BBC LS5/9 Link...

[DSJR]

I have been threatened with some LS5/9 speakers in "tatty black" but with an instruction not to plonk them straight on ebay as soon as I have them. If this happens and I'm lucky enough to have them, it'll be in the summer before I can get them, but I thought I'd do some research first, as I'd not heard especially wonderful things about them when compared with the larger active LS5/8's, which apparently are more forgiving.

Now apparently, these were designed as best quality "Grade 1" monitors and the link below specifically mentions how transparent these speakers can be. Apparently the Quad 405-2 was deemed "acceptable" for driving purposes.

http://www.mhennessy3.f9.co.uk/rogers/ls59.htm

Finally, the comments regarding the passive crossover are very interesting, in spite of the "active always better" scenario, at the time of the design (early 80's?), the readily available amps weren't judged good enough, the passive crossover being good enough to present an easy load and be as transparent to the signal as necessary for a high class monitor. Even so, the sonics seem to be judged as too revealing for many recordings, so my jury's out on that one ;)

I'll have to see if my mate has got them home now and compared them with his Spendor SP2/3's yet..:)

[hifi_dave]

Mmmmmm interesting. When are you getting these ?

Be illuminating comparing them with the Harbeth M30, which is 'a drop in replacement for the LS5/9'.

[DSJR]

I wasn't going to mention the "drop-in-replacements" as yet.

Apparently and according to the site linked to, the ATC SCM20SL's are better, "old" Vifa tweeter and all, which just about gets me back to 1992 :( - Oh alright, the SL versions didn't appear until 1996 or so, but I've had active 20's in pro boxes since then... :( :(

[Barry]

Nice one Dave, they look good. Certainly more versatile than the LS5/8, which required the use of the AM8/16 power amplifier: a Rogers-Swisstone modified Quad 405.

Dave, if you don't get on with them - you can always sell them to me! :eyebrows:

Regards

[Welder]

While it’s great you’re getting some new/different speakers and I’m sure they’ll sound very nice and all that, some of what you’ve written and some of what I’ve read on the site you linked to is a bit concerning. I’ll probably have to spend more time behind the sofa for what may appear as wanton pissing on this particular parade, but it would be soooooo nice if just for a change some realism crept into the audiophiles vocabulary when talking about products.

First I would suggest that the very notion of a transparent passive crossover is nonsense. A passive crossover does more damage to the audio signal than any other component in the audio chain. It’s pretty much rule 1 in speaker building; the only good crossover is no crossover, everything else is a compromise and with a passive crossover the compromises are large, no matter how well designed.
So, it would be helpful imo if the HI Fi showroom sales descriptions of audio equipment were left in the showroom. Something either is or it isn’t transparent, everything else has degrees of opacity.
Next, the notion that only quad amps were of sufficient quality to drive such speakers.
What’s that all about then? It may well be true that the combination of quad and BBCLS5/9 produced a pleasing sound but I find it hard to believe that no other manufacturer of that time made amps that were all of a lesser quality and unsuitable to drive what is a pile of electronic components and a few transducers.

Then there is this;

“Even so, the sonics seem to be judged as too revealing for many recordings, so my jury's out on that one ”
What sort of nonsense is that? Are we to assume from this that speakers with inbuilt distortion will sound okay with some recordings and the object of good speaker building is to hide poor recordings?

My appologies if this is all a bit blunt.

[DSJR]

No, it's just me not being able to place my thoughts clearly!

All things being great, active will ALWAYS be better, I fully appreciate that, but in the real world, not everything is IMO. In the 80's, it would appear that the main amps the BBC had were more like PA types than HiFi grade (I'm not sure I could live with a standard HH power amp at home, let alone a "virgin" Amcron/Crown D150A (which couldn't take the active crossover board inside anyway), and I can vouch that back then, there was a large difference as components and especially transistors, didn't seem to be as well matched as standard as today. The 405-2 is merely "acceptable" - hang on a minute before blowing my head off - as hard driven, it runs frighteningly hot (both mine did), the supply caps used to leak fairly quickly under such conditions and I understand that the electronic crossover was shoehorned in, causing the failure of one of the amps in the article on the 5/8's.

I hope "we" can praise the basic design of the 405 series, as today, and with a little careful fettling, the performance is very good, both on the bench and to the ears. The 606 and 707, had they been available then, would have been far better I think...

As for active vs passive - this is where the "art of sound" of tweaking a speaker design comes in I think. All the active speakers I've heard have an innate clarity that will reproduce the source recording fed them with precision. Sometimes, this can be too much, as many commercial recordings are so flawed, like the brick-walled pap on offer to the multi-mic'd orchestral disasters of the 70's.. For HOME listening, possibly something a little gentler on the ears could be considered.

