fayeanddavid said:
Yes, and as mentioned elsewhere, looking froward to your initial thoughts and then when they are fully run in.
Should be very interesting..................
Well, this goes out to all those who think that store demo rooms sound way better than their own homes. Obviously, this may be the case sometimes, but in this case, yet again, a product stuns me with just how good it is. They've only had about an hour playing time, and its late-ish, so I've not been driving them very loud, just trying a couple of soft bits and bobs out - I can't wait to get these cranked up a bit and shifting some air. For the record (and for those who followed the convo over on the other channel, I've set them up using just the outer bungs (as I did with my old R300's).
The ability of the HF unit to be delicate is pretty amazing. There's the smallest details going on, so delicate that you wouldn't think that the diaphragm could move enough to produce it. Very smooth with it too, no harshness, and no hint of veiling. And these are yet to run in.
Bass is a little harder to comment on as I've not been able to turn them up much, but Portishead's Dummy was surprising. With this type of music there's so much texture in the samples that many speakers tend to smother it. I've heard distortion on Roads that I don't think I've heard before - either that or it brings so much more detail to the fore. Basslines are extremely easy to follow, and once again, string detail stands out on some tracks that you never knew existed.
With Angus & Julia Stone's album Down The Way, the LS50's have the ability to hang their voices right in front of you in a way that defies their price point - I thought the R300's were good at it, but the LS50's do it in a more open way, which makes it all the more convincing.
I'm now listening to Track & Field's album In Search Of, and like Portishead's Dummy, they are surprising me with their layers of instruments and samples, and all the while the speakers aren't attracting any attention to themselves whatsoever. Their ability to throw the sound free of the cabinet and send it towards you is nothing short of stunning. The R300's could do this, but again, because the cabinet of the LS50 isn't adding anything, they're essentially invisible.
You'd expect an album like Ocean Colour Scene's Moseley Shoals to make the speaker draw more attention to itself as it isn't clean electronica, but no, business as usual. Bass guitar can be followed throughout a whole track as it is never obscured, and drum skins are more apparent than usual too. One thing I have found that high quality speakers do way better than others is to reproduce electric guitar distortion more accurately. That might sound stupid, but I find it is one tell tale sign of a loudspeaker if it just sounds like a distorted mess with electric guitars. That makes no sense, but I know what I mean! Maybe those that play guitar will know what I mean.
I'm really looking forward to these settling down and trying some real demanding music on them and seeing how they perform in a real world situation (i.e. not a store). Even out of the box these sound pretty damn good, and the scary thing is, most of the above comparisons have been against the R300's - themselves one of the best sub £1,000 speakers! I'm dying to try a few movies out on them too...
Since the R series emerged, we've felt that they've been KEF's finest range of loudspeakers since the introduction of the current Series 2 Reference range. They could even be described as a gamechanger - not only for KEF, but also for the speaker industry too.
This really is Reference performance at a budget price.
Anyway, worth seeking out.
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