One for the audio physics deniers

It was true in the 70s and it’s still true now. The most important part of the system is the bit that reproduces least faithfully. That is the speakers, by a bloody mile. Objective measurements confirm this. Distortion and frequency response is a lot worse from pretty well any speakers than from a CD player. Especially if you take into account the fact that the typical room has marked resonant frequencies, which will always put lumps in any frequency response.

I’ve always believed this and various upgrades and tweaks to my hi fi over the year tend to show it too. Speakers make the biggest difference, followed by the amp (pre – power, surround whatever) this is especially true if you listen to more than one source as obviously a good amp speaker combo improves all the sources connected to it.

Check the back panel of your LS3/5a – are they screwed on – do they look like the pictues just below the

The Kingswood Warren LS3/5As.

Yep my ones are the real deals, before they were licensed.
Cases were hand built by the kingswood cabinet maker, in return for dads collegaues building the cabinet maker a set.
My dad handwound the coils and then matched them in the anachoic chamber – not sure it gets better than that. 🙂
Only mod is that XLR connectors been fitted.

We have another pair in the loft ( licensed ones ), with blown woofers..

Will not be selling them. Just turning volume down a little..

Will not be selling them. Just turning volume down a little..

you might be looking at £3k for them, maybe more.

The ls3/5a group on yahoo is run by Paul Whatton – his father was at design dept and brought the LS3/5a to market – Paul has a pair with 001/002 on the back – these have thin wall cabs like yours but I don’t think the xovers are as special. They still sound good, but old…

These is a group member named Jim Finnie who also has some ‘prototypes’ like yours.

Ken Kessler got us a room at the HiFi New shows in 2001 and 2002 where we ran LS3/5as through various tube amps – the rooms were packed all weekend with many people saying we had the best sounding room – needless to say we cheated a bit with the choice of material and we used 001/002.

There are pictures in the gallery on http://www.ls35a.com.

My pair are in cabinets that are copies of yours – 9mm ply, screwed on backs, which Stirling Broadcast use for their LS3/5as.

I use an 11ohm pair with Cicable external crossovers – they were matched to the drivers but I made the mistake of buying a Bryston amp with its idea of a protection circuit that dumped copies amounts of current into the speaker in response to the slightest static charge meeting its casing 🙁

The Cicables, and the Stirling LS3/5as, which use different drive units, were designed by Deek Hughes, whose father Spencer worked at KW and built the first bextrene cones (using a mattress…) and designed the famous BC-1. Maybe your father knew him. Derek has just designed a new version of the LS3/6, which was a derivative of the BC-1:

http://www.stirlingbroadcast.net/

I am not particularly jealous though – there is something about the bass on 15ohm LS3/5a that I don’t like, always seems slow. The same units in JR149s don’t seem to be similairly afflicted. Plus the Sp1003 B110s can often get peaky at 1K, fooling people into thinking that they sound better.

The blown pair were given back to my dad about a year ago, and I did a little digging to find that indeed these and the original I have were worth a bit.
I suggested the idea of fixing the blown ones, but the comment was he had no way of tweaking the crossovers so was not worth his while ?? Perfectionist you see..

My Dad was at Kingswood for c. 30 years after starting in service planning, and passed the originals onto me after he bought a pair of Ls7t from whoever it was who set up Rogers .

I went around Kingswood loads as a kid – very cool place.

I am not technical, but if you have any questions I can pass them onto my old man.

Cheers
J.

you are implying that an ‘audiophile’ setup is somehow inferior to what they use in a studio – in some cases this may be true but in many it is not – often there is b*gger all difference and the ‘audiophile’ system may actually use many of the same components, as I am trying to point out but you seem to keep ignoring.

No I’m saying it is different. Audiophile kit is (partly, aside from the wahnk factor)designed to sound amazing and nice, rather than true, it flatters the sound. In the studio the producer needs to hear every detail of the music, every bit of sibillance, every breath, to make a good mix that will reproduce as well as it can on every system. If producers used audiophile kit to mix, the music would most likely sound worse on everyone else’s setup, as the audiophile kit is flattering the music. I think someone has already mentioned the ‘famous’ NS10’s, I’ve not heard them but I have used Adam and some high end JBL monitors, and I wouldn’t want them in my living room for recreational listening. If you can you should try your setup against some good monitors and see the difference.

