Official Kef LS50 owners thread

Just a heads up, KEF Direct is offering free GFS-524 stands with purchase of LS50/Ws.

I think I'll call them and see if I can get 'grandson'd' in on this since they still haven't sent the stands I ordered.

*D'oh. They're sold out in white.
 
For anyone out there using LS50s with Roon and are thinking about room correction, check out this guide: https://community.roonlabs.com/t/a-guide-how-to-do-room-correction-and-use-it-in-roon/23800

I just gave it a try and wow! Quite an improvement over my own filter settings that I made manually. I think the key difference is the fact left/right measurements are taken - something I am discovering is important for the absolute best EQing.

For those of you who are not using Roon but are using another EQ, such as the Equalizer APO or miniDSP, I am not exactly sure how you would go about applying this guide to that but I imagine there must be a way.
 
Just a heads up, KEF Direct is offering free GFS-524 stands with purchase of LS50/Ws.

I think I'll call them and see if I can get 'grandson'd' in on this since they still haven't sent the stands I ordered.

*D'oh. They're sold out in white.

They're really making you hold out on those stands eh? It sounds like they should be sending them out fairly shortly based on the ETA they gave you. Hopefully you get them soon, I love mine and I'm confident you will love yours.
 
I'm finally using my miniDSP DDRC-22D digital Dirac Live processor with my LS50s.

It does it's digital correction in the digital domain, then sends a corrected digital signal to my Esoteric SA-50 SACD Player/DAC for D/A conversion. I have the Esoteric upsampling to DSD, but it's new to me so I'm still playing with all the settings (2x PCM, 4x PCM upsampling) to see what sounds the best.

The miniDSP made a huge difference, then replacing my Cambridge DACMagic+ with the Esoteric made a huge difference as well (it's now in my desktop system with my Dynaudio BM6A mkII's).

The biggest difference I noticed with the Dirac Live processing is it seemed to open up the soundstage (width, height, depth) and also clean up the imaging and made things even more precise (but still smooth). Also it corrected for the jagged bass response that I was getting in my room (even though I'm using GIK Acoustics treatments all around). The "correct" bass response is actually shocking as it seems to be lacking a little bit compared to what I was used to, I might correct for that with a custom curve that boosts the bass frequencies just slightly more.

I also switched my amp up, I'm currently using an Anthem Statement A2.

There's a lot of "new to me" in my system right now, so I'm still adjusting to the changes, but it's never sounded better by a long shot!
 
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Wow nice Nick. Quite a change from before, it's looking great! I bet it sounds awesome.

Good call on DIRAC, I've been looking into that recently and I'm tempted but it sure is costly. Right now I am just auto-EQing with Room EQ Wizard but I understand DIRAC does its corrections differently. It's tempting because I do have some lop-sided frequency response in the 150-500Hz range I bet DIRAC could fix. One of these days I might splurge for it.

Regarding your bass, I found the same thing when I originally EQed my bass. I added a house curve and I'm much happier. I can give you the specifics of the one I used if you want.
 
I'd definitely be interested.

Dirac Live has a built-in house curve, and you have the ability to tweak the curve just about infinitely to your liking. You can have 4 different curves loaded into the miniDSP DDRC-22D that you can toggle through at any time so I need to do some tweaking and figure out exactly what I want. Actually I can probably tailor each one to different types of music, but I think I prefer to have one "default" setting that I would use 80-90% of the time. The thing I really like about the miniDSP is that it does all of it's correction in the digital domain (no unnecessary A->D and D->A conversions) and I also like that it does it's correction in high resolution at 96/24 (it re-clocks all incoming signals to 96/24), so all of my high resolution music stays high resolution through the room correction process. Even if native DSD or 192/24 program material is down-sampled to 96/24 for correction (the mini DSP can't handle native DSD, but I can use JRiver or maybe Roon eventually? to down sample DSD to 96/24 in front of the miniDSP), it's still retaining most of the recorded information instead of getting down sampled all the way to 48kHz (like my Anthem AVR that I use as a stereo digital preamp/ARC room correction/DAC in my bedroom system). The Anthem does a very good job as well even though it does it's magic at 48kHz, but not quite as good as the DDRC-22D.

