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Kef Blade 1 meta disappointed

Hear Here said:
On the contrary. Their years of research has led them to mount the bass drivers on the sides of the enclosure.

Low frequency sound is very difficult for the human ear to precisely locate its position, so (like subwoofers) the location of bass drivers is largely irrelevant. KEF have long used energy-cancelling methods to maximise bass performance, thus their back-to-back placement within the Blade enclosure and minimising cabinet vibrations.

They've been doing this for decades on their top-of-the-range speakers. I used to own their Reference 107 speakers that had their 2 10" bass drivers completely inside the cabinet, but again using force cancelling techniques to maximise performance. In 1986, Stereophile said of this speaker "Overall, I consider the KEF 107s to be an engineering marvel and, by a clear margin, the best full-range conventional speaker money can buy." KEF didn't get it wrong then and they don't get it wrong now!

View attachment 431442
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Yes i know i was ironic note the smiley ;) there was some other poster ( now blocked ) that in some pig headed way declared that it was always wrong to have side firing woofers and Kef was stupid and he knew better, and then continued his armchair engineering rant into other aspect... :D

I have the LS60 with side firing woofers and they sound very good
 
Regarding speaker close to wall or not , it's actually a kind of half measure to shelf the bass like kef r ( in reference you can choose with port bungs ) put hem close to wall and EQ . it's some kind of whack a mole anyway in small rooms you moving around the problems .

But ill get their rationale ,not many of their typical customer has EQ and microphone at hand ( even they should ) so this compromise can sort of work for many
 
Mnyb said:
Yes i know i was ironic note the smiley ;) there was some other poster ( now blocked ) that in some pig headed way declared that it was always wrong to have side firing woofers and Kef was stupid and he knew better, and then continued his armchair engineering rant into other aspect... :D

I have the LS60 with side firing woofers and they sound very good
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Yeah, the side-firing woofer comment earlier in this thread was nonsense. I got your irony!
 
Comparison of vertical directivity

Kef blade 2 meta

kef R11 meta

Large Woofer

IMG_0411（中）.jpeg
IMG_0412（中）.jpeg
IMG_0413（中）.jpeg
 
sigbergaudio said:
This is a somewhat important point.

I think many pull the speakers out from the wall, and think the difference in soundstage is due to the change in distance between speakers and wall.
In reality the difference is due to the change in distance between speakers and the listener.
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That's the largest contributing factor, but not the only factor. Room reflections also have an impact.

My speaker positions are not centered in either my family room nor office due to room layouts and furniture. In both systems, my soundstage width extends further past the speaker on the side where the speaker is closer to a reflective surface. The side reflections would be problematic if using a speaker with a poor dispersion pattern (e.g., as shown by a horizontal contour plot), but I like the effect using a speaker that has a relatively consistant dispersion pattern. Ideally I could get a little more reflection off of the opposing sides, but I'm not going to prop up something to make it happen.
 
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terryforsythe said:
My KEF LS60s, in my office, each have four 135mm woofers. At the SPLs to which I listen 2m from the speakers, their mid-bass performance is really, really good. I don't know what is the size of their voice coils, but looking at KEF's white paper the voice coils certainly appear to be smaller than 3".

uk.kef.com

Product Support

View KEF's wireless HiFi audio system speakers. Drawing on decades of acoustic expertise, each provides outstanding clarity with several connectivity options.
uk.kef.com uk.kef.com
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The LFs have two different sized voice coils due to the nature of the UniCore arrangement.

Iirc, the larger of the two (outer voice coil) has a mandrel diameter of around 44mm, so 1.75", I guess, if we're working in nominal imperial.
 
AOR said:
The LFs have two different sized voice coils due to the nature of the UniCore arrangement.
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Yes. The cross section is shown on p. 7 (5th slide) of white paper, which is available in the link I provided. 44mm for the outer voice coil looks about right.
 