When I finally sold the ATC 20 Pro's, I compared them extensively with a pair of Croft Series 7 driven Harbeth P3ESR's. Firstly, the sealed and over-damped ATC bass either was lacking, thinning out timbres, or a one-note thump when the built-in bass control was advanced a couple of notches. The Harbeths were no less extended and more "tuneful" here and didn't lose a huge amount in volume either. The midrange was directly comparable - and I thought the "SL" mid to be far better than the non SL passive 20's I had (and better than the non SL 100A's I owned and loved). This I hope to be a credit to the bass-mid driver in the P3ESR's as the Croft was looking into a passive crossover first. As for the treble region, the Harbeths passive setup totally mullered the Vifa spitter in the ATC's. This pair of ATC's had always had more sparkle than my 100A's had, so I don't think the ten years had aged them overmuch. Different preamps didn't change the balance overmuch either. In contrast, the metal-dome tweeter *implementation* in the P3ESR's gave a wonderful timbre to cymbals, the slight "sweetness" there infinitely preferable to the scratchy spit from the ATC's.

To be fair to ATC, they changed the tweeter in the early noughties and I understand another change is immanent to a type that is physically backward compatible with the Vifa.

If you've groaned this far ;) I should add that we're all hopefully allowed to change our perspectives as we get older. In the early to mid 90's, for me, absolute accuracy of timbre and dynamic range was of vital importance and the big ATC's could do this better than most other speaker systems available in the UK (Tannoy weren't playing their big models in the UK back then with any enthusiasm - bit like today really...;)) - PMC didn't then have a large dealer network and the likes of MB1's and BB5's etc were pro market only then. Today, I listen at generally very low volumes, my ears are shot when it comes to loud shrill sounds (that rules out kans 'briks and Saras for ever now :lol:) and I heave a sigh of relief when I relax into the BC2's and their full bodied tones. I suspect the 5/9's will be better in the upper mid to lower treble.

The thing is, and especially for small to middling sized speakers where there is more compromise on efficiency vs bass I think, there *has* been great progress, especially due to far-eastern drivers which have been designed by the best European engineers. The superiority of the classic drivers designed by the Beeb (and often made by Rogers and Dalesford?) may have been eroded by cheaper models now.

Maybe I've got it wrong and it's been suggested (by someone with a commercial interest in supplying drop-in replacements) that surviving and working LS5/9's may not be anywhere near optimum by now. This remains to be seen, but I'll look forward to finding out. If my system is good enough to get them working well, then it will be worth having the cabinets repaired and possibly re-veneered as black-ash isn't my scene..

[Welder]

I didn’t mean to blow your head off Dave.
It’s just I’ve read and heard a lot recently about the quest and adulation of the flat response speaker. A great deal of emphasis seems to be placed on what is imo a not very important feature of a loudspeaker for home audio listening. I went to a great deal of trouble to make my speakers for example, not flat in response.
A speaker with a deviation of less than 1db from 20Hz to 20kHz may seem wonderful and this is the measurement often quoted as an indication of a speakers performance, but what happened to polar response or time alignment, matched impedance etc etc which can all if correctly implemented make a speaker much more comfortable to listen to.
Just having a rant really. I’ve been unfortunate enough to spend a couple of mornings recently in Hi Fi shops with a friend and the level of irrelevant bullshit I’ve had to endure is quite astonishing.
The final straw for my mates patience with me was when the salesman assured me he had listened to a lot of speakers with the combination my mate was interested in and I piped up “I’ve shagged a lot of women but I still know fuck all about them”.
I won’t be going with him next trip :eyebrows:

[Marco]

The final straw for my mates patience with me was when the salesman assured me he had listened to a lot of speakers with the combination my mate was interested in and I piped up “I’ve shagged a lot of women but I still know fuck all about them”.


:lolsign:

Being serious for a moment, and getting back on topic, I think that the term 'balance of compromises' here is rather apt. If we all agree that there is no such thing as a 'perfect' loudspeaker, then all we're doing in effect is choosing our own set of compromises, or preferred 'sonic signature'.

In that respect, as much as the arguments for active speaker designs are very persuasive and undeniably logical, I've yet to hear any such designs I'd swap for my modified Tannoy Lockwood Majors (and I know ATC speakers rather well), as quite simply, to my ears they just don't sound as real or believable with music as the Lockwoods, despite the latter having 'sonically detrimental' passive crossovers.

The same goes for my Celestion Studio 66 Monitors - a more seamlessly integrated, musically entrancing pair of speakers you're scarcely likely to hear, and they ain't active either! ;)

Somehow active designs suck some of the life out of the music, but manage to sound exceptionally 'clean', if a little 'stark'. But like I've said, none that I've heard so far engage me in the music anything like as successfully as the Celestions or Tannoys.

