Article: KEF LS60 Wireless HiFi System

[jeffhenning]

Having a home theater with five LS50's and a pair of LSX's in my bedroom, I'm sure that these are fantastic speakers.

 

I do, though, have some reservations about KEF's active electronics. After about 3 years, the LSX's in my bedroom have gone into "zombie-mode". The are on, but will no longer accept any wireless signal and the indicator on the main speaker, when powered, just flashes amber & white. The remote doesn't even work so I can't even switch them to the optical input.

 

After rebooting and resetting the speakers a dozen times, this has not changed. They need to be sent back for repair. As KEF's active speakers have only a two year warranty, I will have to pay to get them fixed.

 

I'd be expecting these speakers to work without a hitch for the better portion of two decades.

 

The LSX's are minute so shipping is not a big deal.  Imagine having to ship the LS60's back to KEF if they went zombie after their warranty expired. Wouldn't that suck?

 

Given my personal experience and the fact that you could buy a pair of LS50 Wireless and 4 Rythmik L12 servo subs for about $1,500 less than this rig and get low end that would eviscerate this system, I'm not seeing this as any great value.

[jeffhenning]

Hey, just talking about my issues. My first pair of active speakers were Paradigm LCR-450's that I bought in around 1998. They worked great until until one of the speakers went a bit wobbly around 2013.

 

Don't know exactly what the problem was, but I think something about the active crossover between the mid/tweeter went south in one speaker.

 

Since I am also a musician and recording engineer, I had my system set up to use the IK Multimedia Audyssey ARC plug-in on my Mac. What ever was going on was fixed via DSP for music listening using Audio Hijack.

 

On music, especially if it was mono, you could easily hear something was wrong. Using the DSP, it corrected the speaker disparity.

 

When listening to movies or TV in surround, for the most part, you really couldn't discern the problem. Funny how that works.

 

Anyway, KEF makes really fantastic speakers. The electronics that come with them? Not sold on that yet.

 

Just so you know:

1: Again, even two LS50 Wireless speakers with four Rythmik L12 servo subs is about $1,500 cheaper and will give you a drastically better & more potent low end. Sorry that they take up about 3 more square feet of your rooms footage.

 

2: I don't have four L12 servo subs because I want a shit ton of bass... I want whatever bass that is to be reproduced to be rendered as cleanly as possible. Having 4 subs means that none of them is ever straining to recreate lowest notes.

 

3: I am a bass player and I, from time to time, play bass through my home theater system via a Roland GT-10B from a S/PDIF cable. Just for fun, I up mix the stereo output to full surround via DTS. I have a particular patch called "The Voice of God" on the GT-10B. It's two pitch shifters (one above, one below), some distortion and a ton of time-based effects. It lives up to the name.

 

As good as the LS60 is, it could never compete with my system. Hey, again, not saying that it's not a really fine speaker, but that you can have better for less money.

 

At least it's not like that crap from Wilson Audio where they take about $6-8K worth of speakers that you can buy from Madisound and then want you to pay $200-500K because they came up with a "magical box" in which they house them.

 

Most audiophiles are morons. There is nothing magical about your personal ability to hear...anything.

 

Understand science and you will see how many charlatans their are in the hi-fi industry.

 

[jeffhenning]

It's based upon the fact that there are reviews of $500 USB audio cables, $2K power cables and things even more idiotic than those... and people give them credence.

 

If what you are espousing is not based on real science & measurements, it is pure junk.

 

The audio reviewing/journalistic industry, for the most part, is based upon imbeciles with no background in science publishing their opinions.

 

That is not my opinion. That is a fact.

 

You can love that.. or shove that! I don't care which you decide upon.