Recording - March 2018 - 34

KEF

LS50W Powered
MusicSystem
A monitoring system for the
21st-Century home studio

REVIEW BY MIKE METLAY
EF has been around for a good long while, but
it's been several years since we've featured one
of this company's exceptional coaxial monitors in
our pages. Back in July 2013, Lorenz Rychner reviewed
the KEF LS50, a coaxial passive monitor that he lauded
for its exceptional clarity and detail.
In this case, the W stands for Wireless-the LS50W
takes the tried-and-true LS50 cabinet (still available
for $1299.99/pair, not including a power amp) and
adds onboard amplification and intelligence to bring it
into the world of the modern home listener... or home
recording musician.

The tried and true

The LS50W is, at its heart, an LS50, but for those of you who
don't have our July 2013 issue laying around, I'll sum up the details.
It's a 2-way monitor with a driver array that KEF calls Uni-Q. In the
LS50 and LS50W, that's a 1" (25mm) aluminum dome tweeter with
unique vent blades, mounted within a 5.25" (130mm) magnesium/
aluminum alloy woofer. KEF likes to call Uni-Q a 'coincident' array
rather than merely coaxial; the two drivers are also coplanar, ensuring the tightest possible time alignment between them.
The Uni-Q driver array lives inside a solid and nonresonant
cabinet with a diffusive front baffle and a large oval bass
reflex port on the back. Frequency response at the high end is
an impressive 28 kHz (flat ±3 dB) and 47 kHz (down 6 dB);
I'll discuss the low-end response below.
High-quality all-metal woofers are hard to build, but the
folks at KEF are experts by now. The LS50W drivers provide
serious bass and shimmering highs, all with exceptionally
rapid transient response. They're a joy to listen to, and the
new LS50W design places them within an integrated system
that's very much in line with modern home studios' needs.

The sparkly and new

It's fairly obvious from the literature provided by KEF that the
LS50W represents a design philosophy that may be new and
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RECORDING March 2018

strange to old-school audiophiles
who are used to analog component stereo systems with separate
receiver, amplifier/s, and speakers. For those of us who have been
working in modern music production environments, however, the LS50W feature set gives a solid feeling of satisfaction-just about everything that should be there, is there.
It's not revolutionary, but it's well-thought-out and delivers the goods as
a professional would expect... and that's all one could ask for.
First and foremost, the LS50W is a powered monitor. The drivers are paired with a biamplified system that offers 30W for the
tweeter and a whopping 200W for the woofer. This gives a maximum rated output of 106 dB SPL-way too loud for sustained
listening (unless tinnitus makes you smile) but offering plenty of
headroom for clean transients when monitoring at more sensible
levels. That seems to be what KEF has in mind, given that many of
the LS50W's specs are quoted at a reference level of 85 dB SPL
at a range of 1 meter, which is on the high side for me personally,
but perfectly within safe limits for a few hours a day.
Second, the LS50W offers a wide variety of connection options,
some of which were basically science fiction five years ago. The
left speaker has no rear-panel controls other than a Balance trimpot that one should usually leave centered; it connects via Ethernet
to the right speaker, which has a USB connection for a Mac or PC,
a Toslink optical input, a second Ethernet port for use with an audio network, and unbalanced analog inputs on RCA (with an RCA
subwoofer output as well). The system is also Bluetooth-friendly
and can switch between 8 different wireless audio sources. About
the only thing missing is a balanced analog input pair, whether on
XLR or 1/4" TRS.

Controlling the speakers

Speaker EQ is kept simple: a pair of buttons let you choose
between Stand and Desk placement (the latter dipping the low
mids to account for tabletop bounce) and Free Space vs. Wall
mounting (the latter rolling off the lows to compensate for bass
reinforcement due to placement near a wall).

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - March 2018