B&W 800 D3 vs KEF Blade. Let's discuss.

[HiFiDiscoveryTrip]

This is wrong.
It depends on the plastic and how you price it but, by weight, plastics are mostly more expensive than metals.
If you are going to produce a very large number of items making them in a plastic material may work out cheaper since if you have the volume to justify the (high) cost of tooling the piece part manufacturing cost can be very low indeed compared to making the same part from metal, but that is because of manufacturing cost, not material cost.
Next some fibre reinforced plastics are the highest cost and performance engineering materials we have.
The acoustic properties available will depend on the detail design but there is no reason at all why a "plastic" speaker enclosure can't be first-class technically.
Thermo-set plastics reinforced by appropriate fibres (there are many choices) are horribly expensive but produce, IME, the best properties of all materials I have used.

@preload I follow your reasoning entirely. Probably the comment was also incomplete and generalised.

Carbon fiber reinforced plastic as used by Wilson Benesch, for example, is very good, but the advantage comes from combining it with other materials. The different resonance frequencies of each material make the cabinet more inert and therefore less of a loudspeaker in itself.

This production process has no comparison with the injection-molded plastic like the KEF Blade.
One can also wonder about the impact of mounting large bass drivers in such a plastic cabinet. The forces cancel each other out by their arrangement, but still. Especially when they are mounted relatively high in the cabinet, as is the case with the Blade.

The reason why I doubt why injection-molded plastic is ideal is because renowned brands like Wilson Audio & Magico do a lot of research on this. Wilson Audio uses for their top speakers another cabinet material for the tweeter, mid-driver and bass-speaker. Seems logical because each driver operates within a different frequency range which triggers different resonance frequencies.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Carbon fiber reinforced plastic as used by Wilson Benesch, for example, is very good, but the advantage comes from combining it with other materials. The different resonance frequencies of each material make the cabinet more inert and therefore less of a loudspeaker in itself.

Resonance is not a property of materials. You have either been reading some pseudo-engineering marketing BS or misunderstood some actual engineering.

This production process has no comparison with the injection-molded plastic like the KEF Blade.
One can also wonder about the impact of mounting large bass drivers in such a plastic cabinet. The forces cancel each other out by their arrangement, but still. Especially when they are mounted relatively high in the cabinet, as is the case with the Blade.

Are you sure the Blade is injection moulded? The moulds for something this big would cost hundreds of thousands and I would be amazed the sell enough to justify such expensive tooling. Their spec is "polyurethane composite" which isn't a material I have used personally (unlike carbon fibre which I started using in 1982).
As far as the bass drivers are concerned they DO indeed force cancel so I don't know what you mean by "but still" don't you understand what force cancelation means? They weigh 57kg and the non cancelled mass is around 50 grams so work out yourself how big an effect it could have.

The reason why I doubt why injection-molded plastic is ideal is because renowned brands like Wilson Audio & Magico do a lot of research on this. Wilson Audio uses for their top speakers another cabinet material for the tweeter, mid-driver and bass-speaker. Seems logical because each driver operates within a different frequency range which triggers different resonance frequencies.

KEF actually have much better science based engineering capability than Wilson Audio and probably Magico (I don't know enough about Magico to be completely sure) so I would certainly expect a much better engineered speaker from KEF than Wilson.

The Blade measures better than any Wilson speaker afaik.

 

[Deleted member 30699]

I follow this thread mostly for fun as I own the B&W 800 and am considering the KEF Blade.

If you have lived with any speaker in this class for any amount of time, it becomes rather easy to call b.s. on a number of posts in this thread.
For one, you won't get very far if you are looking for the _best_ speaker in this class. It is about _taste_ of the audio (and visual) experience. In fact, these speakers are just different solutions to the same problem (audio reproduction) in presence of real-world constraints.

