I really don't care if you find 1000 reviewers that like to hear them shoved up against the rear wall of their small listening rooms and/or love them for nearfield listening. Peter told you the LS50s wouldn't work with a tube amp and you said hearing the LS50s with tubes was the best yet you have heard them. Does that mean Peter is right and you are wrong for liking the LS50s with tubes? I hope you get my point. At some point in time you have to trust your ears and make your own decisions on what works and what doesn't work for you.
The KEF LS50 and tubes WOW WOW WOW!
- Thread starter Andre Marc
- Start date
I really don't care if you find 1000 reviewers that like to hear them shoved up against the rear wall of their small listening rooms and/or love them for nearfield listening. Peter told you the LS50s wouldn't work with a tube amp and you said hearing the LS50s with tubes was the best yet you have heard them. Does that mean Peter is right and you are wrong for liking the LS50s with tubes? I hope you get my point. At some point in time you have to trust your ears and make your own decisions on what works and what doesn't work for you.
I never took Peter's comment seriously. I already new folks using the LS50s with tubes.
As for nearfield/small room listening, I dug up these comments AFTER I came to my own ideas of how the speaker will perform its best to see if any other reviewers were barking up the same tree. They were.
BTW, I don't believe they need to be shoved up against a wall. I have them with 3 to 4 feet around all boundaries in an 8 x 12 room.
I've gotten pretty good results with them when I was working in the business, even with single subs, but it's not easy to get them well-integrated. And while I find myself wanting one sometimes (two would be completely unnecessary in my situation), I don't have one in my own system because, well, I don't know how else to put this but to say that I'm not sure the benefits of the bit of music that's actually in that extension is worth the hassle to me. Maybe that's the same as KISS. By the way, I know there are people who disagree, and feel that extension into deep bass impacts the whole signal, the soundstage, pressurizing the room, etc. Anyone's mileage is welcome to vary, but I don't hear all of that; I hear bass extension. And not much is down there.
Tim
That's fine, they can all bark up the same tree. I found a different tree. How many of those reviewers do you think tried listening to them in larger rooms and with subs to flesh out the frequency response so it's full range and then compared them to how they sound in a small room with no subs? I'm thinking not many if any at all.
You are forced into the nearfield with the small room you have them in. If the speakers are out from the wall 3'-4' as you said, that means there isn't lots of space left to the wall behind where you sit. You have to like that because you have no other choice in that room and there isn't much room to experiment. My room is 15' W x 23' L x 9' H which means I have lots of options on speaker placement and I'm not going to get locked into nearfield listening because some reviewers said that's what they like or that's what the LS50s are optimized for. If my positioning didn't work for me, I would have moved on and tried something different.
Wouldn't that make the speakers 2' apart from each other in an 8' W room? I doubt that is the case so Andre must have the speakers much closer to the side walls than what he thinks.
I normally sit 8 feet away from Thiels. I am sitting 6 feet away from the KEFS. It may very well be I am over estimating the distances. It may
very well be 2 feet from all boundaries. My ears are telling me it is immediate, and very musically satisfying.
Note, this is set up # 2. They were previously in a room 1/3 bigger driven by McIntosh and Electrocompanient amps.
Again, its horses for course. Big room: larger, near full range speaker. Small room, a sensibly sized loudspeaker.
You choose to use the LS50s in a big room and rig it with 4 subs and a powerful amp. That is your choice, no problem.
All I can say is I would not book a string quartet in a 7000 seat arena, and I would not book Pearl Jam (1st row seats in Nov!)
to play a lounge.
I believe you thou does protest too much and I find your comments about the speakers being perfect for a large room amusing when you
put them on sale for a brief period.
I love the LS50s, so much so, I am going to take up KEFs offer to leave them here for an extended period for an additional system I building in a third room.
Tone Audio is doing a "recommended systems" issue, and I chose the $5000 price point. This system will include the LS50, a Rogue Spinix integrated, entry level Nordost cables, and an Oppo 105.
Last edited:
Listening to the 2013 Moondance remaster on the LS50s, driven by the Rogue ST 100, and a CIAudio passive linestage while editing a review.
