1/1/2024 0 Comments Ohm studio spekers![]() ![]() I had, until this point, felt that the speakers preferred AAD and ADD recording to anything digitally originated, but further listening to contemporary recordings proved me wrong. Beginning with Schubert’s dramatic and searching Piano Trio No.2 in E-Flat Major (D929) on Erato from 2007, the immense HF detail that the album reveals came through with clarity and conviction via the Rogers speakers with the BBC design’s rising treble response adding weight and sparkle to the performance. The following day it was the turn of music streamed, via the Hegel, from my own collection. This may be an ageing design but it has stood the test of time remarkably well. After a very short while I became accustomed to that pronounced HF response which did reveal some sibilance on poorly recorded material that other speakers would merely mask with their lacklustre treble response. The LS3/5A’s pronounced peak at around 1.2kHz came into its own here as the vocals were projected well into the room with the rest of the performers placed behind in a most believable way. The soundstage was wide, well beyond the confines of the cabinets, with plenty of depth and adequate height as well to fully enjoy the cantabile and cabaletta arias. The fact that the entire frequency response from about 600Hz up to 19kHz deviates by only +/- 3dB, before dropping off sharply, and that those highly-damped thin-wall cabinets push the resonances out of the critical audio band, means that we can enjoy a beautifully smooth sound rather than a loudspeaker which is trying to impose its own character on the sound.īack to my usual genre, and Radio Three was now in the middle of a Met recording of Verdi’s Il Trovatore from 1961, I was in my element as the delights of the gypsy’s Anvil Chorus filled the room. And these little boxes were more than okay when it came to pace and timing as well, my foot tapping involuntarily to the basslines of tunes I had not heard before. Goodness, there is bass available from the ‘3/5A and, even if not in huge dollops, in delightful quality, as my known room resonance around 53Hz revealed all too clearly. Just to test the LF response, it was a quick re-tune to both Radio One and Radio One Extra to sample some synthetic music in the form of Aaliyah’s More Than a Woman, Protoje’s Switch It Up, and Block Boy from Pa Salieu. In a more free-space setting and the Rogers units began to sing as I recalled they could. Former Rogers Technical Director (1992 – 98) Andy Whittle has returned to his roots and heads up the engineering department where they are been building other BBC designs as well as the E20a/ii integrated valve amplifier. Rogers is building this speaker at its facility in Virginia Water, Surrey using a 12mm birch ply cabinet sourced from Southend. There was a re-assessment in 1987 and the original 15 Ohm specification was updated, with future units created as 11 Ohm but Rogers has chosen to stick with the 15 Ohm impedance that is favoured by connoisseurs of this evergreen design. To cut a long story short, since this is supposed to be a review and not another history of the speaker’s pedigree, a /A variant had to be created when the characteristics of the KEF-made B110 mid/bass unit changed so as to alter the speaker’s response and the ubiquitous model was created complete with dual-layer bitumen pads as damping panels on the inside of the cabinet, and a PVC edging to decouple the baffle among other modifications such as the trademark thick felt strip around the tweeter. ![]() Studio-grade speakers sported a ‘5’, as in the two-way LS5/8 and smaller LS5/9. The ‘3’ in the model name refers to OB use. These acoustic scaling tests led to the rapid development at Kingswood Warren (inside a week, by all accounts) of the LS3/5 which met an immediate requirement for programme monitoring in confined spaces, notably within outside broadcast (OB) locations. It started life as simply an eighth-scale model, built by the Corporation’s audio boffins at its Surrey research establishment. Referred to as a shoebox-sized monitor, the BBC’s baby speaker was never intended to be, of course. Has there been another audio component to have provoked so much emotive comment, or given rise to so many myths and misunderstandings as the LS3/5A loudspeaker? So I asked in my March 1990 feature ‘The Little Legend’ for Hi-Fi News magazine. ![]() It’s nearly fifty years since the first embryo of what’s become one of the most talked-about audio products, and still new editions of the infamous BBC mini monitor are being born.
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