Ken Kessler of Hi-Fi News has handled more than 50 pairs of LS3/5as, and when he opened the box of Falcon's he felt "a frisson of temporal displacement," as if he were back in about 1980. The LS3/5a began as a small BBC monitor, made for close listening. Falcon builds it with drivers it makes itself, to the designs of Malcolm Jones, who developed the originals at KEF. A box that small isn't built for deep bass, but David Price of StereoNET says its light, stiff cabinet "retains far less energy than most speakers," and he hears that as rhythmic agility. The midrange is the real draw, and Price calls it the speaker's "unique selling point." Stuart Smith of HiFi Pig heard natural voices from BBC Radio 4 even from a low-bitrate stream. Falcon suits listeners in small and medium rooms who care most about voices, acoustic instruments and orchestral music.

Start with Falcon's standard LS3/5a, which now carries its Gold Badge crossover, built the way the BBC's research department built the original. If you own an older Silver Badge pair, it can take the new crossover, and the Ditton Works channel heard the upgrade place instruments in space "a lot better." Give the LS3/5a a muscular amplifier. Price ran the 2024 Limited Edition from a 550-watt Musical Fidelity M8xi, and on video he and Mike Evans suggest keeping the speakers fairly close to the back wall. Smith set the tweeters at ear height with the grilles on, as the design intends, and found that adding a subwoofer made it, in effect, a full-range speaker. For an easier amp match, the M10 is a cousin built around the same mid/bass driver, and Marc Phillips of Part-Time Audiophile suggests 25 to 50 watts. The step up is the floorstanding M40, which adds a larger woofer, and at its Warsaw debut Matt Bonaccio of SoundStage! wrote "finally, a room that gets the bass right."

Malcolm Jones was KEF's first employee, hired by Raymond Cooke, and he did most of the design work on the B139, B200, B110, T15 and T27 drivers. He started Falcon in 1972 while still at KEF and left in 1974, just after finishing the Reference Series 104. Falcon began by supplying parts to people building their own speakers, and its inductors let designers outside the big companies combine drivers from different makers. At one time, Falcon says, more than two-thirds of British speaker makers used its inductors. KEF stopped making the B110 and T27 around the turn of the century. Falcon started remaking the B110 in early 2012 and the T27 about a year later, after more than two years of sourcing materials, including Bextrene made again to the original formula. Falcon keeps the exercise books Jones filled at his kitchen table, and LS3/5a numbers 3 and 4 as references. Price has heard seven or eight brands of LS3/5a over four decades and rates Falcon's as the best.