There is a lot of great equipment in high-end audio. A lot of the equipment is expensive, and we come to think of price as a pretty strong indicator of performance. I can’t tell you how often someone says “I listened to the X, and it was connected to the $10,000 thingamabob and $25,000 flamjazit…” to indicate that they used high quality associated equipment. And they usually name high-quality, established brands — Audio Research, dCS, Wilson, etc — in this process just to be sure everyone understands. I get it and it is helpful in a way. And then sometimes we have products that offer exceptional price/performance and they have such low prices that it is clear the value proposition is amazing. The poster child for this side of the hobby is the Magnepan LRS, but we could include Schiit electronics and Rega turntables, etc. Again, I get it, and it is helpful in a way.
The problem is that the engineering reality of hi-fi places the really great value equipment mainly in the middle between the super-value items and the state-of-the-art stuff. I want to suggest that at the entry level of high-end audio (systems around $2000-$3000 in price, all in) the effort to manage cost ensures that there are performance gains from spending not a whole lot more (assuming you have more). You almost certainly are not going to get 10″ woofers with large magnet structures and an inert cabinet in a $750 pair of speakers. Those woofers just cost too much to make and then install in the necessary cabinet and ship around the world at that price point. Do you need 10″ woofers with large magnet structures and an inert cabinet? Well, no, but it generally will be hard to reproduce 40 hz at high levels and high quality in medium size rooms without them or something similar. So, there will be gains from moving beyond a 5″ 2-way mini-monitor with basic drivers in a small cabinet. Similarly, a 30 watt or 50 watt per channel integrated amp can get a lot of music from those mini-monitors, but are there obvious gains from going to 300 watts per channel? Yes, especially if the larger, more complex, probably 3-way speakers you also move to have complex crossovers.
The argument I wish to make is that you have a choice to buy a $10,000 system or a $15,000 system (a mid-price system in high-end terms) and get amazing value. That is, you don’t have to spend $50,000 or $100,000 or $250,000 to get meaningfully beyond a $2000 or $3000 system. I think this idea is pretty intuitively obvious. And yet, manufacturer after manufacturer reports that this mid-price equipment doesn’t sell as well as they would expect and you might think.
Part of the problem is pure communication. It is easier to get the idea into your head that something is the ultimate or an amazing deal if it is “the best ever” or it costs very little (remember $10 Grado cartridges in the ’70s that sounded very good?). We in the press have to articulate mid-range value more carefully to get the idea across. And, I suggest manufacturers have to do a better job of making mid-range products that are special and not just slight reduced versions of slightly reduced versions of slightly reduced versions of “the best ever”.
Which brings us to the KEF LS60 Wireless. KEF may have just introduced a benchmark value product for the 2020s. Prejudging equipment before we’ve heard it is risky business, but based on the value of the LS50 Wireless, and reviewing the design of the LS60 Wireless, we’d be willing to wager this will be something special. And, at $6999 it is priced in the mid-range, and toward the lower half of the spectrum that I speak of to boot.
The LS60 Wireless draws on some learnings from KEF’s top-of-the-line $27k+ speakers, the Blade 1 Meta and Blade 2 Meta. But it is really different from them in many ways, some of which should generate big price/performance gains. The LS60 uses Uni-Q drivers and a single-apparent source (SAS) woofer arrangement, as do the Blades. This simply follows KEF’s recognition that smooth power response and phase response are critical to accuracy. But executing these ideas in a smaller product required all-new drivers and it required the LS60 to be an active speaker. Uni-Q and SAS are non-trivial engineering efforts to bring $100,000 system concepts to the sub-$10,000 realm. I would rate the woofer design of the LS60 as more complex/sophisticated than the one in the Blades, for example.
KEF also designed the LS60 for realistic domestic spaces. They made the speaker small and they didn’t impose features that aren’t necessary for, say, an 1800 cubic foot room. But they did make it an active speaker as I mentioned and they did this because the small cabinet required a large amplifier to produce deep bass. The LS60 comes with 1400 watts of power (700 per channel, with separate amps for the woofers and Uni-Q drivers). They also used an active crossover which means much fancier crossover slopes and phase correction can be done than would be possible in a passive system. All of this makes it easier for KEF to allow the user to dial-in the speaker to suit the room via various well-chosen adjustments.
You might say this is a technically impressive $3500 speaker that comes with a high-power electronics package for $3500. But as separates you couldn’t get some of these features at that price point (try pricing just an active crossover and you’ll see what I mean). And I bet it would be hard to get that much power (although realistically the power is high because of the bass alignment, so comparisons are hard). And you wouldn’t get the tuning features.
There are other stand-out products in this middle tier and we will continue to work to highlight them. And, we’ll review the LS60 as soon as we can to see if it lives up to its impressive concept and engineering.
Tags: KEF LOUDSPEAKER SPEAKER WIRELESS AUDIO
