KEF LS50 Wireless II and KC62 Subwoofer Review. The BEST Powered speaker and sub?

today on home theater fanatics we're going to take a deep dive into the kef ls50 wireless twos and the kc 62 subwoofer [Applause] [Music] welcome back to the channel everybody today i'm joined by mike of audio architects what's going on everybody glad to have you on the show today mike thanks for inviting me yeah and we're going to jump deep into keff's world and i love kef world they're some of my favorite speakers but before we get into this make sure to like and subscribe and ring the bell so you'll be notified and i'm curious about what your opinion is are you into this stuff as much as i am i don't are you into it as much as i am i don't well i i because i'm into it a lot i've already got a chance to kind of i cheated because we did the powered bookshelf battle yeah not too long ago and we featured these so i've already had an initial opinion and i i know how they sound i know how they look so i think this is going to be a fun video because yeah we kind of already have experience with the whole setup so yeah let's rock and roll right on and i think a good way to get started is to quickly go over the specifications of the speakers so that you know exactly what's going on the ls50 wireless 2 is an all-in-one speaker system that streams virtually from any source by leveraging airplay 2 or chromecast on the front of the speaker you'll find the unique driver array this array features a 5 and a quarter inch aluminum mid-range driver and a one-inch tweeter the one inch tweeter is mated to the kef metamaterial absorption technology frequency response for these drivers is approximately 45 hertz to 28 kilohertz on the rear of the speaker you'll find the amplifier and input and output connections amplification is rated at 280 watts per low frequency driver and 100 watts per high frequency driver that's right there are four channels each amplifier has two channels one channel for the lows and one channel for the highs inputs include an hdmi e-arc connector toslink optical digital coax a three and a half millimeter auxiliary input usb type a and rj45 ethernet connector on the output side of the house you'll find an rca subwoofer output on each speaker of interest the speakers are roon ready and also support streaming services such as spotify apple music amazon music qq music tidal kobas deezer etc etc they've got just about everything that you could think of switching gears now we'll take a look at the kc 62 subwoofer this subwoofer features two six and a half inch drivers powered by a thousand rms watts of class d power the two drivers are coupled together using the unicore technology this means they share a single magnet system the rated frequency response is from 11 hertz to 200hz okay so now that you know kind of what's going on with these speakers we want to talk a little bit about the whys right and i think people are very familiar with buying speakers and buying an amplifier and some kind of source device but when you move into the powered world things get a little bit different because you don't have to buy all those pieces do you right um it does kind of maximize your budget uh so having a powered speaker allows you to kind of i mean basically combine your right everything just gets your amplifier your possibility everything yeah so i think it's an advantage because if someone's on a budget this would be a great way to go and a good thing to take into consideration rather than trying to buy cheap bookshelf speakers and a cheap amp right instead you could just kind of combine that budget and get a solid pair of powered bookshelf speakers right on and another reason that i kind of like the powered concept and you know i think if you're going down the pure audio file route this probably isn't the right route for you however the sound of these is amazing and we'll get to that but this allows you to have a very simple system that's very easy to deal with meaning you can take these two speakers and then if you want a sub add in something like the kc 62 put it anywhere and you have an instant system you don't have to worry so much about where do i get cabling from how do i set this stuff up you just buy them set them down install the app on your phone and you're really really good to go and you know if you're not super deep into the audio world you don't have to worry about what's the right source what's the right amp you know that everything that you purchase has been already designed by kef and it works together really really well you're gonna think i'm crazy for saying this but i think this type of speaker is the ultimate replacement for what we had in the late 90s early 2000s for those all-in-one systems oh yeah those are horrible and these are awesome right yeah but back then we didn't think they were horrible back then that's all we had and they were bassy for their time i think but uh what i think is rad is that you don't need a source well you need a phone right you need something to run the app on right you need a phone but if you have a phone you have you know all the absolute you know inputs you need on here um it's really an all-in-one package yeah and that's what i think is most advantageous about this speaker in particular because there's other powered speakers out there that don't have that aren't as feature-rich as these i think these actually went out of i think kef went out of their way on this time around but i think it's cool because all in one easy just plug and play and another another item to call out that's fairly unique to the powered speaker world is the use of hdmi e-arc inputs on the back so if you notice on the back of the speaker there's an e-arc input and what that will allow you to do is when you have a television you can take these two speakers and instead of buying a sound bar by these