KEF Blade 2 Meta review by Erin's Audio Corner

[Sokel]

@Keith_W will have to measure the electrical signals at the cross-over outputs (with all drivers connected and the speaker fully and properly assembled), so that he can at least replicate the cross-over filters and EQ parameters with his DSP. That would be his starting point for further tweaking (such as phase corrections, etc.).

Yep,that's why ordering it without the filters in place is meaningless,that's what I'm saying.

 

[olieb]

@Keith_W will have to measure the electrical signals at the cross-over outputs (with all drivers connected and the speaker fully and properly assembled), so that he can at least replicate the cross-over filters and EQ parameters with his DSP. That would be his starting point for further tweaking (such as phase corrections, etc.).

Or he just buys a Klippel and makes his own measurements ;-). In a world where you buy a pair of Blades just for tinkering that seems not too crazy.

 

[dfuller]

it could be that people think they usually prefer wider directivity speakers because they mask other shortcomings, but when they encounter narrower directivity speaker with more or less perfect response, no resonances, about full range (like high end studio monitors, D&D 8C) etc. then they appreciate them as well. Kind of opposite of the recent PS Audio review where the response wasn't that flat, but the very wide dispersion still made them sound subjectively good and impressive

I would believe this actually - pretty much by definition narrower directivity speakers will have less interference from the room, so any axial flaws will be more apparent in a typical space.

 

[amirm]

This, what I understand to be "they are all doing it for money, ASR is not, therefore ASR is more objective and the ASR way is the correct way" argument - that's is just a fallacy.

No, it is not a fallacy. I have freedoms that I would not have if I was working every day to pay for my test gear and to quit my day job to do this full time. I remember Erin doing one of his first reviews, I think it was some Klipsch speaker, and spoke very harshly about it. That got fans of that speaker to throw a bunch of bricks at him. He quickly learned that he needed to be more politically correct with his judgements and stated so here. He even proceeded to take the review of said Klipsch down after getting heat for it at SH forum. I can't find his post here but he said the same thing here that he learned to be more politically correct in his reviews.

Sean Olive is getting paid to do what he does as well. Is his work less objective and valuable because of that?

The fact that you bring this up shows that you do have concerns there. Do you want me to bash you for daring to say that?

I have responded to this claim about Dr. Olive and Dr. Toole more times than I count. Oh they worked for a company so they are motivated by commercial reasons. My answer back is not "how dare you question their integrity?" I answer with the fact that both of them started this work decades back at National Research Institute. And that by disclosing their research to all, advantages their competitors. Question has some merit so you need to accept and address it. Not just blow up and complain that no one has the right to even ask it.

The objective of all reviewers is to influence people, to form perceptions and opinions, to capture the alliances of the community. There is always something in for the reviewer.

Yeh, the question is how much and whether it is directly monitory in nature. By your logic Darko, etc. are cool too because after all, that is what they are after as well. So no, there are distinctions among reviews. And Brad pointing that out this is a contrast between us and Erin is very well justified.

I understand ASR's objective might be to be the audio review site that is regarded as the most reliable and objective. But doing that in a way that alleges every other reviewer who is not doing it exactly what ASR is doing as crooked is just very off putting to me.

That is not my objective. My competition is not other objective reviews. My competition is subjective reviews that routinely have little foundation to back what they claim. Same applies to some extent if an objective review is heavily front loaded with subjectivism. And importantly, folks are listening to that part of the review.

Your claim that Erin is called "crooked" is completely out of line. No one has done that. Members have doubt that someone reviewing a $30K speaker and gushing about it for many minutes may be after clicks, revenues, growing subscribers, etc. That should be accepted as going with the territory, not complained about with righteousness.

What is distasteful to me is fanboism used to go after anyone who dares to speak to their doubts. No one or forum has done as much for Erin to grow his channel than ASR. Don't you go high and mighty on us and claim we need to do more for him by stopping members expressing some issues. Live with the criticism and if that is too much for you, don't read ASR.

 

[CleanSound]

And that when he gets a $30,000 speaker on loan, there is a reason to be on guard and not believe everything he says subjectively.

This thread turned into a big discussion, debate and argument about the review industry/business. And since everywhere is closed on Easter Sunday and my kids are out with their friends and I have nothing better to do, I will opine with my own opinion.

I'm not trying to stir things up, nor am I attacking anyone's integrity.

