I am also a proud owner of Falcon L3/5a Kingswood Warren loudspeakers, driving them with my original 30 year old (but CJ factory upgraded with Teflon caps, by the way worth every penny, but needed >100h break in), Conrad Johnson PV12 /Premier 11, with KT120 tubes and a T+A MP2000 front end, Kimber KCAG cables, 24” Sonus Faber stands. I enjoy pretty much every type of good music: I have my Bach days, my Electronic days, my Laurel Canyon days, like to lunch with Keith and Mick, and my Jazz and Neoclassical exploration days…and my bohemian and my medieval days… and superior sound is the vessel and the tool to dare and never stop the quest for new music, no matter how scary and complex…
I was out to buy much bigger speakers for much less, but my local Hifi dealer, musician and absolute Hi-Fi savant in Cleveland, Don Better urged me to really listen and ignore perceptions what speakers should be or look like. Thank you Don, for life! A 70s retro speaker was NOT what I had in mind. But compared to everything he had there (very cool stuff, won’t mention what, but you’d be surprised) these Kingswood Warrens were just non nonsense better in every department (expect low bass of course). Don also showed me how they sound with a Wilson Benesh 13k$ subwoofer, which made clear that these can be full range class A speakers full range if need be. Immediately went in my bucket list. I got over the price sticker shock and jumped into the LS3/5a world without Pre warning, right to the end game…. The break in period both for the refurbished amp as well as for the Falcons was nerve recking and painful experience, testing the trust in my ears and mental sanity, frustration and doubts about the validity of the investment… but Falcon writes in the manual, that any serious listening is strictly forbidden in the first week, so did Jeff Fischel from CJ after re-capping my amps…but then it happened… in my modest 15 x 15ft room I achieved Audio Nirvana … I thought. I first could not get enough of the tonal accuracy which Don the musician, music Professor and Audio doctor had pointed out to me. Once you heard the correctness of voices and sound of acoustic instruments through these speakers, you can’t unhear this anymore. I am sure that the drivers, the crossovers, the cabinets all play a roll. The closed construction and resulting speed is breathtaking. Once you live with these Kingswood Warrens, there is no way back. Occasionally hear other LS3s, it’s just never the same. They are of course limited in bass below 60Hz, but never leave you “unsatisfied”, most people ask „where is the sub?“ , but that’s because of their funky frequency response… something about a 1000Hz peak, it’s a bit fake. Who cares? Enjoyment with hirez streaming from Quobuz and the incredible CD player also integrated in the T+A MP just got better and better, love with these speakers grows, just like with my CJs, will never trade any of it anymore.
But of course once in a while with Rock and Jazz, I’d like it a little louder once ina while, and never missed any bass, but you just wonder what it would be like if….. knowing that a 13k$ crossover/subwoofer from Wilson Benesh did. in Don’s fantastic listening room…and that make these little Kingswoods 22k$ speakers.. and then do they stack up against everything that’s out there? I think so… but I also still need investment room for my future vinyl front end….so… I didn’t bit yet.
Then I read the article in stereophile from Mr. Reichert about his combination of the Falcon L3 Gold Badges with the KEF KC62 subwoofers. Would that be a solution that gets me close on a budget? Everybody talks about how difficult it is to pair LS3/5aa with subwoofers, because they are so damned fast and so accurate, and risk is to mash up more than one gains …but I heard the Wilson Beneshs and witnessed that it can be done, seamlessly, but $$$$$$$
so I thought why not give it a try. here is Yoda Reichert reporting out that he got a perfect match with a small, unobstrusive 1500$ box; internet is full of rave reports.. so curiosity could be not be tamed. I didn’t want to try anything else… because I just don’t have the band width and time to figure out what works and what doesn’t.. I looked into other subwoofers once with another local dealer, with other speakers, which was a bizarre xperience, with the clear result that no speaker should be combined with a subwoofer for music.. no comment, not a pleasant experience.
I never thought I would opt for online business when it comes to high end, I hate it, it is not fair, because I want to support my dealer. We need advice from people who do this for living and make auditions possible, and they should be able to live from it. But then again.. it’s not easy, neither for the dealer, not for us normal folk on a budget. So from KEF NA, the risk is a 5% restocking fee if it goes wrong.. price of a concert ticket, which we’re Covided out anyway til recently…. Not that easy though.. the little KEF cube was globally sold out … took 3 months of patience…but .. patience paid off: it finally arrived. Oh-my-Lord…my first subwoofer experience, my first LS3 experience: friends of the audio-virus infected community: there is a God, and he loves music and seems to be on a budget too… Following Yoda‘s advice, I went straight to placement between the speakers, crossover to 60Hz, input via RCA, Level to 9 o‘clock.. and never moved out of my listening Position since, contemplating early retirement and listening through all my thousands of CDs and half of Qobuz. It took me exactly 2min to find a setting that I have never change since, even after trying others later. The Falcon Kingswood Warrens LS3/5as are little miracles in the first place, but with adding the KC92, the became big miracles. It is surreal.. and exactly how you feel when you jump into the Dead Sea for a swim, you just can’t stop laughing, because you are floating so effortlessly, it feels so satisfyingly good weird. It’s crazy: you experience a completely different speaker, after you would have bet your house that you can’t improve something so good already, or more: why would you?
you hear no subwoofer and no speaker, it blends in completely seamlessly. Just the soundstage opens up, there is now a completely tight bottom end, just satisfying like a bite into a piece of steak. Nothing is out of place, nothing booms. The LS3s now sound even more transparent and now they are not only fast, they don’t give you the occasional pleasant slap in the face, they now slap you on the back w/o exaggeration, like a clap from your giant friend on the back after you just scored a home run for his team…I have no good explanation what is really happening there and why, I can only tell it’s all true: a modern Sub works with LS3/5as!!! And I haven’t even bothered yet to experiment with the built in high pass and driving them via the LS terminals; not sure I will, laziness by happiness! It works Perfectly! Certainly the KC62 does… I am in heaven. I didn’t really miss a sub, but now I can’t go without it. Apollo Fire -Sephardic Journey“ .. magic, Rock.. Jazz Kick Ass, simply satisfying. Everything about the LS3 s that’s good just got better. As good as Don‘s Wilson Benesh.. No, definitely not what I heard in Don‘s holy grail Room with 80k$ amps and source. …but that’s the thing with total happiness… who cares? And in this case the price / performance ratio is outstanding. Well my craving has not completely stopped: after all, because it’s relatively affordable I want to go all the way: I ordered a second KC62. I want to know what happens if I make them stereo woofers… they Are again sold out, have to wait another 3 months…
All LS3/5 owners:start experimenting with small fast subs! It works. If you can afford it, the Falcon / Wilson Benesh combo that my friendly dealer showed me, may be the holy grail, period; I really can’t imagine anything better. But it has its price. Turns out that I can achieve happiness with less. What changed is that there are these super fast, affordable sub woofers out now, with small pistons, low distortion, lots of power as you know you can drive your LS3/5s with small real world (tube) amps…so here you have it: you can put this LS3/5a combination with A matching sub against bigger speakers with monster amps. But the ls3 / sub combination works with small amps, which allows excellent choices for a smaller budget. There are such good affordable tube amps out there, they work great with LS3s. All I can say: I have absolute satisfaction now… life is good, I have renewed the marriage with my speakers. I have never turned the sub off since.