It's rather like the effect of an active preamp... Technically, if one is using a high-output digital source, it isn't needed, but anytime I've compared a passive preamp (and some very good ones, too) to my Croft, they've also sucked the life out of the music, sounding distinctly 'flat' and two-dimensional in comparison.

I suspect that correct impedance matching is ultimately more important than complicating the signal path, providing that it's thus only 'complicated' by the introduction of high quality components, which are as sonically transparent as possible - the norm inside a top-notch preamp.

Therefore, basically, with all aspects of audio, active vs. passive speakers included, there are no absolutes. It's simply a case of choosing your compromises and letting your ears be the final arbiter, rather than becoming bogged down with scientific theories which purport to provide the 'ultimate solution'. Dogmatic absolutism and an obsession with measurements have so much to answer for in our hobby! :rolleyes:

Rarely in audio is there ever the existence of a 'univerally correct' solution to solve any problem, simply because there are too many variables to consider (and address) in different circumstances in order for such a solution to exist.

Marco.

[MartinT]

It's rather like the effect of an active preamp... Technically, if one is using a high-output digital source, it isn't needed, but anytime I've compared a passive preamp (and some very good ones, too) to my Croft, they've also sucked the life out of the music, sounding distinctly 'flat' and two-dimensional in comparison.

For me too. I ran a passive setup for a while and it was all sweet and delicate but it had no balls. The role of the preamp in a system I think is greatly misunderstood and contributes enormously to the end result. I've had some very high end preamps in my system from Krell and BAT with average results. It takes a very special preamp to retain absolute transparency and yet still drive the power amp with structure and authority.

[Marco]

I ran a passive setup for a while and it was all sweet and delicate but it had no balls.


Totally agree, Martin. "No balls" is *precisely* what is wrong with every passive preamp I've heard to date, when compared with a top-notch active design.

You gain sometimes in areas such as sweetness and delicacy (and lower noisefloor), but lose out big time in terms of dynamics and drive.

Marco.

[DSJR]

Oh marco, you crack me up :lol:

Before condemning actives as sapping the life out of the music, get a good LOUD listen to these and then tell me this ;)

http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q8/DSJR_photos/3f4fc847.jpg

Just 'cos the main active speaker that's had far too much mention in fairly recent times is a small two way with a 6.5" driver (which has had a couple of upgrades (the main one retro-fittable) since launch), doesn't tar all active monitors the same. The huge PMC's are summat to behold as well and make practically all domestic passive models sound like cheap kids toys.

If you want a bit of dramatic spice with your active listening, I suggest the Adams will be the best bet.

By the way, decent "active" line buffers should be sonically invisible as long as the input impedance is high enough (not always on a ss circuit) and the current capacity and low output impedance should be such that it can drive longish lengths of cables with ease.

[kt66]

Have used Rogers LS5/9 on and off for 20 years, in between I had 57s but
always kept the 5/9s

They are the best box speaker I have ever heard, they laugh at Spendors,
look down through their noses at ATCs and eat 805s for breakfast.

About 10 years ago I had money to burn,and thought there must be something better, and took my speakers to a dealer and put them up against their best standmounters. I was determined to get some new speakers, and it was frankly embarassing.

Since they have been rewired with VDH, and I now use Epos open frame stands.

My visit to the show on Saturday just confirmed what I already knew.

However if I had the room and the money I would probably have ATC300s
or Harbeth 40.1 passive, but I haven't.

[Reid Malenfant]

Oh marco, you crack me up :lol:

Before condemning actives as sapping the life out of the music, get a good LOUD listen to these and then tell me this ;)
Ummm, my guess is that if Marco heard his Tannoys powered by a couple of his copper amps & the passive xover removed & replaced with some kind of valve active xover he'd never look back :D

[DSJR]

Yep, I wholeheartedly agree. trouble is, his noggin would be the size of a large planet if he did that :) - probably rightly so :D

[Marco]

Hahaha... Very good, chaps, and I don't disagree.... :eyebrows:

But, Dave, you must start reading things properly, daftee chops! I wasn't "condemning actives"; merely stating that so far I haven't heard any (including some big ATCs and PMCs) that I'd swap my Lockwoods (or even Celestions) for.

That is simply a cold hard fact, not "condemning actives". I say that mainly because I'd NEVER sell my copper amp and go back to solid-state. First of all, because the copper amp is a very special totally unique amplifier, and secondly because I much prefer how valves (when done properly) reproduce music.

Now if I could activate my Lockwoods, as you've described, then it would be a different ball game altogether, and *that* would defo piss all over any of yer ATCs!! :lol: :ner:

Marco.