Kenwood LS-880A
The Kenwood LS-880A is a three-way, bass-reflex bookshelf speaker from the mid-1980s. Kenwood built it while pushing to handle the wide dynamic range of digital sources. It was priced at ¥48,000 per unit at launch. The LS-880A is often grouped with its sibling, the LS-880D, and the later LS-X700. The exact relationship between the A and D variants is not documented, though a Pinterest pin labels the A as 1985 and the D as 1986.
The most distinctive feature is the "Class A suspension" on the woofer. It is a Kenwood-specific setup with two suspensions that cancel each other's non-linear distortion, so the cone moves linearly. The 27 cm woofer uses an HR carbon-reinforced pulp diaphragm with a three-layer structure, a hard resin layer sandwiched between pulp layers, to suppress coloration. Its voice coil uses a 92,000 maxwell magnet and a rigid aluminum bobbin. The midrange is a 7.5 cm semi-dome unit made of ion-plated titanium. It combines the directivity of a dome with the efficiency of a cone, and its magnetic circuit uses a 46,000 maxwell magnet and heat-resistant aluminum wire. The 2.5 cm tweeter is also ion-plated. It is titanium nitride deposited via plasma, with hardness more than six times that of highly rigid titanium, and it has a strontium ferrite magnet. The crossover uses separate PCBs for woofer, squawker, and tweeter to reduce magnetic and ground-line crosstalk. Internal wiring is oxygen-free copper.
An acoustic level control lets you adjust for placement. The "Enclosed" setting suits direct floor placement, while "Open" accounts for rooms partitioned by shoji screens or curtains. A Japanese owner notes that using the genuine stand improves sound image localization and lets the speaker perform to its full potential. A Yamaha NS-300X seller once described the LS-880 as a "direct competitor" to that model, calling both "50-liter brethren."
Surviving listings show the LS-880A in good condition fetching between 45,000 and 75,000 ₽ on the Russian market, with the LS-880D appearing more often. A June 2025 HifiShark listing showed a used pair at €200. A June 2026 auction bid reached ¥3,000 for a unit noted as having a sound quality defect. A drive2.ru post mentions a unit in excellent external condition but missing its grilles. A service manual is available as a free PDF download from en.pdf-manuals.ru (8,928 KB, English, downloaded over 1,000 times).
Known Specifications
- Type: 3-way, 3-speaker, bass-reflex, bookshelf
- Woofer: 27 cm cone with Class A suspension and HR carbon diaphragm
- Midrange: 7.5 cm semi-dome, ion-plated titanium
- Tweeter: 2.5 cm dome, ion-plated titanium nitride
- Frequency range: 33 Hz – 45 kHz
- Max input: 150W (EIAJ)
- Impedance: 6 Ω
- Output sound pressure level: 91 dB/W/m
- Crossover frequencies: 700 Hz, 5 kHz
- Dimensions: 310 × 590 × 317 mm (W×H×D)
- Weight: 15.5 kg
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