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General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

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RE: KEF LS50s compared to Maggies?

Posted by RGA on March 30, 2017 at 00:01:51:
I own the KEF LS-50 which is a fine speaker and I reviewed it. I am not a Magnepan person but I would probably take the 1.7 over the KEF certainly for the stated reason above about scale. The KEF is best in a small room and with very good tube gear that can actually drive them. Kinda the way I feel about Magnepan as the best sound quality I have heard them with was with tubes.

I am not really about apples and oranges since sound reproduction is sound reproduction. I think the speakers I had for 13 years and just sold in December sound vastly better than any Magnepan or any KEF I have heard including my LS-50. I would try your best just to listen and ignore the design because we all have biases either because we read too much or built up over past experiences so we bring our past into the present.

Some people like the bigger KEF standmounts a lot better - R300 or something I forget the name of it. So it is perhaps worth giving that a whirl - it has more bass and scale. I find most panels to lack meat on the bones (they sound washed out) compared to the best dynamic speakers - and dynamics is the lifeblood of music to me. So on certain music even the tiny KEF LS-50 will do things a smaller Maggie won't deliver. It will depend on what you listen to, how loud and the room size.