If you can you should try your setup against some good monitors and see the difference.

I am ignoring you from now on…

I have had ATCs in my room, and Harbeths, and Spendors. All are ‘reference’ monitors, with flat responses, etc.

All allow you to hear loads of detail in the music.

Although the speakers were ugly my wife questioned whether we could rearrange the furniture to accomodate the Spendors as they sounded so realistic (she used to play instruments…)

Just because you use poor choices when determining which monitors to populate your studios, it doesn’t mean that everyone does.

Woppit, you are being a little hypocritical from a logic point of view, without realising it.

You are absolutely positive of something based on your own actual senses and experience. This is the case with many religious people too. No logical difference.

Saying ‘yeah but that’s clearly nonsense’ is not an argument.

Anyway, as you were.

My Dad was at Kingswood for c. 30 years after starting in service planning

I worked for Colin Bell, who I think is dead now, but your Dad probably knew him then as he was one of the main engineers in service planning – planned radio 1 going to VHF.

I went around Kingswood loads as a kid – very cool place.

Was there for 2.5 years from 87ish.

Lots of aerials and sat dishes over the grounds when I last looked, where I used to go out and hit 5 irons after lunch after a bit of table tennis and snooker and watching neighbours in the club hut (those were the days of JANE 🙂 ).

Rogers Ls7t

I thought they were pretty ordiniary – he should have got some Spendor SP2/2 – same size and the first design from Derek Hughes – very nice.

You are absolutely positive of something based on your own actual senses and experience. This is the case with many religious people too. No logical difference.

Difference is that he probably did as I did and switch cables around repeatedly to determine if the change really was being imagined or if one could be sure of it.

Religeous ‘experiences’ probably aren’t repeatable on demand…

Kingsood was a big part of his life, and he talked in awe about the brains within the place.

Back on topic
Quad used to demonstate their kit with mains cable, and would laugh at anyobe who queried this.
Would quite like a quad pre/power setup,as this was the stuff when I was young, but my old kit is fine for me..

Ls5/9 were the other ones he mentioned worth having..

£3k you say..
Hmm – could buy a bike for that..

Tempted to send the busted ones off to Stirling to get fixed..
Cheers for the info
J.

eligeous ‘experiences’ probably aren’t repeatable on demand…

However, does that mean that if someone told you that they could have a personal conversation with god on demand, you’d give the concept of god more credence?

£3k you say..
Hmm – could buy a bike for that..

Tempted to send the busted ones off to Stirling to get fixed..

How are they blown – if the coils are locked up then the drivers are probably done for but if the surrounds are done then some places used to be able to replace the surround.

If the drivers are gone then it is very difficult to find ‘BBC specification’ SP1003 B110 drive units, as the specification was so tight and was also not on the median of production.

As the drive units are hard to find the Stirling repairs consist of drop in baffles with customised Monacor drive units/crossovers.

Buying some LS3/5as to get donor parts is another expensive way forward. Buying JR149s would be cheaper to get a matched pair but they wouldn’t be to the LS3/5a spec.

There may be a few people on the ls3/5a forum with some matched drivers hidden away.

I would join the yahoo ls3/5a group and mention the speakers and that you are thinking of selling the good pair – maybe there is a collector on there who would be interested. If not ebay with a high start price – maybe even 3k to start with.

You may also be able to sell the busted pair to someone who has some in-spec drivers, or something like that.

If you still want the ls3/5a sound I have some of the Stirling versions (V2) you could try – I think they are really good, but it depends on how good the rest of system is as to whether you notice that the crossovers on the KW ones are a lot better.

Religeous ‘experiences’ probably aren’t repeatable on demand

I think many people see the hand of God or gods in everything on a daily basis.

Difference is that he probably did as I did and switch cables around repeatedly to determine if the change really was being imagined or if one could be sure of it.

The only way to be sure of it, is to do a double blind test.

Thanks Mr Turner

Will be keeping the good ones.
Busted ones – I might just send to Stirling..

