Graham Audio LS5/5f Floor standing 3 Way, 12″ Woofer, 8″ Woofer, 1″ Tweeter Loudspeaker System

“When we first received the Graham LS5/5 in 2019, we were ecstatic by it’s sonic performance and are now thrilled by the LS5/5f’s beautiful clean, mid-century modern aesthetics as Graham delivers state-of-the-art, sonic performance.  There are many resolute loudspeakers in today’s market but few equal Derek Hughes’ redesigned LS5/5 for its ability to deliver the emotion & passion in the music. It’s a conduit for midrange magic, capable of uplifting the listener with joy or dropping him to his knees with tears of sadness. Such is the power of music, the sound of God whispering in your ear.”  – Philip O’Hanlon, On A Higher Note

The LS5/5f has the same driver complement & cabinet as the LS5/5, but as a modified (in the bass region) crossover and an additional 16” enclosure underneath. The second cabinet underneath the drivers & crossover cabinet is an acoustic chamber that allows the bass driver to breathe.  This ported enclosure provides increased bass extension and dynamic capability. Though the floor standing version has a similar midrange to its stand-mount sibling, it enjoys 7dB more bass, as measured at 20Hz.

Originally designed in 1967, the BBC was very proud of the LS5/5 design and it was considered by many at the BBC to be their best speaker they ever designed which they use for monitoring their recordings of classical music. Fast forward to 2019 and with the use of higher quality magnets, drivers, glue, crossover components; the revised LS5/5 now has 10dB greater power handling/output. This is eight times louder than the original. As you can see from the White Paper (click here), the original LS5/5 was powered by an onboard 25 WPC amplifier. The 2019 Graham revised LS5/5 as a passive design.

However, when the Rock n Roll era came about the engineers found that the LS5/5 would not play loud enough, so they came out with the LS5/8.  Our source revealed that the BBC have used these speakers for decades for microphone calibration to ensure that the microphones meet the BBC’s technical specifications.  When you consider that the BBC has access to pretty much anything in today’s market, this is a huge praise for the original LS5/5 design.