with R500 or R700 is not fair. They are not same price.

But hiw do you compare LS50 with Q500. They are similar price. Would you prefer Q500 over LS50 and by how much? Would the sound quality performance difference enough to compensate for the large size for you?

As my main speakers I would choose the Q500. The LS50 make a huge sacrifice in SPL for my taste. I would enjoy them as background music speakers while I work, entertain guests, read or browse music. I somehow really enjoy to have small speakers to browse music. However, when I want the music to take me through high fidelity reproduction, SPL or bust. When you visit a live music event you don't care for the violin timbre and spatial information. SPL is what keeps you at the edge of your seat.

The problem when comparing standmounts and floorstanders is that people think in the terms of resolution, not scale.

Smaller speakers don't have inherently more resolution than florostanders. They don't have more details, more imaging. It's an illusion from the lack of lower frequency energy harmonics to mask the midrange and high frequency harmonics. Small speakers have a tonal shift toward the midrange where we are more sensitive and more musical information pops up in our mind, because it is accented. But its actually less overal musical information presented to us and is less natural than an equivalent driver technology floorstander.

Driver technology is what dictates the resolution of the loudspeaker system. The box and the number of drivers dictate scale. Diffractions, standing waves and reflections is where these two meet, however those are not inherently speaker box size or number of drivers related. So the LS50 is indeed comparable to the R700 and the Blade. The later cost more because you get more. If you compare the LS50 to Cerwin-Vega, yes it looses on SPL but the CV drivers suck balls for resolution. Apples to oranges, however.

Also, large array speakers don't have inherently more complex crossovers than standmounts. Proof, the 'motherboard' inside the Rogers LS3/5a. Also complex crossover does not inherently mean bad sound or sound quality loss. A lot of generalization have been just thrown out there.

 

[shkumar4963]

QUITE FROM VLAD:

Smaller speakers don't have inherently more resolution than florostanders. They don't have more details, more imaging. It's an illusion from the lack of lower frequency energy harmonics to mask the midrange and high frequency harmonics. Small speakers have a tonal shift toward the midrange where we are more sensitive and more musical information pops up in our mind, because it is accented. But its actually less overal musical information presented to us and is less natural than an equivalent driver technology floorstander.?

[/quote]

Some of the reasons other than the masking effect that you mentioned COULD be:

1. It is much more expensive to brace a larger cabone than a smaller box. So the large box started singing and ruining the clarity or the speaker. The way to solve it would be a much more expensive bracing system or die cast magnesium or aluminum box. And that will make the speakers a lot more expensive and again should not be comore with LS50.

2. Multiple passive cross overs do create problems in sonic quality at cross over points. I am not sure if passive cross overs can be designed without such problem as you say in BBC Roger speakers, why they have not been adopted by other speaker manufacturers.

3. Masking effect that you mentioned is a real effect. Thye do ruin clarity specially if the bix also sings and in a FS they can not be independently controlled. With that in mind would ls50 with cheap sub ($500 from SVS) work better. It will still be cheaper than R500.

4. Localization of sound source as I mentioned in another comment.

I can not listen to Q500 so will have to take your words for that.

Let me know your thoughts if you have heard ls50 with a cheap sub. What did you think about the sound quality in actual listening.

 

[shkumar4963]

This damn smartphone...

 

[Vladimir]

Something has to give. If the floorstanders cost as much as the standmount, the cabinets will be most likely less well braced, or less attention given to solving diffractions, standing waves etc. The designers had their hands tied by budget margins. However, same goes for the standmount. Designers have their hands tied by the laws of physics.

So what to do when you have a great standmount that only has the unavoidable physical compromises made and everything else is briliant. Do you add a sub? Well thats cheating! Take the LS50 money and the subwoofer money (of equal driver and box quality, mind you) and see if you can buy a pair of floorstanders that will be well braced and well sorted for diffractions and with same driver technology.

KEF LS50 (£720) + KEF R400B (£900) + Norstone Stylum 3 (£120) = £1740

KEF R700 = £1500

 

[steve_1979]

Something has to give. If the floorstanders cost as much as the standmount, the cabinets will be most likely less well braced

There's much more to it than just bracing.

Large speaker enclosures are very expensive to manufacture and for any floorstander costing under a couple of grand a very large portion of that money will be spent on the enclosure meaning that there's less left over for the drivers and other stuff. Also they're big and heavy which adds to any transportation costs involved because big heavy speakers need bigger and much stronger boxes that will protect the speaker without disintegrating when a courier drops them off the back of a lorry. This all adds to the cost.

