Practically Perfect

KEF LS60 WIRELESS POWERED LOUDSPEAKERS

- Daniel Kumin

IF YOU'VE been looking for a "justadd music" stereo system under seven or eight grand (or, for that matter nine or ten), you can stop.

Whatever the opposite of "burying the lede" is, I think I just did it. Don't care: KEF's new LS60 wireless, powered tower streaming loudspeaker system is just that good. I've been evangelizing active-speaker design as the only sensible way to engineer a music system for more decades than I'm prepared to admit in print, and in the digital age my preference has been borne out with a dramatic flowering of truly excellent, smart, streaming powered speakers. And the LS60 is, by a pretty wide margin, my new favorite of the bunch.

First, what is it? Visually, the LS60 is a super-slim tower with a 2-way concentric driver visible on its narrow baffle, and a quartet of dual-opposed woofers on the sides. It's a strikingly dramatic look once you get past the slightly Cyclopian face; the association with Kubrick's Space Odyssey is irresistible, but as far as I know no hominids were harmed in its design or manufacture. There is no grille, though, so those with undisciplined cats, ferrets, or small children be forewarned.

Functionally, the LS60 is to a fair extent a tower-ized mashup of KEF'S LS50 Wireless Il bookshelf active-streamers, and a pair of the firm's KC62 nano-compact subwoofer, both of which I've reviewed favorably in these pages over the past couple of years. (KEF may object to this characterization, but the analogy is tough to avoid.)