To me it is a point of target curves. There is a range of target curves that work well and different companies simply choose to voice their top-of-the-line speakers differently. I don't know if there is an objective truth or unique way (luckily otherwise audio would be boring). People don't have calibrated ears and afaik people don't prefer flat speakers in general. Therefore, you can find enough people that like typical B&W curves, KEF curves, etc. If this was not the case, the company would have already changed their voicing targets...

 

[sarumbear]

If you're referring to Luminary Toole's post, which I read twice to be sure, there is no mention of a conspiracy alleging that Abbey Road Studios acknowledges that B&w speakers sound terrible and "non-neutral" but uses them to create recordings because B&w gave them a pair for free. If I missed it, please let me know.

He never said anything about costs. However, his description below fits perfectly to a "non-neutral" speaker. He even says they work like an equaliser! Emphasis mine.

So, instead of listening to neutral monitors and adding a little EQ attenuation in the offending frequency range, they decided to listen to the flattering monitor speakers and leave the excessive highs in the recording.

In short, the non-flat loudspeakers were being used as a program equalizer, and the results would only be appreciated if customers had similarly non-flat loudspeakers. In my terms the "circle of confusion" would be eliminated, but only for recordings made using these monitors and for customers with similarly colored loudspeakers. In the real world this could not really work, because even at that time a flat axial frequency response was the normal target performance, albeit often violated in random ways.

 

[bo_knows]

I follow this thread mostly for fun as I own the B&W 800 and am considering the KEF Blade for a second home.

If you have lived with any speaker in this class for any amount of time, it becomes rather easy to call b.s. on a number of posts in this thread.
For one, you won't get very far if you are looking for the _best_ speaker in this class. It is about _taste_ of the audio (and visual) experience. In fact, these speakers are just different solutions to the same problem (audio reproduction) in presence of real-world constraints.

I'm also surprised that some objectivists here seem to miss the point of target curves. There is a range of target curves that work well and different companies simply choose to voice their top-of-the-line speakers differently. There is no objective truth or unique way (luckily otherwise audio would be boring). People don't have calibrated ears and people don't prefer flat speakers in general. Therefore, you can find enough people that like typical B&W curves, KEF curves, etc. If this was not the case, the company would have already changed their voicing targets...

Also, if I may comment on the discussion culture, I am at times irritated by some comments of people claiming to be 'objective' if that hints at 'scientific'. Science is not about being right - it is about finding the truth. Scientists hold opinions like everyone else but are most excited when they are wrong - this is how you learn. Likewise, engineering is about finding a 'good' solution within real-world (scientific, cost, etc) constraints.
In nontrivial systems like speakers, even defining a performance metric implies making subjective choices and there is no such thing as best. Objectively, you can only state the differences regarding the relevant measurements.

All I'm going to say is that you are a very fortunate person to be able to own such great and expensive speakers. Enjoy!

 

[Deleted member 30699]

All I'm going to say is that you are a very fortunate person to be able to own such a great and expensive speaker. Enjoy!

Thanks.
I re-read my post and removed the last paragraph - for those interested can still read the cited version.
I was just surprised by the tribal nature of some statements.

 

[AdamG]

Thanks.
I re-read my post and removed the last paragraph - for those interested can still read the cited version.
This is a great community but some statements in this thread are just as tribal and subjective as it gets

Like all forums out there, we have our share of detractors and subjectivists. Try not to allow this minority to derail the value the overall community has to offer. Nor deter you from making your own contributions. The use of the ignore function can be a vital tool.

 

[AdamG]

I think we’re done talking about Abbey Road Studios in this thread. Move on please and thank you.

 

[preload]

I follow this thread mostly for fun as I own the B&W 800 and am considering the KEF Blade.

If you have lived with any speaker in this class for any amount of time, it becomes rather easy to call b.s. on a number of posts in this thread.
For one, you won't get very far if you are looking for the _best_ speaker in this class. It is about _taste_ of the audio (and visual) experience. In fact, these speakers are just different solutions to the same problem (audio reproduction) in presence of real-world constraints.

