Why are LS3/5a so popular?

[savvypaul]

Or, at least, it seems that way. The little' broadcast van' speaker was easily the 'most owned' among the hundred or so email contacts that we had after the A British Audiophile review of our Starter Bundle: https://nvahifi.co.uk/collections/syste ... tem-bundle

I've not heard a vintage pair - but I did own the small Harbeths for a short time, and I've heard the Falcon 'Gold Badge' versions at shows. For my ears, they sounded a bit like a toy; not really a proper speaker for music (people say they're great with voices, though). I get the attraction of the heritage, and they look lovely, and 'small' is easy to accommodate, but surely they are way off the pace, musically?

What am I missing? What is the trick to getting the best from them? Partnering equipment? Positioning? Room size / layout?

Choice is personal, so the above is not a criticism. I know there are people who think NVA Cubes are dreadful, and I know that I think the opposite. Just genuinely curious as to why people are paying £2.5k new and well north of £1k used for speakers that used to go for a fraction of that.

[Grumpytim]

Some Spannko's think that KEF B110 midbass units are very musical drivers.
https://www.lejonklou.com/forum/viewtop ... 110#p69560

All Lindsayt's think that they are entirely mediocre.

I suppose I'd rather take a pair of LS3/5a's or their bastard offspring Kans than many tiny low efficiency ported speakers.
For surround sound duties they're dinky things that will do a job.

But for main speakers, for listening to music at home at generous volumes - my speculation is that most owners haven't heard something significantly better. Or if they have, have written it off for being too big or too ugly or far too expensive.

I would also speculate that some people are less sensitive to dynamic compression / having the life sucked out of the music than others.
And some people associate home audio with a transistor radio type tonal balance.

You can buy matched pairs of B110's and T27's from Falcon Acoustics for about £470. The cabinets should be easy to DIY or cheap to get a cabinet maker to make them for you. And the crossovers, you could go external and air cored inductors instead of iron core.
Seems bonkers to me to buy LS3/5a's used at £1k when you can have new bespoke / DIY'd for less than that.

[Daniel Quinn]

A 5 inch woofer , diminutive size , paper thin cabinet .

I've never heard them and do not wish to .

[Grumpytim]

I've heard them once in a colleagues system - who was so proud of them I didn't have the heart to be honest about the sound they made. But in hindsight the sound make a perverse sort of sense. I guess as BBC monitors they wanted to sound like what we would now call the endpoint. A transistor radio, in a plastic case with a single, rather awful 'driver', or an AM car radio. So just like certain bands would master their LP's to sound good on an AM car radio, I wonder if that was the real reason for their sonic signature?

Then of course you get the whole it's made for the BBC so it must be brilliant thing going on, which in terms of their FM live radio 3 broadcasts there was an element of truth behind in the past, but certainly not for everything the BBC touched.

I hadn't realised that Kans were close relations, but it does explain why I thought that they sounded like a goose farting when I heard them at a dealer - who was desperate to sell me them second hand. I did ask if they were so good, why did the original owner let them go, and what did they trade up to?

[CycleCoach]

I think they may work as a near-field monitor/intimate small setup/low volume type of thing, but I remember hearing a set of Falcon versions cranked up loud at the UK audio show in Daventry last year, and they made me feel physically ill.

[Grumpytim]

I'd actually love BBC speakers to sound great - because the 'heritage' thing, I really do get, and they look so cute.