Hi-Fi Hall of Fame
2024 Inductee
KEF LS50 Speaker
Introduction
KEF is a British company that has been building Hi-Fi speakers for more than sixty years. It was founded in Maidstone, Kent, England in 1961 by a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) engineer named Raymond Cooke.
The company was named after its birthplace, Kent Engineering and Foundry, and continues its legacy of innovation to this day. The company still does research and development and manufacturing of its core products at the same location.
In 2012, to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary, KEF launched a new speaker called the “LS50”. It was a compact, two-way speaker with superb performance and beautiful aesthetics, and has been a best seller and an award winner ever since. The KEF LS50 is our next nominee for induction to the Hi-Fi Hall of Fame.
KEF LS50 Origin, Design, and Performance
The history of the KEF LS50 likely began in the early 1970s, when the BBC developed a compact studio monitor loudspeaker for use in their outside broadcast vans. Called the LS3/5A, it wasn’t much bigger than a shoebox, but despite its small size, it produced a clear and natural sound.
The LS3/5A employed a pair of KEF drivers; a 110mm woofer (the KEF B110) and a 19mm dome tweeter (the KEF T27). It was built to an exacting BBC specification, and while it couldn’t produce deep bass due to its small size, its sound quality captured the hearts of audiophiles.
Although originally intended just for use as a studio monitor, the BBC decided to make the LS3/5A available to the public by licensing the design to a number of manufacturers. Companies such as Rogers (later acquired by Swisstone), Spendor, Harbeth, and even KEF manufactured the speakers under license for more than 20 years, eventually selling upwards of 100,000 pairs of speakers worldwide. Unfortunately, KEF ceased production of those drivers, making it impossible to continue production, and the “official” LS3/5A is no longer available.
With KEF’s 50th anniversary approaching, executives there decided they wanted to produce a speaker to celebrate the occasion. It would be called the “LS50”, and it would be a 2-way mini-monitor in the spirit of the LS3/5A, but using the latest technologies, materials, and engineering principles.
KEF had already introduced a superb coincident source speaker technology called “Uni-Q” in 1988. A Uni-Q driver places the tweeter at the acoustic center of the woofer/midrange to mimic a single point source of sound, much like how we hear natural noises. It was decided to use a Uni-Q driver in the LS50. A suitable cabinet and crossover network were developed, and the KEF LS50 was born!
The LS50 was a superb performer, and received many positive reviews and awards from prestigious organizations. The LS50 was reasonably priced and delivered excellent, precise sound, especially in smaller spaces.
Evolution of the KEF LS50
Since that original design was released in 2012, the KEF LS50 has gone through a number of revisions and transformations. In 2017, KEF introduced a wireless version called the “LS50 Wireless”. The LS50 Wireless was designed for audiophiles who wanted the convenience of a wireless Hi-Fi system without sacrificing sound quality.
The LS50 Wireless has built-in amplifiers and can stream music from various sources such as Apple AirPlay 2, Google Chromecast, and Bluetooth. It also offers wired connections for TVs, game consoles, and even turntables. It employs the same Uni-Q driver technology as the LS50 to produce a wide, natural soundstage.
In 2020, KEF pioneered the use of a new technology called “Metamaterial Absorption Technology” (MAT) in speaker design. MAT employs a maze-like structure, where each of the channels efficiently absorbs a specific frequency. This structure absorbs unwanted sound radiating from the rear of the driver, reducing distortion and unwanted resonances.
KEF decided to use this new MAT technology to develop improved versions of both the LS50 and the LS50 Wireless. Both new speakers were released in 2020. The new wired speaker was renamed as the “LS50 Meta”. The speaker is essentially the same size and weight as the original LS50, but it incorporates a new 12th generation Uni-Q driver and employs a MAT disc inside the cabinet. The LS50 Meta won a “2022 Product of the Year” award from British publication What Hi-Fi.
The new wireless version was called the LS50 Wireless II. In addition to the new Uni-Q driver and MAT, it was upgraded over the original model with a new smartphone app called “KEF Connect”, support for more streaming services, support for multi-room streaming, and more powerful internal amplifiers. The LS50 Wireless II won a “Best Product” award from EISA (Expert Imaging and Sound Association), and a “Product of the Year” award from What Hi-Fi.
If you’d like more information on the KEF LS50 Meta or KEF LS50 Wireless II, they each have detailed descriptions on the KEF website, here are links:
If you’d like to read the history of the KEF Loudspeaker company, here’s a link:
Induction to the Hi-Fi Hall of Fame
The KEF LS50 has only been around since 2012 but it already has become something of a Hi-Fi classic. The original 2012 model was a superb performer, and was certainly a worthy successor to the LS3/5A which was the inspiration for the speaker.
The newer versions of the KEF LS50, including the 2017 “Wireless” and the 2020 “Meta” and “Wireless II” models, raised the performance bar even higher, delivering superb sound in a sleek, modern enclosure. In the right room, with the right source material, it would be hard to produce a significantly better sound at any price point.
For being a worthy successor to the iconic LS3/5A, for delivering superb sound from a small enclosure, and for raising the bar with new technologies and top quality build quality, the KEF LS50 speaker is inducted into the Hi-Fi Hall of Fame.