But here are few things we know: Erin want these Blade 2 Meta, and he obviously won't pay MSRP if he doesn't have to, I mean, who would? Either consciously or subconsciously, his subjective portion may help sway the folks at KEF to give him industry insider accommodation pricing. It is also obvious that Erin is finding as many ways to monetize his reviews as possible. I have absolutely nothing against any of that.

But what I personally find objectionable is when he started a goFundMe to cover the cost of his NFS, I thought that was very distasteful and the epitome of the entitled and handout mentally of this new generation. If you, as a grown man, made the decision to spend $100k on a toy that you think would be an investment, then you need to have a plan to earn the return on investment; not go around asking people to help you pay for it. Absolutely pathetic and juvenile.

Regarding his subjective portion, I find it useful as it does add extra color where data alone does not tell the full story. But I am fully aware that it's subjective and Erin's room plays a lot into what he hears. I also have developed a very low tolerance for flowery BS, so if the subjective portion is too much, I will just fast forward. And I grew up on the hustling streets of NY, so I am a skeptic to the nth degree anyway.

The most important thing for any HiFi consumer: Since, the advent of ASR, Erin and Spinaroma.org, I personally will NEVER EVER buy any speaker without (1) seeing the measured data and (2) listening to it first or have a full return/refund policy.

Any ASE member who has been presented all the science on ASR and yet decides to buy a pair of speaker as a result of Erin's or anyone else's subjective review alone without doing items 1 and 2 above, you absolutely deserved to be swindled.

 

[amper42]

Happy Easter Everyone!
Go out and hide some eggs for the kids and hug them.
Kiss your wife and do something special for her.
It's a wonderful life.
Thank you @amirm for ASR. You're an amazing gift to the audio community.

 

[Tell]

The measurements are just fantastic, but even if I got these for free I wouldn't use them since I prefer not to have big ugly UFOs in my living room.

 

[Chester]

This thread turned into a big discussion, debate and argument about the review industry/business. And since everywhere is closed on Easter Sunday and my kids are out with their friends and I have nothing better to do, I will opine with my own opinion.

I'm not trying to stir things up, nor am I attacking anyone's integrity.

But here are few things we know: Erin want these Blade 2 Meta, and he obviously won't pay MSRP if he doesn't have to, I mean, who would? Either consciously or subconsciously, his subjective portion may help sway the folks at KEF to give him industry insider accommodation pricing. It is also obvious that Erin is finding as many ways to monetize his reviews as possible. I have absolutely nothing against any of that.

But what I personally find objectionable is when he started a goFundMe to cover the cost of his NFS, I thought that was very distasteful and the epitome of the entitled and handout mentally of this new generation. If you, as a grown man, made the decision to spend $100k on a toy that you think would be an investment, then you need to have a plan to earn the return on investment; not go around asking people to help you pay for it. Absolutely pathetic and juvenile.

Regarding his subjective portion, I find it useful as it does add extra color where data alone does not tell the full story. But I am fully aware that it's subjective and Erin's room plays a lot into what he hears. I also have developed a very low tolerance for flowery BS, so if the subjective portion is too much, I will just fast forward. And I grew up on the hustling streets of NY, so I am a skeptic to the nth degree anyway.

The most importantly thing for any HiFi consumer: Since, the advent of ASR, Erin and Spinaroma.org, I personally will NEVER EVER buy any speaker without (1) seeing the measured data and (2) listening to it first or have a full return/refund policy.

Any ASE member who has been presented all the science on ASR and yet decides to buy a pair of speaker as a result of Erin's or anyone else's subjective review alone without doing items 1 and 2 above, you absolutely deserved to be swindled.

While I agree with most of what you’ve said above, it leaves me somewhat confused as only days ago in the PS Audio thread you were vehemently defending Erin, as below:

Of course he gets special treatment.

How many other reviewers are as technical as he is? Heck, how many reviewers are legit engineers of any type?

How many other reviewers knows about speaker design as much as he does?

How many other reviewers has a NFS? Heck, how many speaker manufacturers has an NFS?

How many reviewers do you know actually gives bad reviews and many bad reviews?

I know of only one other reviewer, and I don't even consider him a reviewer, rather I consider him a fact checker.

You dare put Darko or other jokers in the same breath as Erin? Give me a break.



Damn right I'm a fan girl of Erin, because I'm a fan girl of science and engineering and data, just not a fan of his corny dad jokes. Would you want me to be a fan girl of the likes of Darko, Steve Guttenberg, Thomas Tan?

These threads have become a little too emotionally charged I feel. I’m going to duck out now.

