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SPRING 1997

A Classic
Cat-Coffin
We come not to bury Wilmer but to praise the
LS3/5a. Review by Art Dudley.



Spender LS3/5a loudspeakers: $1250 per pair. Distributed by QS&D, 33 McWhirt Loop, #108, Fredericksburg, VA 22406. (800)659-3711.

Derek Hughes was just a lad when his father, the late Spencer Hughes. helped design the LS3/5a for the British Broadcasting Corporation. And whether in spite of that fact or because of it, it seems the younger Hughes-who now heads up R&D for Spender, the company founded by Spen and his wife Dorothy some twenty years ago-has a special place in his heart for this classic speaker.
     Not only that, but the LS3/5a has its own place among Spender's other workers, as well-literally. As I noticed when I toured the factory last September, one entire corner is given exclusively to the making of' LS3/5as. The rest of the work force is more versatile: One department glues the cones for various different models, another winds all the crossover chokes, yet another magnetizes the magnets. But here, partly obscured by stack upon row of metal shelving, you'll find all the parts and ONLY the parts for building the LS3/5a. You can't visit and nor come away thinking the place is kind of special.
      So what is it about this oldest of Spender speakers that inspires such feelings? It's endearingly small, for one thing, not to mention quite conservative (some would say old fashioned) in appearance, what with its recessed grille and its wider-than-deep dimensions.
      And there's the fact that the LS3/5a is one of the few high-fidelity products to which a real story is attached: It exists for a reason that has nothing to do with marketing or merchandising or somebody's desire for a bigger house with a bigger pool and a bigger BMW in the driveway.
     And there's the fact that, despite its curious model designation, this product's designers got it right the first time: There is no Series V LS3/5a.
      But back to our story. What happened was, in the 1970s the BBC found themselves doing more and more location recording of speech and music, and so they needed a monitor which could be both very accurate and very portable. A small, neutral box: That challenge was given to their in-house design team, whose members included Hughes the elder and another talented fellow by the name of Dudley Harwood. The result was the LS3/5a-or, more to the point, a set of very precise design specifications for that speaker, plus a few prototypes: Since the BBC was and remains in a business other than speaker manufacturing, such specifications had to be handed over to somebody else to actually make the things.
     It was decided to have the English firm KEF make the drivers: a one-inch mylar dome tweeter protected by a rugged metal grille ("Crikey. watch where you're going!") and a five-inch woofer/midrange driver which exploited the research of Mssrs. Hughes and Harwood into plastic cones. After that, the BBC licensed some manufacturers to assemble the finished product-whose number would include KEF themselves as well as Rogers and, eventually, Spender.
     The rest of the specifications: Put the drivers in a rugged, tightly sealed box with a removable baffle to facilitate repairs in the field. Said cabinet should also be damped on the inside with bitumin and high-grade acoustic foam, and should sport a very precise arrangement of thick felt on the front for diffraction control. And don't diverge from specification on any parts used without BBC approval (Spender actually has permission to use a higher-grade copper wire than the original design calls for).
     The crossover must also be just so: a fifteen-element network which among other things contributes to the speaker's unusually high impedance (nominally 12 Ohms) and low sensitivity (only 82dB per watt per meter).
     Then: Test 'em all. And if the finished product doesn't match the performance specifications, junk it or call it something else, because a BBC approved LS3/5a it is not.
     The result? An uncommonly musical and dependable loudspeaker, not to mention one that's also eminently affordable.
     I don't know how or when this professional monitor first came to be used in a domestic setting, but to hear the LS3/5a with good home gear is to know how easily it makes the transition. In particular, the BBC wanted a loudspeaker that would be faithful to the human voice-the sound of which virtually any recording engineer can be counted on to recognize without effort-and that's what they got. And tied to this strength is the absolutely superb stereo imaging one gets from a pair of LS3/5as placed fairly close to one another on decent stands of two-foot height or greater. Put on any halfway decent record and voices will pop out of nowhere with such ease you'll begin to feel like a schizophrenic who's gone off` his meds.
     Not just voices but most other natural instruments sound good through these, too: rich, solid, real, and believable. And as I discovered recently when I tried a brand new pair of Spender LS3/5as, they have an additional and very unexpected strength in their ability to overlook LP surface noise. It sounds nutty but it's true-even though these Spenders aren't all that limited in their high frequency extension, these are, for whatever reason, the most gouge-friendly speakers I've heard which still have working tweeters.
     For instance: The Wyn Morris Mahler Fifth and a particular Dylan bootleg of Basement Tapes-era material are the Itchy and Scratchy of my record collection: I can't let them languish unplayed-but then again, listening to them borders on the painful. Enter the LS3/5as, which actually render these brittle platters listenable. Go figure.
     And with regard to bi-wiring-a refinement which I believe the BBC approved for this speaker only recently-it's not often I've heard that particular tweak make such a big difference in the sound of a speaker, especially a comparatively affordable one. During their stay at my place I went from a single run to a twin run of Nordost Flatline and was thoroughly astounded by the difference. Top end clarity and extension increased (gee, I almost said "went way up") and made for even greater gains in stereo imaging. For example, one well-recorded vocal in particular (John's. in the Anthology 2 version of "Good Morning") sounded even more carved into place and stable-and it was already quite good to begin with, thank you very much. Try this and see if you don't think I'm right.
     And don't let anyone tell you these speakers can't rock 'n' roll. I put on the second Clash album one Sunday and "Safe European Home" still kicked, even though there wasn't much in the way of the lowest two octaves. Who stole the bass? Who really cares? Contrary to what you might think reading other magazines, there's more to music than just bass and midrange and treble. A lot more, in fact. (And, no-by "a lot more" I don't mean "soundstaging.")
     Nor should you be put off by the LS3/5a's somewhat daunting specifications.