set beside your television plug in your hdmi cable and you're done right that's it you don't have to worry about anything just go change the settings in the television tell it to output and uh select the source here and your television game is going to be taken up several notches because this stuff sounds great i mean as home theater fanatics i'm sure giles will always recommend to you you know doing the whole at the very 9.1.6 yeah very minimum of 5.2 but which is what i have but i mean yeah but this is definitely a huge step up from a sound bar well and you know to test that i took these and i put in my living room which is where we're at now on the wall behind the the camera is the screen and i've got a 100 inch screen with an ultra short short throw projector and i use these in stereo mode in 2.1 mode with the kc62 sub here for i don't know three weeks listening and i was completely satisfied now it doesn't give you a full theater experience but for my casual watching and then when i wanted to listen to music it was absolutely outstanding for that use case um so that yeah i think those are some reasons why you might want to go with powered and then from a cost point of view you know i hate to call out costs because they always change and then people will invariably put down in the notes that you're wrong about the cost but you know these are somewhere north of two thousand dollars for the for the pair and for that kind of money when you get everything you need it really justifies the cost especially with the sound quality that you get out of the units so let's let's jump a little bit into the setup and configuration of the unit so out of the box you'll get the two speakers you'll get a remote control there's an app that you can download and that's pretty much all there is there's a cable that you can use to cross connect these or that can be done wirelessly i just elected to use the cable because i'm still a bit old school but you can do this wirelessly if you need to you have the ability to switch the left and right so if for some reason you set them up and you did it backwards or something don't fret or if you want to have your control panel on a specific side of your room you can set whichever one you want on the left or right now all of the setup is done in the app and everything that you would think that's an app will be there one cool feature is that the subwoofer there are a ton of settings around the sub so you can manually set your crossover and all of your other configuration however if you use a kef sub there are a number of presets inside of the configuration for for these wireless tools that allows you to select the sub that you have and it will set everything up for you also on the back of these they each have an rca output so you can run dual subs using the output from either of these so you could set this as mono you can set it for two stubs subs i'm not sure about the stereo piece i don't i don't know if it will link one up to the other however there is an output on both and that's something that we'll dig in a little bit deeper and see if we can figure that out but good thing you you would think you would think but otherwise why would there be a well sometimes you want to put a sub on the left side of the room and the speaker that's on the left side if you don't have a sub output on it then you're running a cable crazy to get it to where it needs to go so it's nice having a sub out on both of the units just like you can swap the left and right on the unit so it makes it very flexible and i guess another thing to call out around the configuration and the build of these is that each speaker has its own amplifier so you're not running an amp out of your main speaker and then using speaker cable to power this one you have to plug electricity into both of these but that means there's an amp here and an amp here i think it's more convenient this way it is very convenient that way i mean there you can juggle some balls and say it's convenient because you know you got to amp at each one but then what happens if one of the amps fails and is it better just to have one amp and if it fails us all down instead of one so there are two that could i don't know so that i mean that's that's kind of up in the air my preference though is for the way this is set up um and being able to have sub outs and all that kind of stuff in each speaker very very true giles one thing i really like that kef does is they make them pretty so fit and finish yeah let's get into it yeah let's uh let's get into that that is always the first thing that kind of catches my eye with kef is the fact that they put so much time and effort into aesthetics not only yeah turn this one around well obviously not only do they sound they sound you know good but they just look they're stunning really good just the way they made them look and that's solid yeah i mean there there's no resonance here at all they're completely dead not only did they make it make the aesthetics functional but they made it just beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful speakers yeah so a few comments there um you know they they have some interesting color choices so this is kind of the silver grayish gunmetal you know they've got black but they also have a very interesting blue and a very interesting red color and then you can see the maroon that they have on the uh on the edge detail here which is also very nice and then the black uh heatsink for the amplifier itself it all works together the uh touch screen display here on the top the controls is some type is it polymer resin maybe maybe it's glass i can't really tell for sure um it's it's good enough that i can't tell the difference so it might be glass feels like yeah it's nice it's nice and then you know they have the very discreet silk screen logos here on the top and you