KEF has spent 65 years proving that loudspeakers do not need to resemble black shipping crates to deliver credible high-end sound. Its LS Wireless range has become a major part of that legacy, with the compact LSX II and larger LS50 Wireless II earning strong reviews by combining amplification, streaming, and KEF’s Uni-Q driver technology in complete stereo systems that do not require a rack full of equipment.

The British manufacturer is now pushing that formula further upscale with the KEF LS LUXE, which it describes as its most ambitious wireless HiFi speaker system to date. Developed with industrial designer Ross Lovegrove, whose previous work with KEF includes the rather less affordable MUON, the LS LUXE is designed to deliver a luxury listening experience without surrendering half the room to loudspeakers, amplifiers, cables, and source components.

The industrial design also has our sci-fi juices flowing. The sculpted enclosure looks less like another pair of compact wireless speakers and more like something that rolled off the Krell assembly line in Forbidden Planet—which is very much a compliment.

Ross Lovegrove Gives the KEF LS LUXE Its Sci-Fi Shape

The LS LUXE is designed as a functional work of art that engages the senses and enhances its surroundings, whether music is playing or not.

The LS LUXE continues KEF’s long-running collaboration with industrial designer Ross Lovegrove, whose previous work for the company includes the towering MUON loudspeaker, Mu3 wireless earphones, Mu7 wireless headphones, and the more recent Muo portable speaker.

Internationally recognized for his sculptural, organic forms, Lovegrove has shaped the LS LUXE into something that refuses to disappear into the background. It is part loudspeaker, part sculpture, and considerably more interesting than another rectangular box covered in fabric.

“At KEF, we have always aimed to redefine the listening experience and make it truly inspiring. LS LUXE is that vision realized,” said Grace Lo, President & Head of Global Marketing at KEF. “True luxury doesn’t announce itself – it transforms the atmosphere of a space, blending design excellence and acoustic mastery in a way that feels both immersive and effortless. When people ask what luxury sounds like, this is our answer.”

The LS LUXE has a rounded, low-diffraction design, robust materials, a flexible decoupling chassis, and an advanced bulk molding compound that enable a purer sound experience, with sharper clarity and deeper bass, setting a new benchmark beyond the gold-standard LS50 Wireless II.

On The Inside 

The LS LUXE incorporates KEF’s 12th-generation 6.5-inch Uni-Q driver with Metamaterial Absorption Technology (MAT). For added support, the LS LUXE also includes KEF’s debut of Velocity Control Technology (VECO) for speakers. Working together, Uni-Q, MAT, and VECO are designed to help the LS LUXE deliver a level of performance that belies its compact dimensions.

KEF’s Metamaterial Absorption Technology (MAT) is designed to absorb 99% of the unwanted sound radiating from the rear of the tweeter, reducing distortion and coloration while helping create a wider, more consistent listening area.

The Uni-Q driver assembly is also mechanically decoupled from the cabinet by a flexible chassis, helping isolate it from unwanted vibrations and preserve clarity across the frequency range.

The LS LUXE is designed to deliver tighter bass, lower distortion, and greater control across the frequency range. It is also KEF’s first loudspeaker to use Velocity Control Technology (VECO), following the technology’s debut in the XIO soundbar.

The closed-loop system uses a velocity sensor to monitor the movement of the Uni-Q driver in real time. That information is fed to a dedicated amplifier, which corrects inconsistencies in the driver’s motion before they can obscure detail or introduce distortion.

Music Integrity Engine (MIE)

The LS LUXE is designed to preserve detail, tonal accuracy, and clarity at lower listening levels and during longer sessions. Its advanced hardware is supported by KEF’s proprietary Music Integrity Engine (MIE), which uses optimized DSP algorithms to manage the system’s performance across different volume levels.

As the amplifiers and drivers are pushed harder, MIE is designed to maintain balance, definition, and control while reducing the risk of distortion.