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terryforsythe said:
Yes. The cross section is shown on p. 7 (5th slide) of white paper, which is available in the link I provided. 44mm for the outer voice coil looks about right.
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Fun little development fact. The mandrel of the outer coil of the LS60 bass driver is the same size as the voice coil of the LSX. This is because the prototype version of the LS60 used heavily (very heavily) modified LSX LMF motors for the bass drivers.
 
AOR said:
Fun little development fact. The mandrel of the outer coil of the LS60 bass driver is the same size as the voice coil of the LSX. This is because the prototype version of the LS60 used heavily (very heavily) modified LSX LMF motors for the bass drivers.
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What is the maximum excursion (Xmax) of the LS60 bass drivers?
 
I am not an expert as many here are and a few others suppose they may be, lol. In fact, I hope to soon start a discussion where I have the community expertise shape and inform my emerging beliefs on audio. I have, however, heard the Blade one meta in 3 different rooms and the Blade two meta in a separate location on my journey to discover what I might get if I upgrade equipment pretty significantly. I have listened to a lot of options in speakers from roughly 10k to 30k. Here are a few things I found:

The Blades can sound very, very good to my ears. One room they only sounded 'good' but in several others they were certainly quite impressive across rock and classical pieces. Soundstage seemed very good. They had particularly great bass in one room in particular, strong and deep with no sub. That was the Blade one but the Blade two also sounded very good. I can't imagine anyone dissing the Blades. I briefly listened to a few speakers out of a realistic price range for me and it seemed the Blades competed without problem.

On Best Buy. Two locations for the Blades were there. The 'only good sounding' one and another where they sounded great. These locations are not just Magnolia shops... they are special design centers have have the typical Magnolia room and another room with that next tier of speaker in it such as Blade Ones, B&W 800 series, Martin Logan 15a etc. There will usually only be one of these stores per major market. I have been to one in Denver, Charlotte and one other spot I can't recall. In those stores you need to be there when an audio lead is there... The regular staff may not be able to help too much.

FWIW, I have found expensive speakers to all sound good but they do sound different. I have listened to many brands and the ones that have stood out most are the Blades, Perlisten S7t/R7ts, Dyptiques and the 13a and 15a Martin Logan's. I have heard all those in multiple locations except the Dyptiques which were only in one place. The Blades seem do do it all well. The Perlisten's sound excellent and their bass is mighty tight with impact too. The Martin Logan's have this amazing airiness that brings vocals right in front of you-- really a standout feature-- and their soundstage can be magnificent too. They are not as sweet spot dependent as I had heard (head in a vice is not true, lol) but setup is important with them, more so than the Perlisten's which seems very flexible. The Dyptiques were also impressive but wow were they position dependant! More than the electrostatics actually. In fact their position would sound great for one genre and then not so good with another... In the same spot. That was a problem for me.
 
traind said:
I am not an expert as many here are and a few others suppose they may be, lol. In fact, I hope to soon start a discussion where I have the community expertise shape and inform my emerging beliefs on audio. I have, however, heard the Blade one meta in 3 different rooms and the Blade two meta in a separate location on my journey to discover what I might get if I upgrade equipment pretty significantly. I have listened to a lot of options in speakers from roughly 10k to 30k. Here are a few things I found:

The Blades can sound very, very good to my ears. One room they only sounded 'good' but in several others they were certainly quite impressive across rock and classical pieces. Soundstage seemed very good. They had particularly great bass in one room in particular, strong and deep with no sub. That was the Blade one but the Blade two also sounded very good. I can't imagine anyone dissing the Blades. I briefly listened to a few speakers out of a realistic price range for me and it seemed the Blades competed without problem.

On Best Buy. Two locations for the Blades were there. The 'only good sounding' one and another where they sounded great. These locations are not just Magnolia shops... they are special design centers have have the typical Magnolia room and another room with that next tier of speaker in it such as Blade Ones, B&W 800 series, Martin Logan 15a etc. There will usually only be one of these stores per major market. I have been to one in Denver, Charlotte and one other spot I can't recall. In those stores you need to be there when an audio lead is there... The regular staff may not be able to help too much.