Cheers for advice
J.

I bet you couldn’t tell the difference between a 320kbps MP3 and a high end CD player in an ABX test…..

There was a thing in Radio 4 a few months ago about compression and digital radio/FM/MP3 affecting music quality and how hard people even bother trying to achieve a great sound in the studio in the first place.

They had great Bob Stanley (google him!) in and played him the same bit of a Neil Young track twice, once ‘as it comes’ and once compressed. I couldn’t tell the difference at all (probably didn’t help listening on a DAB!) but in the studio Bob Stanley guessed the wrong way round. I expect they were using doorbell wire for their monitors. 😕

Plus the feed to the FM transmitters is, or at least used to be, something like 15bit resolution.

Deeply confused by this going round in circles.

Anyway, you guys keep paying for your magicke cables and stuff, if it keeps you happy, as it keeps the rest of us entertained!

Busted ones – I might just send to Stirling

you didn’t mention how they were busted?

Anyway, you guys keep paying for your magicke cables

but none of us have magic cables – any time anyone asks about speaker cables on this forum I point them at the Van Damme stuff, which is cheap and the same as the cheap studio cable you keep alluding to.

you didn’t mention how they were busted?
I am guessing they have been overworked and the drivers have burnt out ??
I will get my man on the job to identify the problem.
I think one of the tweeters may be dodgy aswell, and to top off some of the laminate has come off the box.
In truth not pretty..
J.

somebody must have been arguing in their favour, or none of this would have happened.

somebody must have been arguing in their favour, or none of this would have happened.

not really – I just mentioned that my amps seems to really dislike certain fat cables, sounding nastily filtered – although it needed a complicated crossover network to trigger it. Not that any cables can make it sound better. I mentioned that the guy who used to run Spendor also occasionaly saw stability problems with Quad 606s (mine are 707s and 909s, so the same).

Mr Woppit said he experienced differences – I mentioned that his Naim amplifiers were known to need a certain level of inductance to drive into or else they become unstable – so it was entirely possible that he did experience differences as the different cables were likely to have different inductances.

This is a pretty well known ‘quirk’ of Naim amps and some people regard them as badly designed… Naim recommended their owne cable, which to be fair is not exhorbitantly priced – something like £10 a metre which is trivial if you are buying Naim anyway, as you will need loads of costly extra little boxes to extract the best out of them anyway 🙂

oh right, well what I’ve been trying to say is, in my opinion

‘Audiophile’ cables etc costing hundreds and thousands are crazy and pointless. If you want to hear a difference, you will, etc. I’m sure they sound great, but so do £30 cables.

The hardware requirements of mixing/mastering studios aren’t the same as the home listener,

and both are why studios aren’t decked out with Russ Andrews kit, and magic crystals.

well what I’ve been trying to say is, in my opinion

‘Audiophile’ cables etc costing hundreds and thousands are crazy and pointless.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think anyone here has disagreed with that, at all, despite several people vociferously re-stating the same point as though someone has.

Honestly, I think some people could argue with themselves.

TurnerGuy – drop me an e-mail ref these speakers when you get a moment- pretty please.

jerrybuckleyATyahoo.com

Cheers
J.

I can’t get an image of Mr Woppit singing his heart out to ABBA out of my head…

An interesting concept is the loudspeaker as a conduit of information, whose resolution can be measured by bandwidth. There is a clear argument that if a loudspeaker has insufficient bandwidth (NB not upper and lower F3, ie frequency response bandwidth) then the listener will only be able to differentiate between recordings of lower bandwidth, which may explain the problems in blind testing of audibility between MP3 bitrates. Something I’ll be investigating for forthcoming designs…

That makes sense. Call it ‘quality headroom’ or ‘the weakest link’ concept I guess.

I have played MP3s on general equipment ie my phone, the car stereo, and been happy. However the exact same files played via the PS3 and the ‘nice’ stereo seem to sound like crap.

I think that there is also some element of ‘expectation’ adjustment that the brain performs – so if you are listening to something on your kitchen radio you can think this sounds quite good and enjoy it, but in reality the sound is very poor compared to your proper hifi.