Amplication

Each LS LUXE speaker combines a 100-watt Class AB amplifier with a 280-watt Class D current-drive amplifier, for 380 watts of amplification per enclosure.

That hybrid arrangement is unusual in a compact wireless speaker. KEF uses Class AB amplification where finesse matters most and Class D power where greater efficiency and output are required, giving the LS LUXE the headroom to play loudly while keeping distortion under control.

Connectivity

The LS LUXE incorporates KEF’s W2 Wireless Platform, supporting music files at resolutions up to 24-bit/384kHz along with multiroom playback. Listeners can access TIDAL, Amazon Music, Qobuz, Deezer, and other services through KEF Connect, while Spotify Connect, TIDAL Connect, QPlay, AirPlay 2, and Google Cast provide additional streaming options from compatible apps.

Wired connectivity includes HDMI eARC, analog, optical, and coaxial digital inputs for connecting a television, CD player, game console, or other source component. Dedicated subwoofer outputs are also provided, while support for local NAS drives and compatible music servers gives listeners access to their own digital libraries without relying exclusively on streaming services.

Easy Setup

LS LUXE is easy to set up and can be precisely configured through the KEF Connect App (iOS, Android) that allows users to fine-tune the LS LUXE to suit their room and listening preferences. Normal mode provides step-by-step guidance with minimal setup, while Expert mode offers more granular control over EQ settings in decibels.

Advanced Room EQ DSP helps optimize the speakers for their placement and acoustic environment, while dedicated subwoofer presets are designed to simplify integration with KEF’s subwoofer range.

Control and Customization

Volume, source selection, and system settings can be managed through the KEF Connect app or the C3 Remote. Both are designed for straightforward operation, allowing users to enjoy the LS LUXE without navigating an unnecessarily complicated setup.

LS LUXE Finishes and Accessories

The LS LUXE is available in three finishes: Dusk Titanium, Eclipse Black, and Mineral White. Each pair includes KEF’s C3 Remote, which features an aluminum top plate, backlit buttons, and a customizable favorite button for quick access to frequently used functions.

Optional S-LUXE floor stands include integrated cable management for a cleaner installation. KEF’s K-Stream interspeaker cable supports high-resolution signal transfer and allows the speakers to be positioned up to eight meters apart. For added convenience, the KW1 wireless subwoofer adapter kit (available at Amazon) enables a cable-free connection between LS LUXE and KEF subwoofers.

Comparison

The Bottom Line 

The KEF LS LUXE is more than another compact wireless loudspeaker dressed for Milan Design Week. It is KEF’s attempt to plant its flag at the top of the category, although Focal and Naim’s considerably larger and more expensive DIVA UTOPIA systems might object to the coronation.

What makes the LS LUXE different is the combination of Ross Lovegrove’s sculptural industrial design, KEF’s proven Uni-Q and MAT technologies, and the first use of Velocity Control Technology in a KEF loudspeaker following its debut in the XIO soundbar. VECO monitors driver movement and applies real-time corrections through a feedback loop, while each speaker uses an unusual combination of 100-watt Class A/B and 280-watt Class D current-drive amplification. Few compact wireless systems combine that level of driver control, amplification, streaming support, and visual ambition in one stereo package.

At $3,999.99, however, the omissions matter. The LS LUXE does not include a built-in phono preamplifier, so turntable users will need either a model with an integrated phono stage or a separate external phono preamp. That feels like a missed opportunity for a luxury wireless system aimed partly at audiophiles, especially when the analog revival shows no interest in quietly leaving the room.

It also remains a two-channel speaker system. HDMI eARC makes the LS LUXE a potentially formidable soundbar alternative, but it does not decode Dolby Atmos or DTS. Klipsch’s The Nines II offers both immersive formats, HDMI 2.1 video pass-through, and Dirac Live, while KEF’s own $2,499.99 XIO delivers Dolby Atmos and DTS through a 5.1.2-channel configuration.

