This forum has been a wealth of great information. I have learned and geeked out a ton!
I thought I should share my own experience and observations setting up the Kef LS50 Meta with a SB2000pro and the Denon x3600h preouts to a Luxman R117 for amplification.
The TLDR of it is that this combination provides excellent sound quality when used with the Audyssey Editor app and good sources such as Tidal or Amazon HD.
My previous system for the last 5 years was a KEF 104/2 powered by the Luxman R117 connected to a chromecast Audio for streaming. I really loved this system and had no reason to upgrade other than to experiment with something new.
The first addition was an SB2000Pro, which helped in the obvious ways, although the 104/2s can go quite low themselves.
I tried to eq the SVS with its app and used a 60hz crossover. The bass felt nicely integrated with the 104/2s
Next came the LS50 Meta. In the beginning, the sound was a little bright but opened up very nicely after about 20 hours. By themselves, I felt that the LS50 are more transparent than the 104/2s but overall 104/2 felt like they had better presence and room filling sound. My room is 16ftx14ft with 10ft to 8ft slanted ceiling.
View attachment 103796
I tried to integrate the LS50 with the SB2000pro using the SVS app, but this time the results were not as satisfying to the ear. The LS50 by itself had a decent amount of bass in my room, but the additional of the sub made the bass overwhelming at times.
Reading how well the Denon x3600h measured on this site, I decided to use it for bass management with Audyssey and its preouts to drive the Luxman.
The graph above is slightly less flat the what the Odyssey app reports. I did try to use the mmm technique with REW which did produce a curve closer to the app, just forgot to save the results.
Overall, I am very pleased with this setup. I feel that this beats my previous 104/2 with sub in terms of clarity in the highs and the lows feel very well integrated. I am running Audyssey full range right now but plan to experiment with limiting it to 500hz and below in the future. I did try to compare vs Denon's direct, pure direct modes and felt that Audyssey provides a much richer presentation of the music.
Few other notes:
- In the course of my testing, I also tried to use the Denon's onboard amps. As expected, the performance was very disappointing. The LS50s sounded very thin with too much brightness. The Luxman is able to open up the sound nicely and everything just becomes more airy and musical.
- In A/B testing the LS50 vs the 104/2, the Luxman was producing around 3-5db higher SPL on the 104/2s vs the LS50s keeping the volume knob at the same place.
I thought I should share my own experience and observations setting up the Kef LS50 Meta with a SB2000pro and the Denon x3600h preouts to a Luxman R117 for amplification.
The TLDR of it is that this combination provides excellent sound quality when used with the Audyssey Editor app and good sources such as Tidal or Amazon HD.
My previous system for the last 5 years was a KEF 104/2 powered by the Luxman R117 connected to a chromecast Audio for streaming. I really loved this system and had no reason to upgrade other than to experiment with something new.
The first addition was an SB2000Pro, which helped in the obvious ways, although the 104/2s can go quite low themselves.
I tried to eq the SVS with its app and used a 60hz crossover. The bass felt nicely integrated with the 104/2s
Next came the LS50 Meta. In the beginning, the sound was a little bright but opened up very nicely after about 20 hours. By themselves, I felt that the LS50 are more transparent than the 104/2s but overall 104/2 felt like they had better presence and room filling sound. My room is 16ftx14ft with 10ft to 8ft slanted ceiling.
I tried to integrate the LS50 with the SB2000pro using the SVS app, but this time the results were not as satisfying to the ear. The LS50 by itself had a decent amount of bass in my room, but the additional of the sub made the bass overwhelming at times.
Reading how well the Denon x3600h measured on this site, I decided to use it for bass management with Audyssey and its preouts to drive the Luxman.
The graph above is slightly less flat the what the Odyssey app reports. I did try to use the mmm technique with REW which did produce a curve closer to the app, just forgot to save the results.
Overall, I am very pleased with this setup. I feel that this beats my previous 104/2 with sub in terms of clarity in the highs and the lows feel very well integrated. I am running Audyssey full range right now but plan to experiment with limiting it to 500hz and below in the future. I did try to compare vs Denon's direct, pure direct modes and felt that Audyssey provides a much richer presentation of the music.
Few other notes:
- In the course of my testing, I also tried to use the Denon's onboard amps. As expected, the performance was very disappointing. The LS50s sounded very thin with too much brightness. The Luxman is able to open up the sound nicely and everything just becomes more airy and musical.
- In A/B testing the LS50 vs the 104/2, the Luxman was producing around 3-5db higher SPL on the 104/2s vs the LS50s keeping the volume knob at the same place.