 

[CleanSound]

While I agree with most of what you’ve said above, it leaves me somewhat confused as only days ago in the PS Audio thread you were vehemently defending Erin, as below:




These threads have become a little too emotionally charged I feel. I’m going to duck out now.

I don't see any issues or contradiction. I defended him for getting special treatment because the good he does is greater than the bad he do.

The good: he provides accurate data, he explains the science and he gives bad reviews when bad reviews are deserved. He also gives extra color on the subjective portion.

The bad: (And my biggest beef) As a grown man, makes a financial decision and commitment on $100k toy and instead of manning up to pay for it through return on investment, he starts a goFundMe, telling others how long it will take to make that money back as if he is trying to earn pity and then asking other people to cover the cost of HIS decision; absolutely pathetic and juvenile. His subjective portion sometimes do get flowery. And his corny dad jokes.

You take all the good and bad and compare him to ALL reviewers out there, you mean to tell me, he is not a good reviewer? He is still one of the best reviewer and I am a fan boy of his. . .being a fan boy doesn't mean I think he is perfect.

 

[napilopez]

I was saying about masking issues just like stereo listening is masking issues instead of single speaker, and surround setups even more than stereo with blurring the differences between tonality of such setups with increase in number of speakers and sources. Also it doesn't seem right to me anyway, that would mean headphones are masking issues in the recordings the most, they work more like idealised laser beam no reflection from the room speakers, but opposite is more true. But if he was talking about the room issues then sure.

I hear what you're saying, but I'm not sure the comparison to stereo really works here. Stereo means your ears are receiving decorrelated information from two directions at the same time. In mono, no matter how wide the directivity, there's still one primary direction where the sound is a lot louder than any reflections arriving from other directions.

For headphones, I'd also contest the point that they are inherently more revealing than speakers. People listen to terrible headphone all the time, and I'd argue their main benefit in detail retrieval is probably relatively low distortion and in many cases lowering the noise floor. See the quote from Toole's book below.

I would believe this actually - pretty much by definition narrower directivity speakers will have less interference from the room, so any axial flaws will be more apparent in a typical space.

That's exactly what I'm saying isn't necessarily true though. I concede might depend on what the source of the axial flaw is -- acoustic interference vs a resonance. But for a resonances, it appears reflections make them more prominent, lowering the threshold for their detection.

I know you've probably seen some or all of this before, but collecting here for the purposes of discussion. Here's what Toole has to say about resonances, around Chapter 4.6.2

"If resonances exist in loudspeakers, either in the transducers or in the enclosures, they are added to those in the program, changing the timbre. These changes are monotonously added to all reproduced sounds: voices, musical instruments and so forth. Such resonances are unwanted, and it is one of the prime challenges of loudspeaker designers to eliminate them because they radiate throughout the room, about equally to all listeners. An interesting fact is that reflected sounds are perceived as “repetitions” of the direct sound, and the result of the accumulated “looks” at the sound is that low- and medium-Q resonances become more audible."

Consequently two contrasting events follow: flaws in loudspeakers are more obvious (bad), and subtle timbral cues in music are better revealed (good) (Toole and Olive, 1988). Listening through headphones or in a dominant direct sound field (a dead room) make us less sensitive to low- and middle-Q resonances, possibly explaining why some headphones with unimpressive measurements are tolerable, at least with pop music."

Furthermore:

"In general, resonances alter the timbre of sounds, while the delayed arrivals of reflected sounds that create acoustical interference are perceived as spaciousness—the sound of a room."

Here's he's talking about room reflections as opposed to speaker directivity directly, but they are effectively the same thing.

I don't think Toole's necessarily right about everything, but I'd like to see the evidence otherwise in this case.

Granted, I'm also defending my personal experience: I for, one have never felt narrow directivity speakers to be inherently more detailed, just more pinpoint with their imaging. I recognize some might disagree with that experience, and my experiences are of course partly colored by having read this book too.

 

[mglobe]

How in the hell did a set of measurements and opinions on what is clearly one of the better speakers on the market, turn into an argument about the guy that made the measurements? Many of us have been hoping for measurements on big, high-dollar speakers. We should be thrilled. The discussion should be about how they compare to competing products, value or lack thereof, aesthetics... Instead we get a bitch-fest about personalities that might as well be a discussion of characters on the Real Housewives of Orange County.

Pathetic.

 

[Ron Texas]

My opinion is by now the discussion of Erin's or anyone's motivations has passed the point of sanity and is spreading into the realm of absurdity. The Blade 2 is easily one of the best passive speakers available. It's expensive but not crazy expensive. There are a lot of possible things to discuss about these speakers which haven't been touched. So would this group of bright people refocus please?