The LS LUXE therefore makes the most sense for listeners who want genuine stereo separation, high-resolution streaming, serious amplification, and industrial design that has our sci-fi juices flowing—all without constructing a traditional component system. It is expensive, it leaves vinyl users to supply another box, and home theater buyers can find more immersive alternatives.

But as a compact, high-end wireless stereo system that looks nothing like the competition, the LS LUXE may be KEF’s most convincing argument yet that convenience and ambitious HiFi performance no longer have to occupy separate rooms.

Price & Availability

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LinkedIn is taking aim at the “AI slop” — low-quality, artificially generated content — filling its feed. On Thursday, the company announced that it’s adding a new feature to let users click a “seems like AI slop” button when someone’s post appears to have been written with AI.

The move reflects a broader shift across online publishing platforms to cut back on AI content, as people have grown frustrated with the computer-written, inauthentic posts filling the web.

Last week, for instance, newsletter platform Substack added a tool to help users identify when the content they’re reading on its site was written by AI, through a partnership with Pangram. Meanwhile, Pangram this week announced $9 million in new funding to tackle the problems of AI content flooding the internet. The problem is also impacting new startups, as Digg had to shut down its Reddit competitor in March, saying it couldn’t get a handle on the number of bots flooding its site.

Internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare says the problem is just getting worse, as there is now more bot traffic on the web than human-generated requests — a milestone that was reached faster than it had previously predicted.

In a post on LinkedIn, the company’s Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan admitted the Microsoft-owned social network is facing similar problems. “AI slop is a top priority for all of us. We really care about this. People come to LinkedIn to connect with real people and share their real perspectives, ideas, and expertise,” he said.

The exec explained that the new “Seems like AI slop” button is now one of several measures LinkedIn is using to reduce the amount of low-quality, AI-generated content on its platform. The company is also investing in automation defenses, where it now blocks “hundreds of thousands” of automated comment attempts daily, and millions of other automation attempts in just the past couple of months.

Srinivasan said LinkedIn is also introducing new classifiers to identify if a post is AI slop or other low-quality content, which would reduce the amount of slop you’d see in suggested content recommendations from outside your network. (The button ties into this measure as it will provide a source of signal that will allow LinkedIn to tune its AI models to better identify slop.)

Plus, LinkedIn will begin privately flagging in users’ dashboards when people believe their content is coming off as inauthentic due to heavy use of AI. The company believes that this will help posters improve their writing, in the case that they’re simply using AI technology to refine their own work, rather than when they’re posting what’s considered full-on “slop” content.

Notably, the company is pulling its own “enhance your post” feature that had used AI to help you write. It’s replacing it with a feature that proofreads your words, instead of changing your voice.

Other improvements include expanding access to profile and page verification tools, and adding an option to block comments from company pages you no longer want to see, Srinivasan said.

Logging and telemetry in remote controlled racing is a great thing, and not only does [jwachlin]’s Open RC Spotter do a fantastic job of that, it has quite a few clever tricks up its sleeve that make it extra special.

Open RC Spotter is an ESP32-based hardware platform for high performance RC car racing that reads from various sensors (including IMU, GPS, temperature, battery, and IR receiver for IR lap beacons) to create a filtered stream of readings that include position, velocity, lap time, battery voltage, and more.

This data gets logged to an SD card, but can also be broadcast wirelessly via ESP-NOW to a receiver that can in turn send it over serial USB, or do whatever else one wishes. There’s also a neat feature that fires up a temporary WiFi access point on demand so log files can be downloaded with a web browser, no need to hook up a cable.

So far, so cool. But there’s still another nifty feature. Open RC Spotter supports the Crew Chief telemetry protocol. Crew Chief is a piece of free Windows software that serves as a companion application for sim racing. It acts as a virtual race crew member, providing spoken information based on live telemetry read from supported racing sims.

