KEF Reference Series

[parimento1]

I have never heard a KEF speaker in real life, but was always intrigued by the coaxial driver arrangement. Has anyone heard them, and if so, what were your impressions??

[RicardoJoa]

Never heard those kef, but coexial speakers have out for long time.

[kwarny]

I currently have the Soundfield Monitor 1 that is one tour. It uses a KEF coaxial. I took it to an Ascend owner's house that has the towers (nrt) two weekends ago. I am now swapping the SAM1 and my 340SE out about every 2 minutes into each song.

It is easier to describe the difference compared to the Towers than it is with my 340SE. It bugged me so much at home that i ended up taking windowed measurements at 0, 30, and 45 degrees of the three sets of speakers in the room at 1 meter.

[JustaSheep]

Kwarny, can you expand on what differences you heard? Also, what bugged you?

Thanks,
Sheep

[RicardoJoa]

sounds like those sma1 may sound similar to the 340?
The sm1 has some advantage with its active woofer.

[kwarny]

I plan on having a blind listening test with my gf tonight to see if she notices anything. Some at the recent Kansas City speaker shootout thingy noticed something similar to what I heard with the SAM1 but another was praising it for this trait. Him and I have had different impressions on this hearing aspect the last two weekends (with almost every speaker) listening so perhaps we envision this aspect completely different.

[GirgleMirt]

I have never heard a KEF speaker in real life, but was always intrigued by the coaxial driver arrangement. Has anyone heard them, and if so, what were your impressions??

I heard the Muon and some of the Reference series. I thought the Muon was disappointing. The Reference 207/2 for its price it was definitely not bad, definitely worth a listen if you're looking to purchase some speakers in the 20000$ price range, they sound quite nice!

The Muon I did not get though... Ok, it was at a show, but the sound just wasn't that great for 150000$... I'd much rather take a pair of 207/2 and 130000$ in spare change...

Besides that I had heard the older Q and XQ I think it was, the Q wasn't very good and I liked the XQ but it was $$$.

[RicardoJoa]

I plan on having a blind listening test with my gf tonight to see if she notices anything. Some at the recent Kansas City speaker shootout thingy noticed something similar to what I heard with the SAM1 but another was praising it for this trait. Him and I have had different impressions on this hearing aspect the last two weekends (with almost every speaker) listening so perhaps we envision this aspect completely different.

Have fun....
but dont forget to let us know what that myserious impressions is. :)

[hearing specialist]

I have auditioned the Q series (Q900's) and the new R900's. I really thought i'd like the WTW setup of those and they sounded OK. They honestly were "thumpy" sounding and I almost couldn't focus on their mid/high combo driver. The Q900's were big sounding and sounded brighter i'm sure because it was a M/TWWW setup vs. the MTM or WTW setup. I had high hopes for the R900's, fwiw. The UniQ driver is pretty heavy looking and I held the one used for the R900's, pretty beefy and cool I guess.

[curtis]

I heard the R300 and R900 briefly at a recent show in Newport Beach. I thought they both sounded good, with the R300 a bit warmer.

The room was not setup well, and I think they lady running the demo didn't really know what she was doing.

[Dark Ranger]

The room was not setup well, and I think they lady running the demo didn't really know what she was doing.

Maybe she was one of the models used in the Muon photoshoot. :p

I actually considered a few KEF products before I settled on Ascend. I'll be honest here and say that, in my opinion, KEF seems to follow the "Apple" philosophy with loudspeaker design. They appear to invest tremendous effort in aesthetics compared to many other companies. I expected more sonic "wow," but the performance took a back seat to appearance. Of course, I am well-aware that not everyone shares my opinions and preferences.

[curtis]

Maybe she was one of the models used in the Muon photoshoot. :p
Definitely not one of the models.

[kwarny]

We did the blind test Thursday night. I wanted to post this before I leave for vacation in a few hours.

Here are pictures of the apartment. The speakers are placed differently as described down below. Please ignore the measurements on my avs thread. There are some flaws in those.
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1406398/kwarnys-apartment-setup


The front baffle of both speakers was 40" from the back wall. The speakers are about 6.5' apart. The listening position is about 8.5' from the speakers. The right speaker was greater than 3' from the wall and coincidentally a chair is in the spot of the first reflection. The listening position was about 15 degrees off axis of both speakers to remove the typical coaxial dip on axis.