To me it is a point of target curves. There is a range of target curves that work well and different companies simply choose to voice their top-of-the-line speakers differently. I don't know if there is an objective truth or unique way (luckily otherwise audio would be boring). People don't have calibrated ears and afaik people don't prefer flat speakers in general. Therefore, you can find enough people that like typical B&W curves, KEF curves, etc. If this was not the case, the company would have already changed their voicing targets...

I agree with this. I'm a longtime owner of the first generation B&W 802D. I also own a pair of Genelec 8351B's and I had a pair of Revel m126Be's. I purchased the Genelecs and Revels based on the enthusiasm on this forum just to hear for myself. The B&W's clearly have a divergent design philosophy from the Genelecs and the Revels, as everyone surely acknowledges. Yet, for the music I personally listen to (which is primarily NON-classical, and crosses a variety of genres, including 80's and 90's pop/rock, EDM, indie, and cover artists), the reproduction from the B&W's is preferable to ME.

And I'm just going to throw this out there for those of you who have read the Harman AES papers and understand the concept of "research generalizability" - the music I listen to is DISSIMILAR to the music selections used in the Harman studies on loudspeaker preference. In other words, if the music you listen to matches the music used to conduct Harman research, then Harman's conclusions about smooth directivity and flat response without a BBC dip likely apply to predicting loudspeaker preference. BUT if your music was mastered in Flabbey Toad (or another unnamed studio) where they're using B&W monitors, and the engineers are making EQ decisions for playback on speakers with a BBC dip, then it's easy to predict that playback on loudspeakers with a BBC dip (like B&W's) are likely to sound closer to what the engineer intended, and likely preferable. That's just the reality of the Circle of Confusion, which also comes from Floyd Toole.

 

[Deleted member 30699]

And I'm just going to throw this out there for those of you who have read the Harman AES papers and understand the concept of "research generalizability" - the music I listen to is DISSIMILAR to the music selections used in the Harman studies on loudspeaker preference. In other words, if the music you listen to matches the music used to conduct Harman research, then Harman's conclusions about smooth directivity and flat response without a BBC dip likely apply to predicting loudspeaker preference. BUT if your music was mastered in Flabbey Toad (or another unnamed studio) where they're using B&W monitors, and the engineers are making EQ decisions for playback on speakers with a BBC dip, then it's easy to predict that playback on loudspeakers with a BBC dip (like B&W's) are likely to sound closer to what the engineer intended, and likely preferable. That's just the reality of the Circle of Confusion, which also comes from Floyd Toole.

There is much truth to this. While it is certainly possible to create a near-flat audio chain, mastering of music requires making assumption on how audio is reproduced. A good mastering engineer will evaluate a mix on a range of speakers to make sure that a track sounds good on 'anything' including speakers that would be described as terrible on any audio forum like laptop or (basic) bluetooth speakers. A hifi audio system is the exception rather than the norm and a flat studio monitor-like chain is the exception of the exception.
This just means that a flat speaker response is only one of many possible solutions and not neccessarily the best for some tracks. There is nothing better or worse about alternative speaker voicing including BBC dip, V-shape, etc. as music may be mastered with some of these traits in mind. It is just a matter of preference. Of course, speaker voicing should have consistent directivity and a speaker must control distortion at the desired output levels.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

sorry for give my opinion but if you have the bw 800... you can always EQ them for get in the speakers that flat response or do some BBC dip+ the flatEQ, i mean the BW are cute and can sound nice with EQ

 

[sarumbear]

@preload I follow your reasoning entirely. Probably the comment was also incomplete and generalised.

Carbon fiber reinforced plastic as used by Wilson Benesch, for example, is very good, but the advantage comes from combining it with other materials. The different resonance frequencies of each material make the cabinet more inert and therefore less of a loudspeaker in itself.

This production process has no comparison with the injection-molded plastic like the KEF Blade.
One can also wonder about the impact of mounting large bass drivers in such a plastic cabinet. The forces cancel each other out by their arrangement, but still. Especially when they are mounted relatively high in the cabinet, as is the case with the Blade.

