I am and I'm not in about equal proportion. Back in '76 when they were designed, they were high-fidelity nearfield voice monitors for broadcast use in very small spaces -there wasn't anything off the shelf that met the corporation requirements. If there was & it was affordable, they wouldn't have developed them. If you use them as a general purpose speaker in a wide variety of settings, and / or on a wide variety of programme material, then they're characterful as a result, since they were never meant to be used that way. That usually means some will like how they sound when used like that & some don't. You only have to look at some of the junk that get rave reviews in magazines, blogs & the like to see how how that comes into play. Especially if the 'reviewer' goes into it with expectations (or is told what to hear 😉 ).
It was. Which to a point says it all about some of the contemporary journalists. But I suppose taste is taste. Some like what they do, even out of the design context (& in fairness, even then the midband was / is good relative to some of the dross that was available on the commercial market in the mid-late '70s); fair enough if it works for them.
It did. Then some rationality kicked in for a decade or so, and now it seems to have gone mad again. Go figure.
Hype, nostalgia and to a point herd instinct I suspect.
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That simply is because of the highly opiniated Hifi press with its flock of followers, lacking all basic loudspeaker design knowledge. It has nothing to do with facts, real specs or design targets, but everything with what would nowadays be called "influencership". Add a fair dose of nostalgia to the cocktail and there ya go. It is the very reason over the years I developed a certain allergy for MC, JA and other influencers, posing for technicians. Basically antiques peddlers in a dying trade.
The speakers pictured here sound like “phat” LS3/5A’s. Audax HD13B25 5” Bextrene woofer with SB Acoustics 29mm tweeter. Enclosure is a back-loaded horn tuned to 60Hz. 30 liters.
They have the buttery romantic Bextrene euphonics, with of course a very nice high end, but the bass horn generates the equivalent surface area of a 10” woofer and the sound stage is huge. WAY better bass than the LS3/5A and 10dB more dynamic range.
If you want a beefed-up LS3/5A with decent
bass while retaining a very musical euphonic sound, this is a great way to go. The bass horn also adds some romance to the sound.
This was biamped with DSP, which yielded great phase response, cured some irregularities in the midbass and a sharp 55Hz cutoff ensured the 5” driver didn’t have to deal with bass below the tuning frequency which would have eaten up all its Xmax and yielded no benefit. They generate nice SPL with very little cone excursion.
They have the buttery romantic Bextrene euphonics, with of course a very nice high end, but the bass horn generates the equivalent surface area of a 10” woofer and the sound stage is huge. WAY better bass than the LS3/5A and 10dB more dynamic range.
If you want a beefed-up LS3/5A with decent
bass while retaining a very musical euphonic sound, this is a great way to go. The bass horn also adds some romance to the sound.
This was biamped with DSP, which yielded great phase response, cured some irregularities in the midbass and a sharp 55Hz cutoff ensured the 5” driver didn’t have to deal with bass below the tuning frequency which would have eaten up all its Xmax and yielded no benefit. They generate nice SPL with very little cone excursion.
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1975 was the punch card era. Personal computers were a decade after the LS3/5A release, two decades before common use. Likewise was the bulk of 'audiophool' press save Stereophile and Absolute Sound.
FWIW my first experience with them was decades ago at an acquaintance dealer's residence. Driven by SAE and a Linn table spinning Proprius vinyl they created a coherent soundscape with proportional placement that contemporaries like the Dynaco A35s, Larger Advents and ESS AMT1s in my circle never hinted existed.
I would not want to be in their place to make decisions in order to sustain the business model, but I very much appreciate the opportunity to
check a free review of a loudspeaker along with whatever measurements they perform.
Lojzek, that is quite a valid point. But we have still to look past the inevitable 80-100Hz hump of JA's measurements. Thank heaven ARTA has a baffle size correcting tool for NF measurements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cizek
Found pictures showing 4 different woofers. This one was one of th eprettiest boxes, a KEF B200 & the classic Peerless tweeter.
Serious filter on the tweeter.
dave
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I have managed to make mine sound decent without throwing tons of money at it. You have to ignore all the marketing BS and look at it as a simple belt drive turntable, with a lot of flaws in it's early years of production.
jeff
An 8 inch wouldn't fit. Rather a 6.5 inch coated paper unit resembling the B-200. Most probably from when made in Italy. The original American made KA-1 had an untreated paper cone with a large flat dustcap.
Btw, look at some posts back, where I showed that de original BBC never had such a enormous hump.
It's only the Roger variant that shows such extreme.
Putting everything within context, looking at the original frequency response and the original BBC makes sense.
The Roger variant doesn't make sense, also sounds bloody awful.
Oh yes! Now that is a 'manly' filter.
I like it. If you're going to go OTT, no point in holding back. 😉
You can get LS3/5As to play louder, obviously with better bass, with better dynamics and power handling if you subwoofer them, however there is a penalty, they lose some magic in the mids. My advice is play vocals, choral arrangements, string quartets, Firesign Theatre, opera, and you’ll be a happy camper.
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When we did that (with a HP on the LS3/5a)we found the opposite. Midrange improvement was the largest gain. Perhaps since it filtered out at least some of the box reasonances that muck it up.
dave
The composition / mix of mids to bass energy in a box or satellite subwoofer arrangement is an art.
Or better said you get used to a sound and a radical change (adding sub) changes completely the sound.
A bit too much bass and the mids get "drowned" by it.
While listening to Mike Oldfields "Exposed" Disc 2 on a 2.1 system the mids have to remain prominent (guitar music).
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...ription-subwoofer-gallery.207217/post-7494416
In my setup with 8cm fullrange I had to put the small driver a bit away from the back wall, too.
The 3 / 5 a with more cone surface can be more far away from back wall when used with a subwoofer.