Music Fidelity to make copies of BBC LS3/5A speakers

[Andrew]

2,349 UK pounds for a pair of LS3/5A 4,099 for a pair of LS5/9's

[Woody]

A pair of LS3/5A started on eBay last week at something like £9.99. They went in the end for well in excess of £1700!!!

[mm0fmf]

Mate from Uni made some (1985?) from Wilmslow Audio driver/crossover kits. He was very good at woodwork so the cases were beautiful. They sounded rather good especially when you consider how tiny the bass driver is in them.

[Joe]

[John Walliker]

Mine are the original d-i-y kit sold to BBC staff. I once measured the frequency response outdoors and it was almost ruler flat. However, they do benefit from a subwoofer with an active crossover at about 80Hz.

John

[mm0fmf]

Sweet Baby Jesus, how the price of T27 and B110s have gone up. There again it was the early 1980s when I was last looking.

[Adrian Caspersz]

Birch Plywood has become very expensive lately ....

These are near field monitors, not sure they would enjoy the wick wound up with anything dynamically exiting?

However, if someone has built a critical listening room, and still has the golden ears of a twenty something recording engineer....

[Animal]

That's steep for what they are. If you're building, get some ribbon tweeters, they make moving coils sound crude. And some are surprisingly cheap.

[John Walliker]

I don't think there is anything crude about the sound of the LS3/5As, although if I had the space I would like Quad electrostatics which are the only speakers I have ever measured that can reproduce a square-wave reasonably accurately. There are some subtle details. The birch ply was chosen for its damping factor. It is lined with adhesive bitumen sheet. The whole internal volume is filled with polyethylene foam. The back of the tweeter is braced to the back panel to reduce panel resonance. The felt on the front panel is to damp a sideways resonance between the forward projections of the side walls. The pressed perforated metal dome over the tweeter provides mechanical protection but is mainly there to act as a phase shifter to make a smoother crossover. The crossover is made from polycarbonate capacitors and I think mu-metal cored inductors. ( I think later models used cheaper components here.) John

[Trevor Wilson]

**It has to be said:

The LS3/5A is the most over-rated speaker system ever released. They are just an average performer.

[Animal]

All good stuff, but not a patch on electrostatics or ribbons. Comparitively crude, not absolutely crude.

[John Walliker]

The LS3/5A was designed as a monitor for use in outside broadcast vans and similarly small spaces at moderate sound levels. For its intended use cases I think the result is very impressive, especially for something designed in around 1970. Other BBC monitors of that vintage had internal amplifiers for each drive unit with active crossovers. Such an arrangement has a lot of advantages. If there is more space available then something with more extended low frequency output will probably be a better choice. Electrostatic speakers have their own tradeoffs. Nothing is perfect in every respect.

John

[Brian Gaff]

Now what is so special then? They were never that price when new. Is this a case of money for old rope if you can make something look authentic? Brian

[Clive Arthur]

<snipped>

Yes, they were deliberately very inefficient at mid and high frequencies so as to compensate for the natural inefficiency of the bass in a box that size. Great for smaller rooms, but not for organ music. I still have mine, purchased around 1975 with a BBC staff discount.

[mechanic]

It's what's called a cult-following. Lots of stuff about these on t'internet e.g.

Wiki article is good: If you have a pair, sell them for the best money you can get. As you get older your hearing won't be up to needing the best hifi anyway.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Having spent many years listening to loudspeakers, I liked the Kef units for fairly low self resonances - colouration

TBH when it comes to absolute clarity I prefer high power horns for the mid and upper, and as big a box with twin 15" in it as can be mustered for the bass. The KEFS are pleasant speakers that wont irritate you after a while as they don't have their own 'sound' ..

You wont ever get a huge bass response out of the 8" units no matter how big the box.

But that aside, one of my more liked speakers

[Adrian Caspersz]

To be fair, by definition all hi-fi is overrated.

"High"

I propose a new class,

"Ample Fidelity"

Stuff that does what it says on the tin.

Bluetooth speakers mainly. Streaming.

No need for collections, components, stack systems, midi systems, music centres, radiograms etc. Folks used to dedicate a room, space, that mess of wires in a corner now replaced by a pot plant.

And they can enjoy the efforts of songwriters, singers and musicians and not the marketing whims of the dancing circus capitalists pretending ye need this and that for the "ultimate".

Yeah, I enjoy messing with audio electronics technicals and it's nostalgia - but for today like a load of other pastimes from the last century, just recognise it's going nowhere as a future business.

[Tim Streater]

What's streaming or bluetooth got to do with the sound quality that the speaker will generate? You can use bluetooth or streaming to supply audio to a tin box but it won't sound very good.

[charles]

I'd better increase my home insurance ;-(

[Andrew]

And extra for your ladderax shelving too :-)