Elicit pleasures
The UK’s Rega presents something you can plug your turntable into. “The MK5 prioritises sonic performance in the same way as the original Elicit, while here grudgingly including two digital inputs...”
Say Rega; think turntables. It’s inevitable: not only have Rega Planar record decks been around since the original 1970s renaissance in source equipment, they have stood out in their design, Rega guru Roy Gandy favouring lightness and rigidity over the weighty high-mass approach of most manufacturers. As the years went by and Rega’s ambitions rose, their turntables got ever more skeletal and brilliantly braced, so that one imagines the ultimate realisation of Gandy’s engineering path will be something like an anti-black hole — weightless but infinitely rigid, with cosmic forces that somehow spin its local area of space with a resonance of 3.487168 radians per second (or, more familiarly, 33⅓ rpm).
But what’s this? It’s a Rega amplifier. The first one of these appeared back in 1990, and we well remember the controversy accompanying its development. Gossip had rippled through the industry: an amplifier! From Rega! When it arrived, it was kinda blocky (the clamshell style of much Rega electronics would come later), but it answered all criticisms by prioritising performance and solid engineering above all else. It won many fans.
That first amplifier was called the Elicit. This one is the Elicit MK5, and the new amplifier is hailed as Rega’s first ever integrated to come with digital inputs as well as analogue. And about time!
Build & features
Some have suggested the addition of a digital-toanalogue module in a Rega amplifier as being a seismic shift, but it’s hardly new territory for the company in terms of electronics, since the module combines technology from the company’s wellrespected standalone DAC-R and its Apollo and
Saturn CD players. This digital circuit is compatible with signals of up to 24-bit/192kHz PCM; there’s no DSD compatibility, but you could have a media player chunk it up into PCM before sending it over.
Perhaps more limiting is that the digital inputs themselves are extremely minimal — one coaxial and one optical. Wot, no USB? No wireless, no Bluetooth? Perhaps Rega is thinking this might be good for upgrading those new-fangled CD players. Streaming, young Jim? Connecting a computer? Not on a Rega!
No complaints on the analogue connections, however, where you can plug up a host of stuff into the five line-level inputs and a moving-magnet phono stage, and run a good few things besides your speakers out again, given two sets of fixed ‘record out’s and one of pre outs, as well as the full-size headphone output on the front, and of course the binding posts for the speakers.
There’s also the less common option of an additional ‘direct input’, to which you might connect a volumecontrolled DAC or streamer, perhaps, given the minimal digital section here. Be aware, though, that any signal through this input bypasses the Rega’s volume control and preamp circuitry entirely. If your streamer decides one day to output at full level, it won’t be pretty.
Sitting back for a long look, the new Elicit perhaps marks a change of direction in Rega’s external amplifier design, removing the Rega roundness for something visually more robust and businesslike, with just the slightest of chamfers on the clean-cut casework to curve the corners. It’s still recognisably Rega, for example in preferring the minimalism of a single input button that toggles through seven options, rather than direct access.
The Elicit MK5 shares with its higher Aethos sibling a fully-analogue discrete FET-based preamplifier design, with the power amplifier also being a further evolution of a tried-and-trusted Rega layout, with some
carefully-placed high-grade components to optimise the performance. The Class A/B power amplifier circuit here delivers a quoted 105W per channel into 8 ohms (or 127W into 6 ohms, 162W into 4 ohms) with very low quoted 0.004% THD+N at 1kHz. This powerful analogue circuitry keeps the amp warm in use, so don’t stack other stuff directly on top.
Performance
We began with that new digital module, to hear whether Rega has successfully gone hybrid at last. It certainly seems so; our digital sources were rendered with excellent detail and gainfully-delivered dynamics, so that the sound from these inputs was able to sit comfortably alongside that from the analogue line stages.
Because when we fed the Rega an analogue input sourced from a high-quality streaming DAC, the new Elicit really did truly shine. Asked to play Radiohead’s The National Anthem at high levels, it remained clean and controlled, thumping out the track with venom. We were particularly taken with its grip on the bass, a powerful, agile and pleasingly precise low-end. Further up the spectrum, the fairly chaotic spray of information in this track was organised in a musically cohesive way, the amp’s explicit midrange highlighting
Thom Yorke’s vocals as easy to follow, impressively clear, and nicely nuanced.
The MK5’s sonic spotlight so highlights detail and clarity that some may not consider it the most relaxed-sounding amplifier around. But there’s finesse a-plenty to deliver Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata with delicacy and a pleasing sense of space, and also a surefootedness with dynamic shifts.
As you might expect, the built-in phono stage continues the good work. Some will wish Rega had catered to moving coil as well as moving magnet, even if it’s an understandable economy suited to the great majority of systems into which the Elicit will be inserted. The phono circuit was quiet, and retained the clarity and drive delivered from the line inputs. From Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run to Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis, never did the Elicit deliver results anything less than enjoyable.
