KEF LS50 wireless

http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2016/10/future-fi-now-kefs-ls50-wireless-active-loudspeaker/

Now let's talk.

 

All you LS50 owners please feel free to dump your passives for cheap .

 

wow.

 

Double wow,

Damned nice idea!

 

I might just take you up on that, but shipping to South Africa would probably be extreme.

 

I'm in the US. I'll take them for really really cheap.

 

Lawdy.

 

I mean it might not trounce dedicated DAC/AMP kits... but all it has to do is trounce the kits which cost 700$ or less.

 

I wonder how the market will take it? That's a pretty penny for what in uneducated eyes is probably a glorified bluetooth speaker...I can see a lot of consumers going "Oh, cool!" but not actually reaching for their wallets. Well-heeled folks who can drop two grand pretty easily for a secondary system, sure. Enthusiasts...I don't know. Enthusiasts want to play, and there's precious little here to play with, unless you want to buy audiophool CAT5 cables. It's like the nanny state of audio....I still like stick shift myself .

 

I think that's why speakers like these and say the Devialet Phantom are between a rock and a hard place. 2K is a lot to swallow if you just want a nice listening experience. Also the LS50 has effectively a 4" woofer which won't thwack as a 10" would. And that's something you can't doctor away with a subwoofer.

I could see them as a post-audiophile system when you know what you're getting, but don't really have the time or the passion to dive back into the whole amp/dac/cable maelstrom. But then again if you're an ex-audiophile, then it should be no problem to replicate almost the same with a pair of good studio actives and a quality streamer.

But they do look sexy, no doubt about it.

 

depending on the dsp highpass capability, if you cross the ls50 at about 100hz to a pair of subwoofers, you actually cross at what Barefoot or Amphion with their base one25 and those have all the bass they need.

 

I seem to recall reading on some other forums that the crossover in the LS50 was considered one of the weak points. If they've gone the bi-amp route and done some magic with the dsp end of things, hmm... fascinating...

 

Haven't heard that before, but found this: http://www.stereo.net.au/forums/topic/98114-kef-ls50-crossover-upgrade/. Makes sense as they had to save costs somewhere.

 

Seems like it's expected at $2500 now. Price is still TBC. Announcement should be today.

 

I like the idea of the amps in the speakers, I'm less excited by the DSP and the digital. If one could bypass that for "serious listening", I'd be intrigued.

 

Very interesting to see how well they can execute this, but there are a lot of plus sides for a dedicated amp and careful DSP. One of the speakers I use DSP for bass, and effectively lets me use lesser powered, more delicate amps to still get realisttic sound levels.

At the very least, good sounding optimized self powered LS50s would stop the idiots from bragging about their Bose systems. No wait, that wont stop.

 

I recently upgraded my Linn speaker rig ... and it moved from external power amps (with a dedicated channel per driver) with active crossovers (analog still, but active), to a setup in which the stands for the speakers contain the power-supplies, digital DSP cross-overs, DACs, FPGA filters and then driver-matched, per-driver power amplification (their "Exakt" system).

The difference was startling.

Since I've been toying with the idea of adding LS50s to my "pretty office" rig, the new wireless version is,then, particularly interesting. If it drives down the used prices of the regular LS50* I'll just grab a pair of those and run them off the Ragnarok. And if not, I'll just buy the new ones.

(*I'm funny about the price on these. At the typical $1000-1100 I see them listed for used, by the time I get done with fees and shipping, and factor in concerns about what condition they're really in and how they've been driven, they're not much of a deal at all and I just go back to putting off buying a new pair. Especially where I've seen them on sale new for $1,299 occasionally.)

 

I sold two pairs of LS50s last year for half what they retail now locally, think you missed out!

I very much like the idea of KEF going active on these, it takes the guess work out of the amplifiers and everybody today wants to use bluetooth or some wireless link to play back their music. Afaik KEF used pretty decent caps in the crossover so I doubt it is really much of a weak spot as much as the tiny driver is and getting subs to play nice was pretty tricky. Ended up swapping the LS50s for KEF floorstanders and haven't looked back.