The reason why I doubt why injection-molded plastic is ideal is because renowned brands like Wilson Audio & Magico do a lot of research on this. Wilson Audio uses for their top speakers another cabinet material for the tweeter, mid-driver and bass-speaker. Seems logical because each driver operates within a different frequency range which triggers different resonance frequencies.

There are three ways to make an enclosure stiff: increase the weight, increase the stiffness of the material used or shape it so that walls can’t resonate. Wilson Audio, et al are small scale manufacturers compared to KEF. They have limited means to shape the enclosure. Whereas KEF can recoup the initial investment of the tooling required to create an enclosure like the Blade’s by selling many more units in the longer run. I am sure if you analyse both enclosures you will find that Blade’s is as solid as rock and better than Wilson’s.

 

[bo_knows]

There are three ways to make an enclosure stiff: increase the weight, increase the stiffness of the material used or shape it so that walls can’t resonate. Wilson Audio, et al are small scale manufacturers compared to KEF. They have limited means to shape the enclosure. Whereas KEF can recoup the initial investment of the tooling required to create an enclosure like the Blade’s by selling many more units in the longer run. I am sure if you analyse both enclosures you will find that Blade’s is as solid as rock and better than Wilson’s.

The proof is in the pudding.

Point made at 6:58 mark.

I think I heard or read somewhere (can't remember now) that KEF has invested $1million in Blade's development.
That being said, I have NEVER EVER heard BIG BLADES sounding impressive to this day. I'm sure they do but their setup in BestBuy is far from optimum and they need probably a large space to work well. At the same showroom, B&W 800D3 was very impressive sounding and I could see how mastering engineers would like them as well. Now, I heard KEF Blade 2 in less than optimum space and it was so impressive that is on the top of the list of best speakers I ever heard (and I heard a lot living in Vegas and attending CES show every year for the past 20 years). The 3d soundstage effect was stunning! They did everything right in my book. Now, this is just my subjective opinion.

 

[NTK]

In all fairness, $1 million is peanuts in terms of product development cost. For accounting purposes, the cost of an engineer is easily $200/hr or more. Two engineers working full time for 1 year plus some materials is $1 million already.

 

[bo_knows]

In all fairness, $1 million is peanuts in terms of product development cost. For accounting purposes, the cost of an engineer is easily $200/hr or more. Two engineers working full time for 1 year plus some materials is $1 million already.

Agree, I could be totally wrong.

 

[Deleted member 30699]

sorry for give my opinion but if you have the bw 800... you can always EQ them for get in the speakers that flat response or do some BBC dip+ the flatEQ, i mean the BW are cute and can sound nice with EQ

Agree. I believe we are saying the same thing from a different perspective: you can certainly 'revoice' a good enough speaker (good enough = eq does not drive a certain frequency range, usually the lows, into distortion).

 

[Morpheus]

These cool looking speakers all seem less interesting as I've gotten older and learned more about room acoustics, but they are what draw people into the hobby. Without brands like B&O, Wilson, B&W and KEF making these flagship products there would be nothing for people to fall in love with.

I'd love to have a pair of LX521 some time but you're not selling those to anyone concerned with appeara nce.

Well, for almost all of those talked about here, their appeareance is at least much a function of techical reasons and form follows function as aesthetics, its not just a novelty thing, altough I'd say Linkwitzs are hardcore functional. I haven't heard them, only the Kefs (like) and BWs( dont like) but I'd wage that in sighted listen, your favorite looking one from what are mostly very good and accomplished speakers, is able to bridge the gap to the objective best by suggestion/bias on subjective listening...And we know there isn't remotely one single way of designing an ideal speaker for x circumstance, only various possible approximations as we stand. So why not celebrate the diversity and aesthetics AND technical accomplishemts/design options of Nautilus, Gyas, Spheres, Kiis, DDs, Gheitains, Genelecs, Blades, Salons, Muons,B&Os,Gedlees,M2s,Grimms, Linkwitzes and many other distinctive, bold, forward thinking and great sounding loudspeakers? Horses for courses ,etc, none are perfect for every situation and listener all the time, thats an ever fleeting goal as most things, but they are damm interesting techical and aesthetic exploits, and I love them for that..