I have my eye on one more upgrade in my main system if I can sell the Anthem Statement A2 stereo amp and the Outlaw monoblock and replace them with a high quality 3 channel amp. That will free up some rack space for a high quality stereo analog 2-way crossover (thinking Marchand XM-44 fully balanced). Right now I'm using the line level high pass crossover in each sub to cross the speakers over to the stereo subs and it's a bottleneck in my system. The electronics in those Velodyne subs don't come close to the quality of the signal they're being fed by the esoteric DAC & SACD player. Also, when I'm using the transport in the Esoteric, CD and/or SACD isn't being corrected with the miniDSP so I need to get that analog crossover between subs and LS50s as clean and optimized as I can to increase the performance of SACDs (or if I want to play CDs in the Esoteric player as well).

I might try this balanced crossover before going with the Marchand as it's price is a lot more attractive. https://www.xkitz.com/products/k231-stereo-3-way-active-crossover?variant=37247534094
 
They're really making you hold out on those stands eh? It sounds like they should be sending them out fairly shortly based on the ETA they gave you. Hopefully you get them soon, I love mine and I'm confident you will love yours.

Finally got them yesterday.

IMG_0340.jpg


Definitely happy with the look! No issues with the speakers so far. Just loving life with them. Roon remote has been pretty unstable since my last iOS update. Great software when it's working smoothly, but I've had my share of jitters with the remote app. Hopefully that will get worked out because I'm in with Roon for life.
 
Hi guys,

I am the owner of the kef LS50w, and I just connected a subwoofer SVS SB1000 (my configuration is only 2.1)

I'm looking for the right settings between the speakers and the subwoofer. Could you tell me if this setting is fine:

Settings in KEF application :

Bass Extension : Extra
High-pass frequency : 75Hz(50-120Hz)
Sub out Low-pass frequency : 65hz (40-250hz)
Sub gain : 10db
sub polarity : +

Settings to my sub directly :

Low pass filter (crossover) : 160Hz (max is LFE)
Volume : 50%
Phase : 0

What do you think about these settings ? Thank you :)
 
Hi guys,

I am the owner of the kef LS50w, and I just connected a subwoofer SVS SB1000 (my configuration is only 2.1)

I'm looking for the right settings between the speakers and the subwoofer. Could you tell me if this setting is fine:

Settings in KEF application :

Bass Extension : Extra
High-pass frequency : 75Hz(50-120Hz)
Sub out Low-pass frequency : 65hz (40-250hz)
Sub gain : 10db
sub polarity : +

Settings to my sub directly :

Low pass filter (crossover) : 160Hz (max is LFE)
Volume : 50%
Phase : 0

What do you think about these settings ? Thank you :)

It's always difficult to say without hearing it and without measurements, but here's how I would set it:

Bass Extension: Normal
High-pass mode turned off
Low-pass frequency: 70-80Hz
 
Finally got them yesterday.

IMG_0340.jpg


Definitely happy with the look! No issues with the speakers so far. Just loving life with them. Roon remote has been pretty unstable since my last iOS update. Great software when it's working smoothly, but I've had my share of jitters with the remote app. Hopefully that will get worked out because I'm in with Roon for life.

Boy does that look sharp. Did you notice any improvement over your old stands?
 
It's always difficult to say without hearing it and without measurements, but here's how I would set it:

Bass Extension: Normal
High-pass mode turned off
Low-pass frequency: 70-80Hz

Thank you, new test today ,

Bass Extension : Normal
High-pass frequency : 80Hz (50-120Hz) <<<< why you would turned off ?
Sub out Low-pass frequency : 100hz (40-250hz)
Sub gain : 0db
sub polarity : +

Settings to my sub directly :

Low pass filter (crossover) : disable
Volume : 50%
Phase : 0

I think it's more accurate, better, and if i increase the Sub gain to +5db, more bass, but always accurate, very good.

What do you think ?
 
