John Darko
The LS3/5a speaker (€2500/pair) from Musical Fidelity is a two-way standmount speaker whose portless design and compact dimensions might mean – for once – it could work as a bona fide bookshelf speaker. Time has told us that ‘bookshelf’ loudspeakers usually require placement on stands to sit away from the front wall. Musical Fidelity offers a bespoke open-frame stand for the LS3/5a but I don’t have a pair — yet. Instead, I am using the Solid Steel SS6 whose top plate is a perfect fit for the LS3/5a’s width but too deep for its shallow cabinet.
Setting the LS3/5a apart from its competition is a long and complicated history. The first models date back to the 1970s when the BBC wanted a mini monitor to use in its outside broadcast vans. You can read the BBC’s white paper here but the brief was for nearfield listening in small rooms with a strong focus on the accurate reproduction of the human voice. Low bass was not on the agenda. The BBC’s stringent specifications included – but were not limited to – cabinet dimensions that ran 30.5cm high, x 19cm wide x 16.5cm deep, a 12cm thick birch ply cabinet, a 1.9cm Mylar dome tweeter and 11cm Bextrene mid/bass driver.
LS3/5a production was licensed to a range of British loudspeaker manufacturers who would make the speaker according to those specifications using drivers manufactured by KEF. We’re talking Rogers, Spendor, Chartwell, Harbeth, Goodmans and KEF themselves who, over time, caused the LS3/5a to cross over into the home hi-fi space to become a cult favourite. That cultdom was strengthened in the late 1990s when KEF discontinued LS3/5a driver production to set its future adrift.
Bye-bye LS3/5a? Not quite.
Stirling Broadcast picked up a fresh BBC licence for LS3/5a production in 2005 but used SEAS and Scanspeak drivers. A new crossover design reportedly helped those drivers mimic the original’s sound. Ten years later, Falcon Acoustics became an official LS3/5a licensee with an ace up its sleeve: the company has one Malcolm Jones on staff as a Technical Consultant. Jones worked on the original KEF driver design and manufacturing, thus allowing Falcon Acoustics to manufacture new-production drivers within a whisker of KEF’s originals — so close that the original crossover design reportedly only needed minor tweaks to bring the whole thing together.
It would be remiss of me not to mention Rogers and Graham Audio who also make modern-day LS3/5a speaker designs; but our focus today is Musical Fidelity’s LS3/5a, one of the many new products coming to market since Pro-Ject’s Heinz Lichtenegger bought the (formerly) British brand in 2018.
Don’t be put off by the 82.5dB sensitivity rating as a nominal impedance of 15 Ohms – just like the original – makes these LS3/5a an easy-ish load. In my testing, the Musical Fidelity speakers demand an extra 15-20% of volume wheel turn from the Cambridge Audio EVO150 compared to the 86dB/6Ohm Monitor Audio Studio 89.
Heinz Lichtenegger has also resurrected Musical Fidelity’s A1 integrated amplifier, a sample of which arrived at the Darko Haus for use with the LS3/5a. The two have reportedly been designed to work copacetically. To the A1, I’ve connected a Shanling ET3 CD transport whose USB output talks to an iFi go Bar Kensei (dongle DAC) for a system that echoes the LS3/5a’s 1980s heyday. Despite the Shanling sitting on my wifi network and capable of receiving AirPlay streams (hello, Roon), I have a WiiM Pro Plus playing second fiddle with its 21st-century streaming smarts.
With this 2-way’s low bass reach rated by Musical Fidelity at 80Hz/-3dB, I’ll also be running a KEF KC62 subwoofer in (and out) of the system. The A1 offers only full-range pre-amplifier outputs for subwoofer connections so the Marantz MODEL M1 and its more sophisticated bass management software will be looped in for a second opinion.
Grilles easily removed (unlike the original!), we see how the ‘British/Austrian’ LS3/5a uses a 12mm birch-ply cabinet – just like the original. It runs an 11cm mid/bass driver – just like the original – and a 1.9cm tweeter – just like the original. However, Lichtenegger’s team has yet to come back to me about 1) the materials used to make the two drivers and 2) if this new implementation has been officially rubber-stamped by the BBC.
I’ll update this post when that information comes over the wire but Pro-Ject needs to get its skates on as I’ll be shooting/editing my review video in the next week or two. The listening notes and side-by-side comparisons to the Monitor Audio Studio 89 (€2350/pair) and GoldenEar BRX (€1599/pair) are already done.
UPDATE Monday 15th July: Musical Fidelity emailed me with the following information:
“1) The mid-bass cones are made from Bextrene
2) The Mylar dome tweeters are manufactured by German manufacturer Dr Kurt Müller
3) The Musical Fidelity LS3/5a are built to spec based on the BBC R&D design 1976/29 but are not officially licensed”
Further information: Musical Fidelity