The story is similarly positive for the 6.3mm headphone output. With Grado’s RS1 headphones it had us listening far longer than we’d intended for the purpose of this review. The Rega and Grados share similar strengths, so pull in the same direction as far as sonic presentation goes. The more rounded Focal Stellias headphones didn’t match so well.
Any niggles? The design minimalism leaves you a little short of information — no way to know the incoming signal resolution when using the digital inputs, for example. And as we’re sure Rega is aware, including USB-B and HDMI ARC inputs would open the amp up to significantly wider usage scenarios, while networking the amp might bring it into the 21st century in terms of music streaming, making it a just-add-speakers solution. But we wonder if the complications of licensing fees discourage the addition of those other digital inputs, while the hazards of picking and dealing with a third-party streaming platform make networking seem equally enormous a task. Rega clearly prefers to keep it simple, and perhaps we should be thankful for the digital inputs we have been given, instead of always wanting more.
Conclusion
We’d sum up the Elicit MK5’s sound as taut, punchy and clear. It prioritises sonic performance in the same way as the original Elicit, while here grudgingly extending the feature count to include two digital inputs, the amp now as comfortable with a bit of conversion as as it is with a fully analogue path. Do as you will with it, this is one of the bestsounding integrated amplifiers available at this price. Recommended? You bet.
KEF is going gangbusters for its 60th anniversary celebrations, releasing brand-new designs and a whole slew of upgraded models, among them the latest editions of its dinky little wireless speakers, the KEF LSX.
The original LSX found success in taking the active wireless playback that KEF had developed for the larger LS50 model and squeezing all that tech into far smaller speakers, just 24cm high and not even six inches wide. Everything was optimised to make the smaller speakers especially easy to use, since their relative affordability would appeal to a wider and less technical audience.
Now comes the new version II, and as with the first, these are active wireless speakers, no amps required, just do your music streaming, and if you like, plug in additional sources. So what’s changed?
The speakers
Dinky they may be, but we can’t believe anyone could think the LSX II to be anything be a lovelylooking speaker. The fundamental design was created by Michael Young, a British industrial designer based in Hong Kong, and five colourdifferentiated versions of the LSX II are available at launch (all lined up in the image above): Carbon Black, Mineral White, Cobalt Blue, Lava Red, and the finish which we enjoyed on our review pair, which is ‘Soundwave by Terence Conrad’, wrapped in a grey fabric with gold/brown wavy lines through it (pictured overleaf). This plus the blue and the black options have the fabric wrap around all four sides of the speaker, while the red is high-gloss and the white is a matte paint finish to match the front baffle. When the original LSX launched, KEF told us this was simply because white fabric would get dirty too quickly.
On that note, one of the leaflets that comes with the speakers is dedicated to maintenance of this fabric, which is by Kvadrat, a Danish company which supplies a number of hi-fi companies with the textiles they have been making since the 1960s. Maintenance involves vacuum-cleaning weekly, it says, before offering advice that you’ll hopefully never need on stain removal.
Not sure which colour to choose? KEF has an Augmented Reality app which can place the speakers in your home and switch colours until you’re happy!
The speakers also have three stand types available which can assist versatility of positioning for the LSX. There are P1 desk pads, S1 floorstands, and B1 wall brackets. We weren’t supplied any of these, so plonked the LSX IIs straight down onto a solid surface.
At first glance it may look as if there is only one drive unit on each speaker, but this is KEF’s Uni-Q array, which houses a tweeter within the midrange driver, or in this case a mid/bass woofer. KEF has been using the Uni-Q concept for more than 30 years (the C95, from the 1988 C Series, was the first model to carry one) and Uni-Q is now in its 12th generation. In this case it’s a specially designed version of the 11th gen Uni-Q, which uses a 19mm aluminium-dome and 115mm magnesium/aluminium alloy cone.
You don’t need an amplifier to power these KEF speakers — they are active, with a quoted but unspecified 70W of Class-D power for the mid-bass driver and 30W for the tweeter. One of the key questions for many will be how much bass such small speakers can produce, and from the specs the answer is 54Hz at -3dB, and 49Hz at -6dB. But this will, notes KEF, depend on the EQ settings that are used. As KEF’s tech guru Jack Oclee-Brown notes of the floorstanding L60 Wireless speakers, digital signal processing is absolutely critical to performance in a modern active speaker to achieve bass response that simply would not be possible from a passive analogue speaker. The tuning of KEF’s bespoke DSP algorithms reside in its ‘Music Integrity Engine’ processor, and the improvements there are as key to the improved performance of the LSX IIs as the physical changes in design, notes KEF. Indeed costs have been kept down by making no external changes at all to the overall design, other than to the back panel.