Since Open RC Spotter supports the same telemetry format, one can use the virtual race engineer with RC car racing by simply feeding Open RC Spotter‘s serial data to the Crew Chief application. The RC telemetry data isn’t as rich as what comes from the racing sim APIs, but it’s more than enough to be useful.

People come up with all kinds of neat ideas when it comes to RC racing, and most of them depend on having access to good data. For example, a load cell in the steering mechanism can provides the data for force-feedback steering. We’ve even seen LiDAR and a depth camera used to automatically compute optimal racing lines.

Steven Bartlett has built one of the world’s biggest podcasts on the idea that the right people, obsessively managed, make the machine. Now four of those people have walked out the door. The star host of “The Diary of a CEO” has lost four core staffers in five months, Business Insider reported.

The exits are not junior. One is Jack Sylvester, who calls himself a co-founder of the show and built its YouTube presence to more than 18 million subscribers. Also gone: executive producer Jem Erith, trailers director Anthony Smith, and Grace Miller, whose job title was “head of failure and experimentation.”

Former colleagues did not undersell them. One described Sylvester and Erith as the “inner circle” behind the “heavy lifting” of the podcast. “They’re the reason it gets delivered twice a week,” another said of the four.

A friendly framing, and a bigger picture

Everyone is being nice about it. Bartlett’s company, FlightStory, said the departures were planned over almost a year and that the staff left on good terms. All four posted warm goodbyes. “I owe Steve more than I could ever put into words,” Sylvester wrote, while admitting he did not know what was next.

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Bartlett returned the compliment, saying nobody had a bigger impact on the show. Sylvester told Business Insider he was looking for his next move after the podcast left its early growth phase. Turnover is normal at fast-growing startups, and Bartlett’s previous company, Social Chain, spun off plenty of founders.

The empire is going west

The timing is the story. The nine-year-old show is pushing hard into the US just as its longtime team thins out. Bartlett has moved to Los Angeles and opened a studio there. He is closing on Joe Rogan in YouTube subscribers, and regularly beats him on views.

Around the podcast, he is building a media company. FlightStory has about 150 staff and took in roughly $47m last year, and recently raised an eight-figure round. It now runs a speakers arm and a distribution unit for other creators. It is also exploring a paid membership to squeeze more from its superfans.

Bartlett is also a self-styled operating guru. He is known for obsessing over details, down to the carbon-monoxide level in the studio. He also screens hires with a “Culture Test” that scores how they would handle workplace scenarios. Losing four people who aced that test, all at once, is a curious look for a leadership brand.

The part the goodbye posts skip

There is a harder edge to the DOAC story, too. A BBC World Service investigation found a problem, according to reporting on the probe. Many of the show’s health episodes carried claims that ran against the scientific evidence.

It examined 23 health-related episodes and flagged an average of 14 harmful claims across most of them.

Bartlett has since added fact-check labels to some YouTube episodes where guests make contentious claims. The tension is the interesting bit. He has moved from interviewing chief executives to platforming wellness and self-help voices, the format that drives the biggest numbers and the loudest criticism.

None of that is slowing the growth. Like the wider creator economy, DOAC is a business built on one person’s name, scaling faster than the team around it.

The departures raise a real question. Can a show defined by its inner circle keep its edge once that circle is gone? Like so many media empires before it, DOAC now has to prove the brand outlasts the moment.

When gaming chair maker Secretlab announced the release of its very first home office chair, I wasn’t shocked.

There’s been a gradual trend with office chair makers like Herman Miller teaming up with Logitech to create a gamer-focused version of the Embody, alongside brands like FlexiSpot and Eureka Ergonomic launching its own line of gaming chairs.

DJI has now given the Osmo Pocket 4P a wider global release after initially limiting its most capable pocket camera to China. It is now available across the UK, Europe, Canada, and Australia, but the US remains missing from the list.

