Description
This is that Sunday speaker. When all shackles are loose on the weekend and relaxation by listening to music is all you want to do the whole day, an Anubis LS3/5A with the musicality of a juicy tube amp is what you will enjoy spending the whole day with.
LS3/5A enjoys a legendary status in some checklist of speakers. First made by the BBC in the early 1970s as a broadcast speaker of high vocal neutrality in a small field studio space, it has been reverenced by audiophiles for its truthful presentation of human voices so mesmerising in the HiFi setting.
Over the course of its popularity until now, BBC has licensed out the production of these famed speakers to bigger names of speaker manufacturers for the many original and authentic production of LS3/5A speakers we all see today. And getting it first-hand actually does require some dough for a pair of speakers this size in most instances in the current market.
The craze for these speakers, together with the limited number and high cost of getting one, has over the years resulted in many remakes to make it more affordable to own one. Substitutes for the original drivers and crossovers are inevitable, but the efforts in trying to design the LS3/5A are nothing but highly commendable. Reviews over these few years have been impressed with a couple of brands in their remake models that there is no issue at all to owning such versions of LS3/5A for a taste very close possible to the current original – close in a sense it is definitely not twice as worse if current authentic LS3/5A is selling twice the amount over these remake models.
Anubis is one of the latest entrants in China to produce a remake of LS3/5A, but also one of the most noteworthy ones to date in terms of quality construction and individual partake of simplicity without following for the sake of following. The external appearance looks as vintage and stylish as the original LS3/5A from the driver mountings of tweeter wires to the stapled Velcro all around. Dimension is almost similar with a few millimetres of discrepancies. Internally, Anubis uses high-quality drivers of substantial weight in the magnets aiming to deliver the level of sound signature as similar as possible through their own tuning of crossovers. These brains of frequency networks are nothing complicated, even in many branded 2-way speakers, but Anubis managed to implement such design over the complex crossovers used in many other remake models which they did to seem much ‘closer’ to the original. The result is not a whole lot of difference, if not even identical or better, at a much lower cost of production driving the overall price of Anubis LS3/5A to this competitive price point.
The ethos of QA is always to add value and performance whenever possible. It is no different with the potential of Anubis LS3/5A as after we had done with a complete upgrade of the crossover capacitors to ClarityCap CSA, the sound has raised another level of resolution and realism. But long breaking-in hours of at least 300 hours must be had before the smooth overtones play out.
Being a sealed box, bass is never the forte of LS3/5A speakers and they are never meant to be playing deep bass music too. But on most vocal and jazz genres of music, Anubis LS3/5A has managed to still present deep undertones to fill the mid-bass with presence to fill a full and smooth lower midrange. Despite the shoebox size, Anubis LS3/5A can easily fill a medium-size room with clarity and authority. On good sources, the imaging of the vocals will always be excellent in the centre, forward and in front of listener, while the background instruments will space themselves around a wide sound stage of non-interference and muddiness.
Like vocals, string instruments play in the mid frequencies with superiority and strong imaging of realism. The natural decay of sound tailing off, in the case of voices as well, enables one to listen to these speakers for long hours due to this organic and natural way of how sound behaves.
Having said that bass is not the strongest suit of Anubis LS3/5A, Rap and R&B are similarly enjoyable on this setup due to the clean and rhythmic presentation of the voices. Bass in such instances is so adequate that the PRaT is very positive.
Anubis own design of crossover allows the use of bi-amping to power this LS3/5A speakers, where more advanced users can provide a higher fidelity of juice to the individual drivers if bi-amping equipment allow. At 8 ohms 85dB, it is in the lower-middle ground of sensitivity, but most amps should have no problems driving them to a satisfactory volume. Even low-power tube amps like the 300B which accentuates the delicacy of voices can be an ideal pairing if most of the music genres one listened to are majority vocals. If not, an EL34 tube amp will be a soothing and warm pairing, while a KT88 or even SET tubes like 845/805 will really give the Anubis LS3/5A the added power for the dynamics to flow in addition to a strong midrange performance. In our listening setup of powering the speakers with both Muzishare X7 (KT88) and R100 (805), they deliver an astonishing value and performance when you consider both sets can be had at a price equivalent to just a pair of new original LS3/5A! Talk about spending wisely.
On the note in choice of capacitors, ClarityCap CSA was chosen for this brand is what we have worked before in other projects that have given us great confidence and sound without costing so much that can bring the whole price of the speakers up, driving the value down. However, QA believed there can be other brands of audiophile caps that can possibly bring out various improvements that customers can try requesting as a customisation package if such experimentation is desired. After all, at less than a third of the price of an original LS3/5A, the Anubis LS3/5A sound is definitely a sound close enough than other remake models to the original and worthy of experimenting and clamouring.
🔊 Audition available in our shop front at Peninsula Shopping Centre #03-19, Singapore 179804.
1-year official dealer warranty from QA.
Specifications:
System: 2-way sealed box b-amping design
Drivers: 25mm Anubis-customised silk-dome tweeter and 150mm Anubis-customised paper-woven woofer
Frequency response: 78 Hz to 20kHz
Sensitivity: 85dB (2.83v/m)
Nominal impedance: 8 ohm
Dimension: (W) 191mm * (D) 162mm * (H) 300 mm
Weight: approx 9.5kg per pair
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