know the tangerine wave guide on the front so aesthetically they're very very nice especially i really like the curve on the front it's a modern looking speaker and i think it really adds to decor if you get some very nice stands for these it really can make a statement in a room so right um you know i would i would like to see these like on a pair of solid steels the the tripods uh and those those are gorgeous and i think these would look really really good sitting on top of those yeah let's talk a little bit about the kc 62 now and this is a very interesting piece of equipment and i think it's probably got a niche use case and it really applies to what we were just talking about when we were talking about the aesthetics right you know this matches very well obviously i have this one in black but you can get these in coordinating colors if you wanted to but this is very small it's a dual six and a half inch driver subwoofer using the unicore technology from kef so basically this is kind of like two subs stuck on one magnet working together and that allows it to reduce the amount of space that's needed inside of the box for the components and to shrink everything down and this uh this this picks up it feels like a block of lead when you lift it it's extremely heavy they're all very very heavy but this one is particularly heavy the thing about this speaker and i think you know once you get past the aesthetics because it looks good and the cones are awesome i think everyone is going to ask you know what's the performance like um you know it is two six and a half's and uh you know the first thing that everybody's always said to me is what can it really do and you know from a subjective point of view i'm not going to go into rew measurements on this the subwoofer does add presence to these speakers however from my point of view it's not a oh my god i just hooked up 215s and this thing is thumping right it it does not do that right this is definitely for folks that want to add subtle low-end extension onto their to their mains and they don't want to use a lot of space to do that so would i run these in a dedicated home theater where i wanted to get some tactile response out of my sofa no in a living room where i'm watching television and i don't want to you know wake up the neighborhood when i run this all day long absolutely so i think you know your opinion of this really is going to be informed by your use case what do you think mike well giles i think this is going to boil down to uh positioning uh your speaker uh i've had six and a half's uh out of sound bars before and i i know i've told you this story but the vizio yeah yeah yeah yeah it was a down firing uh subwoofer for six and a half and depending on where i positioned it in the room i actually got a really good bass response so i feel that if this little guy is positioned correctly you could get a surprising amount of bass out of this small little package for sure uh however you know obviously directly or it's not going to have the same effect as a as what we're normally used to but i mean this small form factor seems to be the trend right now with other brands like svs melodyne stuff like that so a lot of other companies are starting to kind of realize hey we need to make something for someone that either lives in an apartment or uh is space conscious or looking for some for the aesthetics right right yeah is looking for something just a little a little form over function yeah all right giles i think we need to let everybody know what type of music we use to test these speakers so i listened to a lot of different music on these from a lot of different genres but there are a few pieces that i do want to call out that are of particular interest so there's a new group called well i don't guess they're a new group but they were new to me called a bad think and uh particularly a song called too far gone and they're doing dolby at most mixes now which in this 2.1 set you know isn't ground shaking but it's kind of cool to listen to it here and then go down into a theater and do a comparison but you know i use that song as the first one to test with and and i really like that you know i shifted gears a little bit moved over to a little bit of radiohead everything in its right place and if you've not heard that song it's absolutely killer i mean you know some people say that that song makes everything sound good and i guess to a certain degree maybe that's true but i like to listen for the uh you know the width of the sound stage with that song in particular and man it felt like it was wider than the speakers were spaced i mean it was it was really really wide so uh those are the two that i particularly enjoyed on these what about you well um i wanted to listen to the uh symphony orchestra of metallica the s m oh yeah yeah i i really love the way they've incorporated they incorporated the i think it's the london symphony with i could be wrong i have no idea uh but it is a symphony that metallica did so i incorporated that and i i really like classical music out of these i think these these are spectacular for some nice classical or if you're listening to a soundtrack like the internet i tried it on the interstellar soundtrack granted the bass wasn't exactly what i was i was hoping for yeah that those tones coming out of the pipe organ are hard but at the same time they played it they played the the instruments very well good separation of the instruments and you know in the orchestra i loved it you know one one thing that that does bring to mind and i wasn't going to call it out until you said that but um there's an arrangement of claire de lune by wc i think i said that right that i listened to on these and it was just absolutely stunning so that's one of my favorite pieces of piano classical music and you know i'm not super grounded in in classical