The Standard Combo starts at £529 or €599 and includes the camera, a fill light, carrying pouch, and a handle with a tripod thread. In Canada, DJI lists the same bundle at US$619, as prices on its Canadian storefront are displayed in US dollars. The Vlog Combo costs £605, €689, or US$669 in Canada and adds a Mic Mini 2, Mini Tripod, larger carrying bag, and the Osmo FrameTap remote.

The second camera is the big upgrade

The Osmo Pocket 4P uses a 1-inch primary sensor paired with a 20mm equivalent f/2.0 lens. It supports up to 17 stops of dynamic range using DJI’s new 10-bit D-Log 2 profile, giving creators more room to adjust highlights, shadows, and colors during editing.

The bigger addition is a second 1/1.28-inch sensor paired with a 60mm equivalent f/1.8 telephoto lens. It delivers 3x optical zoom and gives creators another framing option for portraits, products, and distant subjects without relying entirely on digital cropping. The wide camera records slow-motion video at up to 4K/240 fps, while the telephoto reaches 4K/200 fps. A 2-inch OLED screen offers 1,000 nits of brightness, and DJI claims up to 210 minutes of battery life.

Why is the US still being left out?

DJI has not announced US pricing or a release date for the Pocket 4P. The company’s recent launches continue to face roadblocks as the FCC tightens restrictions around DJI and foreign-made technology. Older products such as the Osmo Pocket 3 remain available because they received authorization before the crackdown.

The government has since expanded the same Covered List approach to foreign-made robots, including future robot vacuums and Roombas. For US creators, the Pocket 4P is therefore another DJI product they can see launched almost everywhere else but cannot officially buy at home.

from the making-things-worse-at-scale dept

Flock Safety’s aggressive expansion into the law enforcement market has been coupled with nearly constant negative coverage of its tech and its practices. Multiple cities have paused or cancelled their agreements with Flock following public outcry over the surveillance tech.

Flock’s willingness to allow law enforcement agencies to search a nationwide network of cameras has generated plenty of negative headlines of their own, including the fact that Texas cops were using Flock to track someone (possibly) seeking an abortion after she’d already left the state.

Flock’s statements in its defense are, well, super-defensive. It claims it can’t control what cops do with its tech. That’s somewhat true, but it’s also true that Flock has made zero effort to limit abusive access until it’s been forced to by its government customers or outside pressure.

Flock also claims its tech has contributed to investigations and reducing crime. This is probably true but it doesn’t mean all that much when pretty much any extensive surveillance network is going to generate some additional arrests. It’s the trade-off that’s the problem and Flock doesn’t seem to care at all about the millions of people subjected to its surveillance. Martial law would likely lower crime rates, but that’s not a an acceptable justification for martial law.

The problem with ALPR tech being ubiquitous is that it isn’t really making police work better or smarter. Instead, it just seems to be allowing cops to be wrong faster and at scale. And police officials who love this tech will always remind us that there’s a price to be paid to live in a safe society. What they never admit is that they keep changing the price tag with each new rollout of surveillance tech.

Flock’s contribution to the problem means it’s just going to keep making headlines. And while Flock may not be a direct contributor to what’s discussed here, these things wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Flock.

First, there’s this story, which involves automotive journalist Joel Felder and the Range Rover he was test driving. His loaner from Range Rover kept getting flagged by Flock as stolen. That Felder is alive to tell his story is more due to his race and location than the so-called police work that resulted in him being ambushed by Minneapolis cops in mall parking lot.

On an otherwise normal Sunday afternoon in late June, I’d decided to take the $155,000 Range Rover I was testing that week out to run some errands with my wife. Little did I know that choice would complete a technological chain linking surveillance cameras, AI, and law enforcement that led to me and my wife being surrounded by police, hands on their guns, in a Kohl’s parking lot in suburban Minnesota.

