KEF LS50 Meta! Worthy of HYPE?

I notice that GR's frequency response measurement is somewhat less flattering than Stereophile's. It makes me suspicious that Stereophile is doing some flattening or "smoothing" of the response that GR doesn't.

If I had this speaker, I would just remove the driver and completely rebuild the rest - the box and the crossover.

Heck rip the internal crossovers out and make a pretty external crossover

Video summary: I really do not like this speaker, BUT HERE, come and see the speakers I am selling! Keep your critical thinking caps on folks!

It does not matter what it lookslike on paper if it sounds like a polished turd! 3 out of 4 people I know that have purchased these have returned them or resold them often at a loss!

They sound like someone put a good driver into a coffee can and then stuffed wet towel over it and put the most gratting tweeter on top pointing right at you!

THe KEF LS50 is one of the worst sounding speakers I have heard in modern times. I just heard the KEF R3 and it sounds just as terrible. It is gratting, fatiguing, harsh and no lows and no texture or warm to the sound even when it is in the recording. If you gave me a pair for free I would not even sell them to someone else I would do the world a favor take the lose and use them for fire wood! Nothing with that type of source point coaxial design sounds like anything but garbage and you can get much better sound out of a more conventional design. Did you actual try listening to these for a few hours? Your ears will feel like they are bleeding and you will have a headache!

A peak at about 5 khz is maybe what he was talking about being harsh. Danny could make a notch filter and alligator clip it to the crossover (if poss). 😂

From just an objective, technical aspect, I totally respect KEF LS50 Meta for what my hearing considers their "neutral" sound. Yet just on a subjective level, some hearers love that and some like myself hate that. And that's ok.

You could do an external crossover.

no glasses this time? I miss the glasses on/of cycle 100 times lol.

System matching is critical. What amp has the guy with the kefs using. i have heard kef reference speakers costing thousands use the electrolytic caps they wouldn't make the speaker sound bright .
Tell the customer to buy a warmer weighted amplifer at a sub, etc

LOL

When he soon says something to the effect of 'I've measured the Q100 and Q150, same driver', that tells me right away that he doesn't know what he's talking about. They may look to be similar drivers, but I know that all 3 speakers have different driver builds in addition to the cabinets and crossover networks.

So I’m very curious, I’ve got a pair of super tweeters that I’m not using now, do you think they could help compliment the LS50 if dialed in properly?

Meta in air quotes?

We want you to go through kef r series! 😁

Why does first graph start at 200 Hz? What happens from 20 - 200 Hz on the stock product?

Your comments about this speaker match my impressions. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single review out there that mentions the vocals sounding slightly veiled and laid back but that’s exactly what I’m hearing.

Yeah to me any speaker presenting a bump in the 3 to 5 Khz region is automatically a no go, makes it fatiguing and annoying. When looking at this graph i immediately think « oof i never wanna listen to it »

Thats why you see so many of the older version of this speaker for sale, they are to bright! They sound fantastic at first listen like many of today's speakers. They have elevated highs and mids.

Sir kindly share crosover values i am very thankful

The frequency response just cuts everything above 18khz. The LS50 is much better especially with rew where you can get a razor flat response. The meta tech just redirects the high end to the back of the tweeter. This is a case where they just wanted to keep selling their most popular box and just changed up with the response curve and presented different as better even if it's not as accurate or pleasant.

You are the only person that doesn’t recommend this speaker

if you want to work on a awsome nugget, try get a KEF ACE 9000 center L/R. / its from the earlye 2005s, such a unique HT speaker, i had a 3 front they was awesome, very much.
if i remeber correct it had. a active carbonfiber pod inside something something. big sound from a thin speaker. and used the Q series top range units.

/

You can find information how to tweak the KEF LS50 (no Meta) when searching for "KEF LS50 Tonfeile Pimp" and "Pimp my KEF LS50" (all in German). It provides information how to open the cabinet by removing the front baffle via 4 screws from the back (may be different on the Meta version?), a suggestion for an alternative bass driver crossover and some nice pictures showing the build and parts quality. I recently shortly listened to the LS50 Meta and was not 100% satisfied, especially cabinet vibrations where a little bit disappointing to me, maybe it is because the front baffle seems not be screwed instead of glued to the cabinet.

The cap on the tweeter is a little too big. Lower it 1-2uf and it will bring that hump at 4-6k hz down. Then, a 15 deg off axis listening position should be recommended imo.

The offaxis response is not good at all. That alone makes it a nogo for me.

