I think we have about 3 different KEF LS50 threads right now, but I guess this is as good as any LS50 threads to post some of my initial thoughts on hearing them. My LS50s arrived in perfect condition and they even look smaller in person than they do in pictures (I guess pictures put weight on objects too). I have custom ordered stands from Sound Anchor, but those won't be here for another 3 weeks or so. I went into the closet and pulled out a pair of stands that came with a pair of Paradigm speakers. The stands are not ideal, are not rigid, and they don't bite through the carpet very well at all. I just plunked them down in front of and to the outside of my Def Tech speakers and they are about 9' apart from center-to-center. They are far away from the rear wall and I'm probably sitting about 12' away from them. The binding posts on the LS50 look like they are 5-way binding posts, but damned if I could get the banana plugs from my MIT cables to fit in there. On Joe Abrams advice, since my MIT cables are bi-wire, I was going to put spades on one set of the tails and banana plugs on the other tail so it would be a clean hook-up to the LS50s. I gave up on that plan when the banana plugs wouldn't fit because trying to jam two big spade lugs on the same binding post was going to be kludge. I dug through my stash of cables and pulled out a pair of Synergistic Research speaker cable and lashed them up to my KSA-250 and the LS50s. All of this happened on Thursday night after I got home from work. I went ahead and powered up the amp and hit play on my music server.
The first thing that struck me was there wasn't a big drop off in volume. Each Def Tech has 9 drivers per speaker and of course the LS50s have a total of 4 and that coaxial driver is tiny. I was afraid it was going to be a joke when I unmuted the preamp, but it was no joke. I do have my pair of Def Tech Reference subs playing as well. I crossed them over to around 80 Hz as a starting point and I had to turn the gain up a little. After I assured myself this wasn't going to be a joke, I let the speakers just play music to start the break-in process and I went upstairs. I went back downstairs and listened to them for a little bit before I went to bed, but I didn't listen long enough to form any real opinions.
Last night was my first full listening session and I played digital files, Lps, and tape. One of the notes I jotted down in all capital letters was "LITTLE TRUTH TELLERS." And that is exactly what they are. And when I use the term 'little', I don't mean in the size and scale of the music, I strictly mean the physical stature of the speakers. The LS50s throw a huge soundstage. It is wide and deep. I was listening to the Ray Charles duets album via DSD file on my server and when the song "Fever" came on, I jotted down another note that said: "and then Ray Charles Fever kicked in...Awesome." This recording is an excellent recording, but I never realized until last night how even though each track sounds really good in its own right, they all sound different one from another. The LS50s let you know how each recording was made and show the differences from cut to cut more than I remember hearing before. That's one of the reasons I called them little truth tellers. My Def Techs somehow homogenized the sound a bit which didn't make different cuts from the same album stand apart from each other as much as the LS50s. Maybe that's the difference between a point source speaker and a bipolar speaker. Maybe that's the difference between having a very high-tech driver mounted in a small cabinet that is well-engineered and executed for rigidity and dampening. Each LS50 weighs 15 lbs and each Def Tech weighs 150 lbs. That is 10 times the mass to store and release energy and maybe some of that energy storage and release is adding to the sound in a way that imparts some 'sameness' from cut to cut.
The other thing I was worried about with the LS50s was would they play loud enough to satisfy me in my room. The answer is yes, at least so far. Voices through these speakers have to be heard to be believed and appreciated. And that's both male and female. You can really hear into the room (or studio) with these speakers and they seem to have a way of making music sound more "live" even if it wasn't a live recording if that make sense. Even though recordings now sound 'different' to me, they sound 'different' in a positive way.
So, the LS50s are far from being set up optimally and I'm sure the sub settings will have to be tweaked some more. Given those caveats, I mighty impressed with what I am hearing. I was afraid this was going to be a joke and there would be a huge let down going from my big Def Techs to the diminutive LS50s and I was going to have to quickly take them out of my system and lash the Def Techs back up. Thankfully this didn't happen. Oh, did I mention the tweeter on the LS50 is really special? I think it is. We will see if the star fades with time, but right now I really like what I am hearing. I do think the LS50s scrub away a lot of crap and distortion that other speakers add to the sound which makes them more of a high purity/high resolution device. Even at full-retail which I paid, the LS50s are a steal.