After dropping off our Amazon returns, we’d just gotten back in the Range Rover and reversed maybe two feet out of the spot when four cop cars came flying out of nowhere and boxed us in. The officers jumped out and started shouting. It’s a situation that can quickly and frequently turn bad, so as unprepared as I was, I followed their orders, got out with my hands up, and tried to figure out what the hell was happening.

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It turns out cops in the area had been tracking the Range Rover for days, following alerts from Flock. But they kept losing the trail when Felder returned home. When he passed a Flock camera near his stop, Plymouth, MN police showed up to accost him.

The main problem was something either Flock or the PD could have taken a closer look at. The Range Rover loaner had New Jersey plates. And on NJ plates, two digits are printed smaller than the rest of them.

The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw 34 DTM in large type and started alerting the local police.

Which means this is also a nationwide problem, on top of being a specifically New Jersey problem. The automated plate readers are reading these plates wrong, meaning any plate starting with 34 and ending with DTM would automatically be flagged as stolen. Who knows how bad that’s going in New Jersey (we’ll wait for those headlines to roll in!), but it’s already a bit of problem in Minnesota, and not just for this particular The Drive contributor.

In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock’s system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call.

And just to let you know how the cop problem possibly outweighs the Flock problem, I’ll let these Plymouth (a suburb of Minneapolis) cops speak for themselves:

“You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”

Cool cool cool.

No doubt this also kept the gun-play to a minimum, according to the Plymouth PD report:

“I observed the driver, who was a white male wearing shorts and a green shirt, as he was putting something in the back seat of the car. I could also see a white female getting into the front passenger seat…”

But Flock’s contribution to public danger isn’t limited to stolen plates. Its system also tracks vehicles of people who are suspected to have stolen something other than the vehicle they’re riding in. Here’s what happened to an unlucky Colorado resident who found herself on the wrong side of this surveillance tech:

Chrisanna Elser got a summons from Columbine Valley police accusing her of stealing a package. The evidence? A license-plate-reader camera that placed her truck near the scene. The problem? She wasn’t there. According to Denverite, Elser had to dig up her own timestamped truck video and a neighbor’s doorbell camera footage to prove it. Nobody verified the camera’s implication before the summons landed. The camera spoke, and the system listened — no further questions asked.

Elser was forced to prove her own innocence as a cop stood in her doorway. Fortunately, she had the evidence on her phone. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened? Certainly not the officer who did nothing more than convert the faulty data into a summons.

When Elser tried to get the officer to watch the time-stamped video from her truck, the officer told her he simply wasn’t interested in anything she had to show him that might prove her innocence:

On her doorstep, the officer issued a summons, without ever looking at the surveillance video Elser had.

“We can show you exactly where we were,” she told him.

“I already know where you were,” he replied.

It took Elser five weeks to get the charges dropped and it took escalating it to the Chief of Police to get it done. While the chief didn’t go so far as to apologize, he did at least let her know she did a “great job” proving her innocence, when that’s not how it’s supposed to work in the first place.

While I understand the presumption of innocence only really applies once criminal proceedings are underway, law enforcement’s reliance on unreliable tech is now forcing people to document their own movements and actions just as thoroughly as Flock tracks theirs, just in case the cops have it wrong. That’s fucked up. We shouldn’t be obligated to constantly generate a history of our movements just to get bogus criminal charges dropped, especially when we know that doing so just means providing the government with additional ways to track our movements.

When cops are boxing you in as you’re trying to leave the mall, they’re the ones who should be as absolutely sure as possible that their actions are justified. The imbalance of power between citizens and law enforcement demands better from law enforcement, but every new tech tool that cops embrace just makes it easier to make more mistakes faster. There’s nothing out there that even slightly suggests pervasive surveillance is reducing crime, but cops treat everything an algorithm spits out as gospel because it means they won’t have to think for themselves. This is unacceptable. And just because no one got arrested or killed doesn’t mean these errors are harmless.

Filed Under: alprs, colorado, false positives, license plate readers, minnesota, surveillance

Companies: flock safety