FWIW, I have found expensive speakers to all sound good but they do sound different. I have listened to many brands and the ones that have stood out most are the Blades, Perlisten S7t/R7ts, Dyptiques and the 13a and 15a Martin Logan's. I have heard all those in multiple locations except the Dyptiques which were only in one place. The Blades seem do do it all well. The Perlisten's sound excellent and their bass is mighty tight with impact too. The Martin Logan's have this amazing airiness that brings vocals right in front of you-- really a standout feature-- and their soundstage can be magnificent too. They are not as sweet spot dependent as I had heard (head in a vice is not true, lol) but setup is important with them, more so than the Perlisten's which seems very flexible. The Dyptiques were also impressive but wow were they position dependant! More than the electrostatics actually. In fact their position would sound great for one genre and then not so good with another... In the same spot. That was a problem for me.
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I appreciate your insights. As the thread starter I had hoped that some local member would have the Blades and offer a better opportunity to hear them and possibly come hear my set up. Secondary was the desire to hear if others had a similar experience and/or had heard both the Goldenear 1r's and the Blades to give their thoughts. I am very happy with the 1r's, the only reason for looking at the Blades was because of how well they were reviewed and because of their appearance since they would be in a modern great room with a lot of art. So 50% of their value would be appearance. I was also curious if they would fair better than other speakers in a very large reflective room. I will see if other BB's have them on demo here in AZ, none of the other dealers do-at least none that I could find. But in the end, they need to be significantly better than the 1r's which I purchased on a final clearance just after Audioquest took over GE to justify their price. I am sorry that this discussion descended into some nasty directions but this has been educational none the less.
 
Goldenear said:
I appreciate your insights. As the thread starter I had hoped that some local member would have the Blades and offer a better opportunity to hear them and possibly come hear my set up. Secondary was the desire to hear if others had a similar experience and/or had heard both the Goldenear 1r's and the Blades to give their thoughts. I am very happy with the 1r's, the only reason for looking at the Blades was because of how well they were reviewed and because of their appearance since they would be in a modern great room with a lot of art. So 50% of their value would be appearance. I was also curious if they would fair better than other speakers in a very large reflective room. I will see if other BB's have them on demo here in AZ, none of the other dealers do-at least none that I could find. But in the end, they need to be significantly better than the 1r's which I purchased on a final clearance just after Audioquest took over GE to justify their price. I am sorry that this discussion descended into some nasty directions but this has been educational none the less.
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A few more thoughts:

"Significantly better" is really tricky to determine. My current speakers were $4500, do I believe the Blades or any of the others I mentioned are better? Yes. But every time I go home and comparatively listen after hearing new speakers in a store I always still feel like my setup sounds very good. I think you seem the same way, largely satisfied with your Goldenears. Would the Blades have sonic advantages? I think they likely would but would they really be significant? Only you can answer that.

If you like the look of the Blades, it sounds like they would look killer in your room, lol. Not my priority but still, aesthetics do matter.

Blades are expensive. If you are seriously considering dropping that much cash if they were right then I suggest buying an inexpensive flight to Denver. There is a Best Buy with the Blade Ones there, right up the road from that Best Buy is ListenUp and they also had the Blade One on demo in December. ListenUp is also in Boulder, about 50 minutes away, and they had the Blade Twos on demo in December.
 
Pearljam5000 said:
What's a better speaker than the Blade at the same price or less?
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A tough question! When someone like Erin says they are the best he has heard it's a strong statement. And Kal from Stereophile bought a pair he was so impressed. I think Kal has heard more high end speakers, or reviewed more, than Erin.

But that doesn't mean any individual would prefer them more than another speaker. Tastes vary. Personally, my demos left me very positive on the Blades. I do think the higher end ESLs from Martin Logan have some noticeable advantages with some music content over the Blades. But all around? it depends on how much you appreciate the transparency from electrostatics. The Blades seem really good across all music. I found the Perlisten towers competitive for less money but no store I found had both Perlisten and Blades in them at the same time.

Due to all the variables, it's tough to compare speakers even though I have been to about 10 high quality audio shops in the last 4-5 months.
 
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