 

[Morpheus]

Well, I also own a pair of LS50 and big SVS (SB-16 Ultra) subs and I do agree on the cost-effective aspect. In certain scenarios, such as loud electronic music or anything with loud synthetic pumping bass, the LS50+SVS combo even outperforms bigger boxes. Such a combo would and does satisfy most of my everyday listening needs.

But, even when subwoofers have been crawled, they have been equalized, time-aligned and measured to be as equivalent as they could to the bigger boxes, there's still a lot of stuff that's missing compared to the bigger boxes.

But, yes, 80 to 90% of the result at 20 or 15% of the price is certainly not a bad deal all things considered.

Crossing the LS50 at usual subwoofer frequencies ameliorates but doesn't get you rid of IM from that small cone flapping at bass/ upper bass. Thats why, among other things, Kefs better speakers all have a dedicated bass/low midrange unit and leave the coax to excel upwards. And crossing over higher to get that, even if you had a sub able to do that competently, brings other issues like localization and comb filtering effects.

What I think is missing from their line up is something like an R3 or R5 config, with the forward-thinking baffle and package shaping of the LS50, but not taking it to the extremes that mandate a Blade price tag..There is a huge gap in design, there is the LSX and LS50, and then, apart from that driver ring around the coax nothing really revolutionary (their coaxs are Sota at their price tags, so not even mentioning that) happens till the Blade, everything ( R and Ref) in between is much more conservative, acoustically speaking it seems to me..I would buy a curvy front-baffled, 3 way "LSR3 or 5" , it would probably be usefully better than either the LS50 and conventional Rs, and killer value (or not, maybe they tried it qnd reached the conclusion they got 90% of that performance increase building a conventional box and baffle and putting that driver trim, for much cheaper..) However, they are better positioned I would say than Pionner or TAD and they did something similar..

 

[Deleted member 30699]

Crossing the LS50 at usual subwoofer frequencies ameliorates but doesn't get you rid of IM from that small cone flapping at bass/ upper bass. Thats why, among other things, Kefs better speakers all have a dedicated bass/low midrange unit and leave the coax to excel upwards. And crossing over higher to get that, even if you had a sub able to do that competently, brings other issues like localization and comb filtering effects.

What I think is missing from their line up is something like an R3 or R5 config, with the forward-thinking baffle and package shaping of the LS50, but not taking it to the extremes that mandate a Blade price tag..There is a huge gap in design, there is the LSX and LS50, and then, apart from that driver ring around the coax nothing really revolutionary (their coaxs are Sota at their price tags, so not even mentioning that) happens till the Blade, everything ( R and Ref) in between is much more conservative, acoustically speaking it seems to me..I would buy a curvy front-baffled, 3 way "LSR3 or 5" , it would probably be usefully better than either the LS50 and conventional Rs, and killer value (or not, maybe they tried it qnd reached the conclusion they got 90% of that performance increase building a conventional box and baffle and putting that driver trim, for much cheaper..) However, they are better positioned I would say than Pionner or TAD and they did something similar..

The LSX, LS50, blade, and blade 2 are point audio sources in contrast to the R and reference lines.
Adding base drivers to the ls50 one ends up with something like the blade. Of course, the price gap is too wide.
Maybe we'll see a cross of the ls50 and their microsub?

 

[bo_knows]

The LSX, LS50, blade, and blade 2 are point audio sources in contrast to the R and reference lines.
Adding base drivers to the ls50 one ends up with something like the blade. Of course, the price gap is too wide.
Maybe we'll see a cross of the ls50 and their microsub?

It seems a lot of people, including me would like to see something like that. Also, we will see if B&W can change the appearance of their 800 series of speakers, or they are "locked-in" like Porsche with their 911.