If anyone wants to see my windowed responses of both, it is on my photobucket (picture 3 and 4). These were taken at 1 meter. I used a 6.2 ms window (to remove ceiling reflection). The floor reflection is partially in the measurements since I wanted a little more detail. I lowered the floor reflection with an ottomon.

http://s1257.photobucket.com/albums/ii505/kwarny/Blind%20Listening/?action=view&current=leftspeakersmatched.jpg#!oZZ3QQcurrentZZht tp%3A%2F%2Fs1257.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fii505% 2Fkwarny%2FBlind%2520Listening%2F%3Faction%3Dview% 26current%3D340se03045degrees.jpg

I assigned a linear phase crossover(really minimum phase) to integrate the speakers to the sub at 80 Hz (DIY 15" Rythmik). I calculated the phase of the front speakers ran together. As you will see, this is highly dependent in how each speaker interacts within the room so the dominant speaker at the frequency will show a better response.

Here are the right speakers calibrated. SAM1 blue, 340SE green
http://i1257.photobucket.com/albums/ii505/kwarny/Blind%20Listening/rightspeakersmatched.jpg

Here are the left speakers calibrated. SAM1 red, 340SE blue
http://i1257.photobucket.com/albums/ii505/kwarny/Blind%20Listening/leftspeakersmatched.jpg

Listening
She was blind folded with three head bands. She plugged her ears when I was handling speakers and forced to hum. We used 6 song clips for about 6 minutes of listening. Once play was hit, I sat clear off axis in the dining room. She listened to speaker A with the gain at +3 dB and the sub distance at 13.4 ft. Speaker B had the speaker gain at 0 dB and the sub distance was changed to 14.3 ft.

She provided her impressions after speaker B. It was short and sweet but kind of summarizes what I heard in the three different listening environments with the SAM1.

Her impressions.
"Speaker B filled the room much more and the instruments were more crisp."

Speaker B is the 340SE.

My impressions.
Every time I heard the SAM1, it has felt like something has been missing. The best way to describe it is when I close my eyes. The image is way back and tiny but without all the spacious reflections that someone may hear in the back of a concert hall (according to my experiences, may differ to others). It really confused my brain. The other noticeable thing is due to the slightly recessed 6kHz and up response. This may affect some of the imaging and some of the detail with guitars, voices, and reverb in the recording.

Note - These are my preferences and certainly dependent of rooms. I still want to hear the SAM1 in a small highly hard surfaced room to see what that would produce. I enjoy a direct response from the speakers with little room reflection at first since this seems to shape the timbre (speakers away from walls and close to listening position) with tons of energy lower in level later on since this seems to provide spaciousness (10-20 ms later, bare surfaces, wider off axis).

I really enjoyed my experimentation with placing the 340SE back to back. The back speaker had a 2 ms (2 ft) delay to simulate a bipole, dipole speaker (set it up both ways). I enjoyed the spaciousness of the back wave. I still wonder how it would sound with two pairs of speakers (and in different rooms) and a slightly different crossover profile in the lower-lower mid frequencies due to summation and cancellation depending on if bi or di-pole. There is something relaxing to me when sitting in a larger room such as a coffee shop or jazz club setting with live unamplified music (electric guitars are okay :)).

[kwarny]

Here are the impressions I sent to the owner of the Sierra Tower. First time I heard both speakers. We tried to level match. I took a cd with certain track times ranging.

Advantages Sam-1
-deeper bass
-the imaging height was the same, most of the imaging height with the Sierra T was at the midrange driver level and some things were about the tweeter level.
-harder to tell where tweeter is. this may be due to it being slightly recessed.

Advantages of Sierra Tower
-very quick, very short overhang on notes (awesome)
-imaging was tons better
-deeper soundstage
-able to resolve the ambiance/reverb much closer to a live event
-seemed more neutral with timbre

Some of the advantages to the towers may be related to each other such as sounding like it had no overhang allowed me to hear the ambiance better. The tower was more engaging to me. Really want to hear the RAAL version since the lcy tweeter was the first tweeter to really disappear to me.

[Jonnyozero3]

pm

Off topic - hey kwarny, I'm sending you a PM. Mucho importante ;)