![]() While it also retains the drive and impact of the original LS50 (which comes over in the space around her voice and her ability to sing at eyeball-rattling intensity), the addition of that ease and refinement in the upper midrange and treble is beguiling and highly addictive. This means Joyce DiDonato’s voice singing Bellini’s ‘I Capuleti e i Montecchi’ holds a purity and finesse that the LS50 could never fully reach. Instead, you get energy and extension without any sense of ‘sizzle’ or ‘zing’. ![]() That high frequency ‘sizzle’ that made the LS50 a little too exuberant at times has gone, but it hasn’t taken any of the excitement to the higher frequencies with it. I hardly noticed the cabinet of the LS50 singing along with the tweeter, but in hearing the LS50 Meta, you quickly recall where it used to interact because such cabinet intrusion has been whisked away. When I had a pair of LS50s, I was surprised at how well they played ZZ Top, but now they add Mahler to that list of impressive things played loud for scale. The LS50 Meta is significantly more refined than its predecessor. The LS50 Meta addresses the elegance issue without undermining the speaker in any of its over performance objectives. In fairness, this was more than made up for by its detail, imaging and impressive senses of scale, headroom and dynamic range for a compact loudspeaker. They were transparent, with a fine sense of musical bounce into the bottom end, but when faced with the elegance of a fine folk or opera singer, the original LS50 perhaps lacked a little finesse and elegance. It was, however, perhaps a little bit rough-edged at times, especially when playing classical, folk or jazz. The KEF LS50 Meta has some big shoes to fill as the LS50 was one of the best-loved loudspeakers of its time. They need some breathing space from the rear wall, however, and at least half a metre will help. Setting up Uni-Q-based speakers can be slightly different to the norm, in that often toe-in is negligible, and the speakers end up firing down the room almost parallel to one another. But realistically, most competent modern amplifiers will work well. KEF is often demonstrated with Hegel at the moment, and this happens to be an excellent combination. That means the LS50 Meta follows the LS50 in being relatively undemanding a load 85dB sensitivity isn’t ‘high’ and that – coupled with a minimum impedance of around 3.5 ohms – means a little more care and attention in partnering is required. The drive unit itself has been re-engineered to reflect eight years of R&D.Īn essentially ‘new’ Uni-Q driver requires a new crossover network, but these appear relatively minimal, with just a mild change to the crossover frequency, down by 100Hz to 2.1kHz. Meaning the already inert cabinet is even less likely to sing along with the tweeter, making a sound that is less distorted at high frequencies and high levels. The 30 tubes inside this MAT are designed to absorb different frequencies from about 600Hz on up, in the process reducing rear resonance firing into the cabinet itself. ![]() This is an internally mounted labyrinth behind the aluminium tweeter at the acoustic centre of the Uni-Q cone. The most significant of these changes is ‘MAT’ (short for Metamaterial Absorption Technology). No, the changes are more to do with the Uni-Q driver itself and the crossover network, and both of these are extremely difficult to see even on close inspection. But the only real changes are additional colourways, such as the Royal Blue version I received. The cabinet has been cleaned up slightly, but you really need a pair of original LS50s in a side-by-side comparison to spot the cleaner rear panel (no more visible bolt holes holding the front baffle in place). The LS50 Meta has the same form-factor, the same basic cabinet construction (a resin/GRP compound to produce the gently curved front baffle, with a braced MDF cabinet for the rear and sides). Few of the LS50’s peers from 2012 are still around in their same iterations, but it’s something of a testament to the original LS50 design that it took until the latter part of 2020 for its LS50 Meta replacement to roll out, and on the face of it, differences are minimal in the extreme. If, as Rab Butler said, “a week is a long time in politics”, then nine years is a lifetime for a loudspeaker. Originally inspired by the LS3/5a but brought very much up to date with KEF’s latest Uni-Q driver array, the small, high-performance stand-mount has been the loudspeaker to beat since it first appeared almost nine years ago. ![]() Unless you have been spending WAY too long in your man-cave in recent years, you will have heard at least something about the KEF LS50 in all its active and passive guises.
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