music but that one i really particularly enjoy and it sounded stunning out of these guys and you know i guess also just to cover back over generalities um i i think these are good at everything the only place where i think you're going to suffer is for music where the it's got subterranean bass so you know curtain shaker probably not the right song for these i agreed so let's talk a little bit about the sound so what what do you think well as you know we have tested these before i feel kept speakers in general have very nice mid-range and a very mellow and nice top end i think the mid-range was the shining point for these speakers along with a nice top end where they did strike a little bit was the base but then when incorporating this little guy position well uh i think it's the total package so i i wouldn't be listening to heavy wrap or edm out of these uh however you know nice rock uh classical stuff like that i think would really really benefit from these speakers yeah i agree with with all those things so um you know with the inclusion of the meta material in in these units so just like the ls50 meta twos this is the powered version of that speaker so to speak it includes the new meta material uh which you know absorbs those internal frequencies and gives you a little less distortion a little bit better clarity um they they sound better than the old version for sure and i agree that the mid-range especially with vocals is the defining characteristic for these for me i mean that's when i think of these speakers i think of really really good mid-range and vocals and you're right that is kind of general to all of the kef equipment that i've had experience with in the past the top is nice and mellow it doesn't kind of go over the top and and punch you and scratch you in the face and leave those marks down as you listen to it you know i can listen to these all day long without any fatigue and you know the sub does bring in that subtle low end that you need but man you're not going to take these like you said to a concert and you know blow the door off of anything but at totally adequate base for watching televisions movies in my living room in a 2.1 setup you know the the vocals were great very revealing speakers amplification is built in it's all class d um it doesn't scream class d at me it doesn't say oh i'm super analytic and you have that blue color of sound if that makes any sense to you because that's that's how it feels to me when i get into a very clinical style of class d amplifier this doesn't um you know go that far and swing the pendulum over into the surgical precision type of amplifier sound and maybe it's just a good match of the amplifier with the drivers to to give you that kind of sweet mid-range sound but uh for me it's a very good experience i thought it was a win yeah i thought it was a win i think these are great speakers um like we said the sub isn't you know it isn't for heavy home theater use it's just for um just creating a slight atmosphere of low end yeah you know so yeah i think it was a win i i really enjoyed these speakers i think this is a great buy uh i think perfect consumer for this would be someone you know wants to just enjoy themselves and listen and immerse themselves in some music the soundstage and imaging was beautiful on it oh yeah i mean very solid very solid uh center image very wide sound stage that has some depth to it as well right on so we'll move on and have the final word so my final word is that i highly recommend these they sound very good excellent mid-range vocals are absolutely stupendous on the low end they're competent enough to stand alone and i wasn't heartbroken because sometimes i am heartbroken when i listen to bookshelf speakers or stand mounts uh and just the i'm crushed at the lack of low end these were competent adding in the kc62 uh pushed them over the edge and moved them into the realm of okay i'm i'm happy i'm good like i said this isn't an 18 inch five hertz subwoofer it's not designed to be such but it is very very good at music reproduction and light home media use maybe two of these would be the answer i'm not sure what that would be like but as a whole as a set absolutely worth the investment of money to put into these especially considering the aesthetics sure it's not considerably expensive it's not super out of you know people's range so i think this would be a good investment if you're looking for something long term i think this is a lot of forward thinking technology inside both of these so i'm sure in the future you could probably get firmware updates and stuff like that oh yeah absolutely and the app is very intuitive as well so yeah i'm excited i think these are great i think this is a great package i think they did a good job yep all right everybody thanks so much for joining us make sure to like and subscribe jump over to audio architects like and subscribe there as well so you'll be notified when all of the new hot content comes out and don't forget every tuesday night is home theater fanatics live and on some evenings i'm even lucky enough to have mike jump in with me for content corner so you can find him there as well all of my content information is below and as always thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Jiles McCoy

Views: 36,728

Keywords: home theater, kef ls50, kef ls50 wireless ii, kef ls50 wireless 2, kef ls50 wireless, kef kc62, kef subwoofer, kef ls50 meta, sound quality, kef ls50 review, ls50 wireless, ls50 wireless ii, ls50 wireless 2, home theater setup, powered speaker review, active speaker review, small subwoofer, kef speaker review, kef ls50 wireless review, kef speakers, kef loudspeakers, kef kc62 sound test, kef ls50 meta speaker review, kef ls50 wireless ii review

Id: tD25zFiwIrM

Length: 23min 21sec (1401 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021