These speakers are scary good.
Heaven.
These speakers are scary good.
Heaven.
I stand my ground, the LS50 is not the ideal speaker for tube amps. On tubes... it plays music, it sounds holographic, it images, but it falls apart in the low end and has that tube bass sound. Some people like these distortions, but it's not realistic. You really need a good fast ss amp with a high damping factor to open up the frequency range of the baby KEF. Remember, the bass foundation is what the midrange and treble are built upon.
Peter-My only thoughts on this subject is that the LS50s don't have much in the way of a low end. They start giving up the ghost at 70Hz which shouldn't be a problem for tube amps. This isn't like trying to use a tube amp as a sub amp so I'm surprised to hear that you think a tube amp will cause problems in what bass the LS50s are capable of.
FYI , the impedance of the LS50 looks like a roller coaster - when used with a typical tube amplifier it will boost bands around 30, 100 and between1-2000 kHz.
The impedance peak around 100Hz goes much higher than 20 ohms - it overloads the scale of the measurement.
See http://www.stereophile.com/images/1212KEF50fig1.jpg
The impedance peak around 100Hz goes much higher than 20 ohms - it overloads the scale of the measurement.
See http://www.stereophile.com/images/1212KEF50fig1.jpg
"Somewhat optimistically specified at 8 ohms, the LS50's impedance (fig.1, solid trace) drops to 4 ohms at 200Hz and to 5.4 ohms at the top of the audioband. The electrical phase angle is generally mild, but the combination of 5.3 ohms and –41° at 135Hz, a frequency where music often has high energy, will make the speaker work at its best with a good, 4 ohm–rated amplifier."
Doug tried them with his Copland 90 wpc tube amp, and noted nothing unusual:
"Then, for the heck of it, I tried the LS50s with the Copland CTA 506 ($6000), a tubed stereo amp that puts out 90Wpc into 16, 8, or 4 ohms; as well as a pair of Anthem Statement M1 monos ($3500 apiece), a proprietary class-D design capable of unbelievably high power (1000W into 8 ohms). The sound was slightly different with each amp, but one thing remained the same: the diminutive LS50s sounded much bigger than their size let on. I also learned that, with any of these amps, the LS50s could play loud -- louder than I expected from speakers of their size, and louder than I really needed them to."
http://www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/equipment-reviews/557-kef-ls50-loudspeakers
"Given everything else the LS50 did right, and the facts that it’s a small speaker, costs only $1500/pair,...it is likely to be used in rooms of small to medium size ...'
"Then, for the heck of it, I tried the LS50s with the Copland CTA 506 ($6000), a tubed stereo amp that puts out 90Wpc into 16, 8, or 4 ohms; as well as a pair of Anthem Statement M1 monos ($3500 apiece), a proprietary class-D design capable of unbelievably high power (1000W into 8 ohms). The sound was slightly different with each amp, but one thing remained the same: the diminutive LS50s sounded much bigger than their size let on. I also learned that, with any of these amps, the LS50s could play loud -- louder than I expected from speakers of their size, and louder than I really needed them to."
http://www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/equipment-reviews/557-kef-ls50-loudspeakers
"Given everything else the LS50 did right, and the facts that it’s a small speaker, costs only $1500/pair,...it is likely to be used in rooms of small to medium size ...'
Thanks, I hope this helps. JA knows his stuff.
edit... Andre is right, a good 4 ohm amp will do fine, a solid state 4 ohm amp
BTW, the LS50 is getting a great review from Kevin and I agree. Just don't expect spot-on tonality and tight bass with tubes. You will get great sound but wow, wow, wow is not the way I see it.
Yes, at my reviewer's studio, 50 watts per channel on one amp, 80 WPC on another. BTW, KEF Blades on SS are magic. The LS50s on tubes are very nice, mind you, but you can do better with solid state, IMHO.
Peter, this is a stunning system. The Blades look gorgeous in black.
I am wondering, has anyone heard the Muon?
http://www.kef.com/html/us/showroom/flagship_hi-fi_series/muon/overview/
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