Finished coffer, cabintes await drivers and a baffle.

     And that's where we came in. It's no secret that, over the past year or so, hobbyists who've been captivated by the sounds of very low-powered tube amplifiers have bemoaned and bewailed the lack of high quality speakers that are also high in efficiency. Why even bring this up in a review of an 82dB/watt speaker? Because like virtually every other spec, that one tells only part of the story: at least as important is the LS3/5a's impedence curve, which is so high that the speaker can be driven with disproportionate ease by a current source of high impedence. And a tube amplifier is just such a thing. (Hey-that's why power tubes need an output transformer between them and their operating load anyway, right?)
     For as long as the new wave of single-ended triode amps has been thriving, rumors have circulated that the LS3/5a is actually among those select few speakers that are genuinely triode-friendly, or at least triode-cordial. True? In many ways, yes- very much so.
     No, the wonderful Fi 2A3s won't really drive them in the full-range sense of drive. Volume levels are actually (surprisingly) okay, and I never heard any gross distortion, but there's like, really no richness or foundation to the music at all. And that's with the output transformer wiring of the Fi amps switched over from the 8-0hm taps to the 16-0hm taps.
     But the little Spenders love 300B amplifiers the way O.J. loves golf and Alan Dershowitz loves publicity. Listening to that Wyn Morris Mahler fifth with the Audio Note Kit One driving the LS3/5as I heard a much more balanced sonic presentation. In fact, it was pretty darned good music making.
     But if you want to hear that combination at its best, listen to something, like Sonny Rollins playing "My Reverie" from Tenor Madness (try the gorgeously direct sounding and insanely quiet LP reissue on DCC). Now this is the sort of thing these speakers were made for, notwithstanding the mono presentation: Every breath, every golden-toned musical nuance comes through, though not in a fussy hi-fi way. Yep, these speakers love the human voice-and that includes Sonny's sax.
     The LS3/5a is not a perfect thing-far from it, in fact. Okay, so there's no deep bass. And, yeah, the upper bass regions are both bumbed up and bumpy. And the highs, though neither really raucous or tizzy, aren't quite as silky and natural as those of all the other Spender models. On top of which, the difficult-to-drive LS3/5a can give lesser amplifiers-lesser solid-state amplifiers, I ought to say-a bad dose of the Shipfitter's Shakes.
     But.
     But they're fun to listen to, and in a way that most speakers aren't.
     Oh, sure-if you expose my deep-down hi-fi wants and needs to the cruel light of day, I'd confess that I could live more easily with certain of Spender's other models, particularly the SP2/3 or SP100 (could and do). Yes, and the very good Mazda MX5 does everything expected of a classic two-seat sports car, and besides, it seldom needs more service than an oil change. But what person with a soul wouldn't want to own a Triumph TR6 just once in his life?
     Or: Who among us wouldn't be gladdened at least to know that these are still being made? And so it goes in the loudspeaker kingdom, phylla English, species Spender. Derek Hughes, who incidentally harbors no great love for tube amps himself, maintains a stoic and distinctly non-faddist view of his smallest speaker's success: As long as there are people willing to buy to LS3/5a, he says, he will continue to make it. And so, it would seem, is the converse true: When people stop demanding it, he will stop supplying.
     Spring is here, and I thoroughly intend to own a Triumph by the Fall.

Quality: -1/4
Value: -1/2

Derek Hughes displays LS3/5a components in their assembly area.