If that bass performance is not enough for you, there is the option to run KEF’s KW-1 transmitter kit from its USB slot, which can then communicate with one (or two) of KEF’s ‘miracle baby’ KC62 subwoofers.
At the other end of the spectrum the KEFs support their high-res-audio-capable inputs with treble response rising to a quoted 28kHz at -3dB, and a sky-high 47kHz at -6dB.
Connections & streaming
The two LSX II speakers have different rear panels, in a kind of master/slave arrangement. The inputs (pictured overleaf) are on what KEF calls the ‘Primary’ speaker, and we were thinking that might be a positioning limitation, except that the KEF Connect app offers a toggle which can allocate the primary to play as either the left or right channel.
The physical inputs (remembering that some users may choose simply to stream) include one analogue minijack, one optical digital, a USB-C socket (which can be app-switched between providing charging power or working as a USB-C audio input), and finally an HDMI input, which is designed to connect to a TV’s ARC-equipped socket, thereby playing TV audio. That makes the LSX IIs a solution to sit either side of your TV, looking relatively small but delivering a big TV sound (see below).
There’s an Ethernet socket if you’re able to give it wired networking, but otherwise there’s built-in Wi-Fi. And of course each speaker requires its own power input, using not the usual IEC-C15 kettle leads but the less common type with three circles (IEC-C50).
There are two outputs — a single pre-out for a non-wireless subwoofer, and the RJ45 signal link to the other speaker.
This last connection is optional, but important. The speakers will operate without it, communicating wirelessly at 24-bit/48kHz. Put the cable between the speakers, and they communicate at 24-bit/96kHz. It may not be merely the transmission which changes, however. We know from Doc. Oclee-Brown that in KEF’s LS60 Wireless, removing the cable drops all the internal processing, not merely the transmission between speakers. This is worth considering, because the LSX II’s specs show it accepting up to 384kHz over the network, 192kHz from USB-C and 96kHz from optical, with MQA and DSD (up to 256) also accepted. But whatever comes in, it’s probably being dropped straight to either 192kHz with the linking cable, or to 96kHz without it. So that cable decision potentially affects the entire processing chain within the electronics, not just the link between the speakers.
The input labels themselves on the rear panel are in a grey-out-of-grey lettering that we found extremely difficult to read. Bring a torch and your best reading glasses.
But as noted, many LSX owners may never plug in any sources anyway. KEF’s latest W2 wireless platform offers plenty of
“We ended with the LSX II pair on TV duties, looking slightly small on either side of a 75-inch TV, but certainly not sounding it; this is a great TV audio solution.”
ways to play, both from the KEF Connect app and via point-to-point streaming. AirPlay 2 is the easiest option for users of Apple devices, Chromecast for Android users. AirPlay also makes Roon playback possible (if you subscribe to Roon) and the LSX IIs will soon be fully and officially ‘Roon Ready’, if they’re not by the time you read this. Bluetooth is also onboard, but use the other options if you can, because they’ll be better. We couldn’t find full Bluetooth specs, but it’s 4.2, same as the first LSX, so we’d guess there’s the same aptX HD codec on board.
Listening sessions
“Simply stream anything including AirPlay 2, Chromecast, Spotify and Tidal, or seamlessly connect the LSX II to your laptop, TV and many other devices,” says KEF’s blurb. But first you have to connect, using the KEF Connect app. We had a little trouble with this: on our 2021 iPad Pro, the app kept searching but never found the LSX IIs. There’s no easy remedy for this: the app says: “The speaker broadcasts at Channel 2. If your router overlaps this channel, it may cause issues with discoverability and connecting. Go to your router settings and change the 2.4GHz channel to avoid overlap with Channel 2.”
So we did that — our router’s 2.4GHz was set to channel 9, so… oh, sorry, you don’t know what we’re talking about? Indeed, and we reckon that’ll be true of many users, with KEF’s only other advice being to call your local helpline. After many fails, we were left unconnected, and as a reviewer it’s always a tad embarrassing to call the local helpline, so we just tried an old iPhone 8 instead, and it worked first time, quickly setting the speakers up without further problems. After that, they appeared on the iPad app as well.
So the takeaway: if connection fails, try a different device. Possibly the issues may have been because the iPad was on 5GHz Wi-Fi, the phone on 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. The LSX is supposed to have dual-band Wi-Fi, but maybe only initially broadcasts its presence on 2.4GHz? If so, it would be more useful for KEF’s error message to mention that.
There’s also a fair bit of signing up to do before you get to play your music. You can’t even start the KEF Connect app without creating an account with KEF and signing in. Having said that, the app is vastly improved over earlier versions, now allowing direct music streaming from Amazon, Deezer, Qobuz, Spotify and Tidal, any of which will require another sign in. Signing the LSX IIs into Amazon Music interestingly required ticking a box giving permission for ‘Amazon for Teufel’ to access our Amazon subscription. Teufel is a company in Berlin making their own Amazon-streaming speakers, so we can assume KEF is using their technology somewhere within the LSX II.