 

[CleanSound]

My opinion is by now the discussion of Erin's or anyone's motivations has passed the point of sanity and is spreading into the realm of absurdity. The Blade 2 is easily one of the best passive speakers available. It's expensive but not crazy expensive. There are a lot of possible things to discuss about these speakers which haven't been touched. So would this group of bright people refocus please?

I highly doubt many people will buy a pair of $30k speaker, hence the conversation drifted to the absurdity realm.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

I highly doubt many people will buy a pair of $30k speaker, hence the conversation drifted to the absurdity realm.

Being realistic, there is people buying this speaker and even members here are Blades owners. Not me tbh, lol.

My end game should be somethin' like Rythmik f12/f15 or KC92 + Ref 1 meta

 

[Ron Texas]

I highly doubt many people will buy a pair of $30k speaker, hence the conversation drifted to the absurdity realm.

My guess is 500 to 1,000 pairs a year.

 

[dfuller]

It's expensive but not crazy expensive

You'd have to really be rolling in cash to justify $30,000 speakers that still need amps. That said, at least you seem to (mostly) get what you pay for, they are demonstrably excellent speakers in basically every respect worth mentioning. Exceptional axial performance and directivity, mountains of headroom, decent sensitivity, extremely low IMD, and excellent dynamic handling.

 

[Sancus]

I don't know if it's quite like that. Evidence leads me to believe to directivity width (and overall behavior) is pretty subjective and content-dependent as long as it's "good".

Moreover, I want to point out that it's narrower directivity speakers that tend to mask issues. Toole's book suggests wider directivity (more specifically louder reflections in room) actually seems to make resonances more noticeable, as they increase "repetitions" of the offending resonances, not the other way around. So it's the narrower directivity speakers that are arguably doing the masking.

I've always figured that wide directivity Increases envelopment in a stereo situation because you're just throwing more energy into the room to form reflections. And it's pretty well established that stereo listeners like speakers that increase envelopment because stereo is so deprived of it in the first place. Especially when listening to acoustic instrumental stuff.

This obviously becomes completely irrelevant obviously isn't much of an advantage in multichannel and may even be a detriment.

 

[PierreV]

You'd have to really be rolling in cash to justify $30,000 speakers that still need amps. That said, at least you seem to (mostly) get what you pay for, they are demonstrably excellent speakers in basically every respect worth mentioning. Exceptional axial performance and directivity, mountains of headroom, decent sensitivity, extremely low IMD, and excellent dynamic handling.

I am not sure about that: at that level of performance, I don't see many benefits in going active.

If they were available as active or passive speakers for the same price, I would buy the passive version and hook it to whatever Hypex/Purify based solutions are available at a given moment. High-quality amplification is relatively cheap and, if it fails, very easily swappable whereas an active speaker must be returned.

 

[OfficialChill]

The bad: (And my biggest beef) As a grown man, makes a financial decision and commitment on $100k toy and instead of manning up to pay for it through return on investment, he starts a goFundMe, telling others how long it will take to make that money back as if he is trying to earn pity and then asking other people to cover the cost of HIS decision; absolutely pathetic and juvenile. His subjective portion sometimes do get flowery. And his corny dad jokes.

This seems like an overly harsh and perhaps inaccurate depiction

I can’t really remember him complaining much about the cost of the NFS. To me he seems fully insightful to the fact the relatively small amount YT pays him is probably never going to provide ROI. My impression is also that he has a decent job, especially if he can afford the Klippel in the first place. When he does mention asking for donations it’s for buying products to test, e.g. when he bought the LS60 wireless and saying how he could only afford to do this once or twice a year

The way you describe him being pathetic and juvenile for asking viewers to donate seems to be on the basis that the NFS has put him into financial hardship but this, admittedly without much knowledge into his financials, doesn’t appear to be the case

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I've always figured that wide directivity Increases envelopment in a stereo situation because you're just throwing more energy into the room to form reflections. And it's pretty well established that stereo listeners like speakers that increase envelopment because stereo is so deprived of it in the first place. Especially when listening to acoustic instrumental stuff.

This obviously becomes completely irrelevant in multichannel.

Not sure it is irrelevant. The limitations of a narrower directivity (smaller apparent soundstage) are minimized when used in a MCH system but the advantages (reduced room interaction) remain. Speculation, of course, but consistent with my perceptions.