tracy@hcrvx1.UUCP (Tracy Tims) (01/28/85)
Me and two other people just got together and listened to some speakers. We
were listening to: Rogers LS3/5A's, Rogers LS5's and Celestion SL6's. What
with all the current ballyhoo over the SL6's we wanted to get a better idea
of what they really were like.
I own the LS5's and one of the other fellows owns the LS3/5A's. He picked
up the Celestion's for the test from a local audio pusher. The test system
was an NAD 7155 reciever, a Linn Sondek table with the Linn Basik arm and
a fairly decent cartridge (can't remember which.) The speakers were placed
on heavy metal stands with little needle legs that punched through the carpet
to reach the floor.
The general feeling was (after listening to everything from classical guitar
to Laurie Anderson to Steeleye Span, to Handel's Water Music, to Bach played
on the Sydney Opera Centre organ) that we liked the Rogers (both of them)
better than the Celestion's. (We applied crude level matching by twiddling
the volume knob, and we listened at several levels.)
The Rogers seemed to give a more transparent window into the performance.
There was always a sense of the individual instruments, and voices, that
was often lost with the Celestion's. We felt that the Celestion's had a
definite veiled sound which caused the music to amalgamate into a homogenous
sound (you can't do *that* to Maddy Prior's voice, for God's sake!) The
high frequencies were far more detailed and stark with the Rogers. The
Rogers seemed to be more unforgiving of source quality. At high levels
the Rogers retained the same transparency and cleanliness, where the
Celestion's got noticeably boxlike and muddy. I liked the imaging better
on the Rogers.
Both of the Rogers had this advantage. In fact, the LS5's and the LS3/5A's
sounded very similar, modulo the fact that the LS5's have a much greater bass
presence (which can occasionally be too much). This was nifty, considering
that they are fairly different designs.
We concluded that the difference in sound between the Rogers and the
Celestion's might be a matter of taste.
The LS3/5A is the BBC location monitor speaker (or was) and is manufactured
under license by Rogers. It uses Kef drivers, as far as I know. Dome tweeter
and Bextrene woofer. The LS5 is a Rogers design that uses their own bass
driver, and a Celestion Laser Developed soft dome tweeter. The Celestion uses
a really wild thin copper Laser Developed dome tweeter and a woofer that's
been constructed by heat bonding rather than glueing. Quite high tech.
These are all compact speakers.
Now from the flack we've seen recently, the Celestion is supposed to sound
better. Any of you out there have an opinion on this? I was told that
current British HiFi rags are full of praise for the Celestion speakers.
What am I (are we) missing?
I heard a rumor that the BBC is now using the SL6 instead of the LS3/5A.
Can anyone refute/substantiate that? (It may just be dealer flack.)
Tracy Tims {linus,allegra,decvax}!watmath!...
Human Computing Resources Corporation {ihnp4,utzoo}!...
Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 416 922-1937 ...hcr!hcrvx1!tracy