Or you could just get the KEFs connected, then use the various direct streaming ways to throw from your device, such as AirPlay 2, which we used to stream music for several days to warm the LSX IIs up before we sat down to listen.
Their great achievement, of course, is in not sounding small. That DSP does a fine job of making them sound impressively balanced during casual listening. Bass guitar lines were solid on Alex The Astronaut’s Haircut, and extended down to at least the bottom G before losing any strength. As we turned it up (you get a lightweight but effective remote control) there was almost too much bass emerging, a most unexpected result, but it’s because you can sense the DSP’s effect on the bass as it gets louder, so that it slightly dominates. Panic not — the KEF Connect app is stuffed with options, including EQ. There’s a desk mode or a wall mode, a treble trim, a phase correction, and a three-position bass selector — Standard, Less or Extra. The effects are generally mild, but useful. By giving the LSX II a bit of space out from the wall, and using judicious EQ, we soon had them pumping at volume as enjoyably as they had been delivering background music at lower levels.
Lizzo’s About Damn Time was granted a tight punching kick drum, a solid and rich bass and a full realistic-sounding set of vocals and harmonies. Or check the full bass line rolling away on Baker Boy’s Wish You Well; we were genuinely impressed by this size of sound from speakers so compact.
The midrange is pretty luscious as well, Sabrina Carpenter’s close miking delicious on Vicious, raised above the background chug and maintaining that separation as the track takes off in the second half. A convenience note: we were playing these from Amazon HD using the KEF Connect app on our iPad Pro. When we subsequently turned off the app, even shut down the iPad, the music kept flowing on through the selected playlist. As with Spotify Connect, your device is the
controller, not an essential element in the reproduction chain, and that’s far more reliable.
Playing ye olde silver discs from a CD transport attached to the coaxial input, more classic fare was greeted equally enthusiastically. Another bass line to hear is the one opening Dobie Gray’s Drift Away: the LSX IIs pushed it out at full size, even though something of the very bottom octave may be absent. They could only hint at the 38Hz bass note in Neil Young’s Walk With Me rather than fully delivering it, but still, good effort from speakers so small.
Lenny Kravitz’s Fear swung along, similarly supported down low, and the multiple vocals pretty cleanly delineated. There was a point, pretty loud, where the whole sound stopped expanding as we raised the volume, so that you could hear the speakers pushing against their ceiling and gradually compressing the song. But that was, as noted, pretty darned loud. Anywhere below that things were kept strong and wide. We had the level right up when Brown Eyed Girl came round on rotation, and it was gifted an amazingly far-flung presentation, the ride cymbal taps off to the left, guitar wide right, Van the Man cutting through cleanly in the middle. The relatively simple mix here came through without notable compression even at quite a whack. Again, stonking sound from tiny speakers.
The advantage of that point-source Uni-Q driver was notable in the clarity of soundstaging during Chick Corea’s Australia concerto, each instrument separately positioned and well-toned too, the piano always held steady even while strings and wind are leaping from all sides. The lively dynamics of this piece were only slightly tempered by the demands being made on that small mid-bass unit; there’s not enough airshifting to shake the gut, but that makes the overall frequency range all the more remarkable. We simply did not rate the original LSX so highly; we only wish we could now hear them side by side, as these seem such a significant improvement. Their clarity and depth lent itself beautifully to sparse acoustic and classical works; only more complex orchestral works played at volume could again reveal the ultimate limits of physics as the crescendos were restrained in dynamics and clarity by the system size here.
We ended with the LSX II pair on TV duties, looking stylish if slightly small on either side of a 75-inch 8K TV, but certainly not sounding it; this is a great TV audio solution. You lose the dedicated centre speaker of a soundbar or surround system, but that only matters if you’re off-centre, so make sure you aren’t, then enjoy the KEF’s abilities to present even a busy soundtrack while holding dialogue crisp and clear.
We nearly forgot to pull out the linking cable and see if it made a difference. We think it did, though the delay in reconfiguration makes it hard to judge, but the wireless connection seemed to reduce the precision and airiness of the system, removing a little of its enthusiasm. So keep the cable in place unless positioning makes this impossible.
Conclusion
This is a great revision of the original LSX. The new app improves set up, the new W2 wireless platform improves streaming abilities, and the latest improvements deliver a far better sound than we recall hearing from the previous LSX. It’s true that $2195 isn’t pocket money for such dinky little speakers, but consider — you’re getting the speakers, the amplifiers, all the streaming, the soundbar-like abilities with TV audio… this could be your entire system for movies and music without the need to add anything other than a streaming subscription. Which makes the LSX II look rather better value, eh?