Standmounts are able to give the same quality (albeit with less bass and SPL) for a lower price due to factors like those mentioned above.

 

[Vladimir]

There's more to it than just bracing.

When you think about it, covenanter, shkumar, david, esra, matthew and cno also paid for that hostess.

 

[BigH]

because active speakers generally have much lower distortion than passives, there are other factors to consider as well. Correct me if I'm wrong but ls50s with 10w would produce 85db at 2m? The KH120 only use 50w amps.

A pair of LS50's will produce about 94 dbs at 2 metres with 10 watts input.

http://myhometheater.homestead.com/splcalculator.html

You are also wrong about active speakers generally having much lower distortion than passives.

I'd be happy to explain why in a separate thread. Discussing it here would just totally derail this thread.

Please start a new thread.. please liberal with quoting reputed technical papers so that I can learn background details.

Here is some bedtime reading: http://www.pteacoustics.com/linked/the%20case%20for%20powered%20speakers.pdf

Also have a look for PMC video on youtube about active and passive speakers, they make both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A4UMh1AOHw

 

[BigH]

There's more to it than just bracing.

When you think about it, covenanter, shkumar, david, esra, matthew and cno also paid for that hostess.

Is she included in the price, if so I can see some attractions to them.

 

[Vladimir]

Is she included in the price, if so I can see some attractions to them.

Nope. KEF wants to pimp you the Blades and nothing else.

 

[Freddy58]

When you think about it, covenanter, shkumar, david, esra, matthew and cno also paid for that hostess.

Me too *yes3*

I used to have Kef Concorde iv's, and I loved 'em. Not exactly floorstanders, they required small stands, but were quite large, probably larger volume(cc) than many of todays floorstanders. Wonderful sense of scale and went deep. As some of you may know (if you'd read my earlier posts), I went for the R300's. Whilst they don't have that same sense of scale, they give a very good impression of it. I did have the option of going for the R700's, but they would have been overpowering (visually) in my room. Horses for courses..

 

[Frank Harvey]

So while small speakers can not compete with larger ones in sound quality...

Yes they can.

And then what about Stereophile ranking them as Class A speakers

They get what they're about, and appreciate what they do.

 

[Frank Harvey]

Reduce the bass tone controls on a floorstander and you get the same effect.

You get a similar effect, but it's not quite the same.

 

[Vladimir]

Me too *yes3*

Figures. You tone control hedonists like to spend on looks. *acute*

 

[Vladimir]

Reduce the bass tone controls on a floorstander and you get the same effect.

You get a similar effect, but it's not quite the same.

Yup.

 

[Freddy58]

Me too *yes3*

Figures. You tone control hedonists like to spend on looks. *acute*

*biggrin*

 

[Frank Harvey]

Why do you consider small speakers to be better at imaging?

Far less cabinet coloration from a well built standmount when compared to an equivalently priced floorstander. Anyone with an amplifier that has tone controls, slowly turn the bass up - you'll notice the mid and high frequencies start to lose definition ans become muted, that is the sort of effect too much bass has on the other drivers in a big floorstander - unless the floorstander has had enough budget spent on it to counteract these sorts of issues. One example of that is the Blades - nicely balanced bass, and plenty of it, but never affecting the other frequencies.

I personally would take the LS50s over the R500s. Yes, that's a personal preference, not a technical one, and certainly not one based on SPL. I like what they do, and for me, they have more in common with the Reference range than the R Series.

 

[Frank Harvey]

Less phase distortion due to there being less cone breakup (see my post above) and the smaller narrower enclosures suffer less from edge diffraction than larger wider enclosures.

A bit like Blades

 

[Frank Harvey]

The problem when comparing standmounts and floorstanders is that people think in the terms of resolution, not scale.

Because the resolution can be the same. Many people don't have the freedom to replicate the scale of a real live gig in their living room.

To replicate a gig, you just need several big, loud, thumpy subs and some naff quality horn speakers, and you're done.

 

[shkumar4963]

@Vlad

You make good argument and good sense.

I am told that we are not very sensitive to sspeaker quality and distortion below 50 hz. In fact I auditioned exoensive and cheap sub with b&w 865s2 and could not hear any difference. In fact the dealer himself said that other than volume it is hard to tell the difference when cross over frequency is at 59 hz or lower.

I suspect a cross over frequency of 80 hz will be same.

Have you been able to hear the difference in sound quality between lower price $500 and hugh quality $2400 sub at reasonable music volumes?