I had the opportunity to listen to the Kef blade 2 meta this week. The listening room was a good one and the speakers had very good electronics and source to drive them. It was a total setup for maybe 80000 dollars.
Very good sound, clean, three dimensional, lots of details, no integration problem at the 400 Hz crossover and they could play loud . One con was obvious in this setup - they didnt go down to 20 Hz and there is maybe a bit to little bass energy and to little ”slam” below 40 Hz . This can probably change with another placement of the speaker or/and using PEQ which is mandatory anyway. As it was, it needed a bass boost of maybe 3-5 dB below 40 Hz.
This subjective fault in the deep bass is only relevant if I compare with the best bass I have heard.
It would be interesting what other listener might think of this ? Kal Rubinson ?
Last summer I embarked on a search for new loudspeakers. I arranged a demo at a local dealer KEF blade 2 meta vs B&W 802 D4. Both sounded hugely distorted and muddled. Particularly on detailed Choral music (that’s the golden ear moment over!). The amplifier looked exceedingly expensive but I didn’t recognise it. Tactfully I asked the dealer to replace it with an amplifier more within my price range - a Rotel Michi - problem solved! The KEF was clearly better than the the B&W though. Later, back home, I researched the expensive amp - a low feedback design with 0.5% IMD and 0.1% THD. The IMD was probably the issue. But no deals were to be done here so I tried another dealer who demo’d Blade 1 meta vs Blade 2 meta In a large room (10X7m). The Blade 1 had better bass but was the mid (300-500Hz) better on the Blade 2 due to the higher crossover? Then the Blade 2 in a smaller room. The dealer’s view was that the Blade 1 only really showed its merits in a larger room. He was able to give me a substantial discount on a flawless set of ex demo Blade 2 metas with full warranty etc. and of course he delivered and helped with setup as part of the service. In my home the speakers are on the short wall approx 2.4m apart and 95cm from the sidewall with the Uni-Q mid/HF unit being some 85cm from the front wall.
On the electronics side I noticed from
@John Atkinson review in stereophile
Sidebar 3: Measurements
www.stereophile.com
that the impedance was falling to 2.8 Ohms - slightly lower than the old blade 2 non meta. I discussed with Alan at March audio the best amp to drive this, and the conservative choice was two P501 mono blocks with 1ET7040 Purifi module and the +/-70V stabilized supply.
Direct drive from the DAC, a Topping D90 in preamp mode gives ~220W at the speaker at 0dB fully modulated. Only disadvantage here is that some live broadcasts are set well below 0dB so as to avoid an inadvertent overload. But that lack of volume has never concerned me.
Some fully modulated rock music can approach 110dB SPL peak with 10dB DAC attenuation (so just 22W). A bit of room gain here perhaps or spl app inaccuracies but impressively loud and a very clean sound.
Living in Cambridge I have a choice of classical music concerts most days during university term so I attend several a week sometimes attending performances of the music which the same performers in the same venue have recorded. The rather smaller venues in the Cambridge University colleges deliver a more near field experience than the regular concert hall and highlight any deficiencies. The Blade 2 meta acquits itself very well listening to these recordings and it is just possible to imagine sometimes that you are perhaps 3m from the performers at the live concert -huge clarity but also sometimes there are faults in the recording and ever so occasionally by the musicians themselves. To take advantage of the blade loudspeakers stick with great performances well recorded!