While this speaker and the standard Kef LS-50 seems to get a lot of praise, they also get a lot of dislikes too and this is from quite a few well known reviewers here on YT. I am going to say that I am a very frugal person and I have been made quite aware of the hi-end audio industry and that you don't always get what you pay for and one of the big areas this holds true is with speakers. While I had been an advocate of concentric cone speakers in the past, it seems there are a lot of audiophiles that don't like them. I had come across Tannoy in the recording studio realm and liked those, but couldn't justify the cost. I am very much a believer that you can get good sound without having to spend a fortune. So teaming that up with what I said before about not getting what you pay for. I am very much against very high priced audio equipment. Save for a a few decent companies out there, many take you for a ride. While I knew this early on, I had seen one of your videos in which a $6000 pair of speakers had a crap crossover in it and the cabinet had some reflection issues. So that right there confirms that fact. Also, you did a review on a $2200 Focal speaker and it had a lot of issues. When you pulled the tweeter out, it looked like a rinky dink Radio Shack tweeter! In the past, I did hold KEF in high regard, but it seems as if their value has gone down. Namely these LS-50s sell for around $1500 and I do admit I have trouble when it comes to spending more than $650 on a set of bookshelf speakers. It was my wondering WHY these cost so much when I came across the negative reviews. In fact, many that didn't like the sound of these speakers, preferred the sound of the Q-150, of which costs FAR less than these. I did see your review and upgrade of those and even though the parts for the upgrade are expensive, buying the Q-150''s and your parts still costs less than what the LS-50's go for. It does seem to me that companies that I once held in high regard such as Focal and KEF are now becoming "Troll" manufacturers and are overcharging for their speakers. Some people just drop so much money on what these companies ask for, and for what? They maybe get a marginal improvement in sound. It seems the higher you go in price, the less the improvement is. By right these LS-50s, which sell for $1500 should 5 times better than the Q-150, but that isn't the case. Given your measurements, I don't even think the improvement in sound would be twice as good. So why waste your money. Another case in point was when you upgraded a pair of Sony SSCS5 speakers. The point was made that the upgrade costs more than the speakers do new, but for under $400, you ended up with a really nice speaker.

The owner complaint that the speakers are fatiguing. I listened to Danny but I don't think he really addressed this 'issue'. Danny mentions that it's a little veiled and the treble is rolled-off but nothing points towards a fatiguing speaker. Did I miss something?

What other speakers do you suggest.
I use to have the older 104. With macintosh mc275 and it sounded quite good. For the price point maybe better B&W ?

Just watched this again. My original LS50s are in a closet and periodically I pull them out them out and listen to them. As Danny noted in the review, they have some clarity issues (at least to my ears) so I go back to my 1st "home-built" X-LS speakers.

They look fabulous and no doubt use high quality parts. I bought them based on the highly praised reviews but i was highly unimpressed with their uninvolving sound. I guess its down to personal preference.

It's because we're searching for the holy grail which is impossible to find ( no speaker is perfect).

It is amazing that you the only reviewer that does not agree with everyone else. Who is right, your ears or the other 20 guys ears?

Anders Ertzeid from Hegel uses those with a H590 in his personal system so they must be doing something right 😅

great video.. external would be nice for that.. have always looked at these.. but meh.

I am in no way any where near qualified to give a solution to what makes this speaker good ... Correct me if I'm wrong , the factors to evaluate a speakers performance should be the amp, the source component(s) and the music production.. (short of the internal components) I'm a cd person and all cd's are not created equal.. the engineering in all cd's are very different.. One may sound great on that speaker and another may not live up to the same.. Change amps change cd players and change cd's and you will get a totally different sound

I bought these as a replacment for my Q150s....i cant listen to the metas for no more than 2 hours..the Q150 i can listen to for 4 hours plus no problem..i just prefer the sound of the Qs

Something tells me some of the older KEF’s from the 90’s probably sound better than these… seems like there are much more competitive options for the $ these days

Do you have any speaker you like? All negative things. Why don't you start a speaker company? Even with a same speaker, some likes it, and some don't. Are you fall in love with your woman after you measuring her specs?

Started with @ HPM-100 review
from you..
Now I just watch random videos about by-passing and cross overs 🤣🤣🤣 for Fun

KEF, like B&W and others, expect you to buy their ultra flagship models if you want the BEST crossover networks WiTHOUT CHEESE. You'd have to buy the KEF BLADE at $30,000 plus to get a high-quality crossover network that matches the quality of Danny's, GR Research/NX Series speakers!

Did Danny ever address the customer's original complaint about the speaker causing listening fatigue ? Obviously, in this case a flat response is not what the customer wanted to hear.

It would be better to go active. Some miniDSP or jfet based discrete active crossover (N.Pass designed some, avail. on diyaudio) would sound much better than what they did.

Can these also be used as centre speaker along side left and and right LS 50 Meta’s and would you recommend that or would you recommend another centre that could go well with L/R LS 50 Meta. My other option is the Dali Opticon 2 stand mount and Dali Opticon Vocal Centre. Many thanks.

That's what noticed about the vocals sound of this speaker. It's slightly veiled and muffled. Completely different from my Sonus Faber speakers which are lovely with vocals. Now I know the culprit. Thanks for sharing that information with us. Good job.

Wow, saying how a speaker sounds without listening to it! Interesting! Kef spent years designing this speaker. Many give it excellent reviews, After Listening to IT!

Can you look at dynaudio focus 140?

Interesting review but there are several obvious problems. At the top of the list is the uncritical acceptance of a single users anecdotal reports of listener fatigue. Then there is the more serious problem that the frequency response curves that he shows don't really line up very well with other folks measurements particularly Atkinson at Stereophile who is still the best in the business, who does not show quite that degree of treble roll-off nor does his testing show the mid treble shelf, which frankly is more likely a potential cause of listener fatigue. But Atkinson's testing doesn't show really much of either of those issues nor do other reviewers complain about listener fatigue, so once again, he has not really established correlations between the anecdotal reports and what he's measuring. Additionally and certainly a problem for many audiophiles, he uncritically accepts popular memes about putative audible characteristics related to certain crossover parts, memes which have not been held to or validated in double blind testing. This guy knows a lot but not as much as he thinks. And clearly not as much as the KEF design team esp. the head of the team Oclee-Brown who is an electrical and acoustic genius.