Thank you, new test today ,

Bass Extension : Normal
High-pass frequency : 80Hz (50-120Hz) <<<< why you would turned off ?
Sub out Low-pass frequency : 100hz (40-250hz)
Sub gain : 0db
sub polarity : +

Settings to my sub directly :

Low pass filter (crossover) : disable
Volume : 50%
Phase : 0

I think it's more accurate, better, and if i increase the Sub gain to +5db, more bass, but always accurate, very good.

What do you think ?

Re: the high pass - it's because I have found in my experiences that having the speakers run full range with the subwoofer sounds better. The idea is that more low frequency sources inside the room improves the bass. See this article: https://mehlau.net/audio/multisub_geddes/

You can experiment of course. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary :)
 
There are definitely many schools of thought on that topic. Using the high pass filter increases system headroom and allows those 5" drivers to play in their "sweet spot" and the speakers will go louder with lower distortion.
 
There are definitely many schools of thought on that topic. Using the high pass filter increases system headroom and allows those 5" drivers to play in their "sweet spot" and the speakers will go louder with lower distortion.

I high pass my LS50’s at 42hz. I’ve found this still retains some of their hefty bottom end but then I don’t get the distortion if pushed loud. Not really a noticeable high pass, more of a protection and headroom thing and it sounds great still.
 
Hi... My LS50's are in with KEF USA right now for review and repair. Story - Was dropping the new Jack White vinyl on my old B&O. Noticed right from the start terrific drive movement. Let it play and within moments seemed to have lost highs. omg. Did some further testing to confirm speakers , amp (Vincent MK2) which were the issue. Spoke with the local KEF rep and he noted that the slow drive flop (60hz) usually indicates missing ground on the turntable. Bingo. He did get me an RA and they are now in KEF's hands.
Has anyone had a similar issue? Or had speakers go to KEF repair? I miss them.
Additionally, I find that for music they are perfect for me. But video (movies) they do not respond well. Bass (explosions,etc) overpowers the driver and produces a bad driver flop. Am I doing something wrong?
REL T/7i is part of the system as well. Thanks
 
Purchased my LS50 wireless/active speakers about a year ago. When KEF released an available firmware adjustment to allow the control speaker to be moved from the right to the left, I did this because my setup really demanded it. Since I've felt that the sound doesn't seem quite the same. Sometimes i think the audio is a bit out of balance (favoring the right or left speaker...but never the same one every time) and staging is a bit more narrow. All of this could possibly be other issues (speaker positioning, issues with the actual recordings...). But wondering what other peoples experiences have been with flipping the speakers. Were there any other adjustments that you needed to make in the app? Any signs of the observations i've described?
 
Hi... My LS50's are in with KEF USA right now for review and repair. Story - Was dropping the new Jack White vinyl on my old B&O. Noticed right from the start terrific drive movement. Let it play and within moments seemed to have lost highs. omg. Did some further testing to confirm speakers , amp (Vincent MK2) which were the issue. Spoke with the local KEF rep and he noted that the slow drive flop (60hz) usually indicates missing ground on the turntable. Bingo. He did get me an RA and they are now in KEF's hands.
Has anyone had a similar issue? Or had speakers go to KEF repair? I miss them.
Additionally, I find that for music they are perfect for me. But video (movies) they do not respond well. Bass (explosions,etc) overpowers the driver and produces a bad driver flop. Am I doing something wrong?
REL T/7i is part of the system as well. Thanks
Haven't posted for awhile. My system is in storage, while we rehab our new to us old house. I miss my boxes, but I am enjoying everyone's posts. I think I can help on this one. You have a solid subwoofer, but I suspect you crossover at the same level for movies as you do for music. Might I suggest you adjust your crossover on the process amp or by whatever method to raise it from the usual 60-80Hz, to 100-125Hz. The Rel should be able to go that high, and the LS50s will be better able to handle the soundtrack, unless you're overdriving them on the high end of course. Kef may be able to tell you what type of failure occurred, and that also might be a clue. For myself, when I was set up my system (5 LS50s in front in a 7.1.2 system) is crossed over at 80hz for movies, and 60hz for music, which is pretty easy to do with my Yamaha RX-A3060. Hope you get your speakers back soon. I know I sure miss mine.
Cheers, Chris
 
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