KEF Blade Two Meta Review

[kyuu]

Most important thing for a challenging space (any space, really) is having some form of measurement and EQ to knock down the inevitable bass peaks whether due to SBIR or room modes. Placement can have an effect, of course, but unless you can pull the speakers WAY out into the room the best way to minimize SBIR nulls is to place the speakers as close to the room boundaries as possible.

 

[SoySalsaPicante]

And then by doing so, you sacrifice bass headroom because you're surrendering boundary reinforcement of low frequencies. Ideally, as kyuu is saying, use EQ/room correction at the main listening position to smooth out response after taking advantage of placement to minimize dips/nulls. You can always cut back on energy, but adding energy is futile as it cancels itself out (the reason for the nulls/dips in the first place most of the time, especially at or below the room's Schroeder frequency).

 

[madFloyd]

I will use REW at some point. I’m still researching electronics and will make sure I have some form of EQ if only for digital.

 

[hvbias]

If anyone is looking for a gift for the KEF lover that has it all (in other words a Blade Meta owner ) I recently picked up Ken Kessler's book on KEF, it's just as good as his book on Quad which is pretty darn impressive.

 

[boatheelmusic]

Night and day difference!

 

[Champster]

Night and day difference!

What are all the amps for???

 

[Descartes]

Night and day difference!

Very nice so many amplifiers?

 

[Descartes]

View attachment 467404
KEF’s high-end flagship — the Blade Two Meta.
Due to its price, significant weight, and unusually shaped cabinet, I was unable to measure deviation between 2 samples and vertical directivity. I appreciate your understanding.





Impedance
View attachment 467405View attachment 467406




Frequency Response
View attachment 467407
Across the full audible range, the response is exceptionally flat.
The -6 dB low-end extension reaches down to about 33.6 Hz.
Although the low-frequency roll-off is fairly steep, the usable bandwidth is still more than sufficient.



Nearfield Measurements
View attachment 467408
Multiple components work in harmony to create something truly cohesive here.
The port shows no signs of pipe resonance, and the woofers exhibit an incredibly clean response.
This is engineering refinement at its finest.





Directivity
View attachment 467409View attachment 467410
Impressive.
As always, KEF’s mastery of directivity control shines through.
It’s simply beautiful.





Beamwidth
View attachment 467411
The beamwidth begins a smooth, graceful narrowing from around 800 Hz upward, showing excellent control across the range.





Polar Plot
View attachment 467412
Due to the speaker’s design and limitations of the time-window measurement method, a measurement artifact appears around 200 Hz on-axis (black line).




View attachment 467413
Once that’s excluded, the radiation pattern from 1 kHz up into the treble converges beautifully into near-perfect circles. It’s stunning.




THD
View attachment 467414View attachment 467415View attachment 467416
Even down to the 50 Hz region, total harmonic distortion remains around the 0.5% range.
Yes—50 Hz. That’s remarkable.





View attachment 467417View attachment 467418View attachment 467419
Even at 96 dB SPL@1m output, the performance in the sub-bass remains impressively clean.
Truly outstanding.




Multitone Test
View attachment 467420
View attachment 467421
This is what true scale and engineering prowess look like.
The speaker asserts its dominance with ease.





View attachment 467423View attachment 467424
The distortion was already so low to begin with that even at higher output levels, the increase in distortion is negligible.
Stellar performance.



Compression Test
View attachment 467425

Within the test bandwidth, the compression results are practically flat — almost error-level behavior.
Utterly powerful.




Final Thoughts
Blade Two Meta doesn’t compromise between stunning design and top-tier performance.
In any reasonably sized listening room, I believe it will deliver exceptional results — no matter where you place it.

Thank you so much for your review, I also had watched Erin’s video review and then went to listen to them in the KEF showroom in Japan!
Now proud owner of these beauties

 

[Descartes]

Nice review! Indeed these are very well designed and engineered speakers. My only concern is the impedance. If I read it correctly, there are many areas where it dips below 4OHMs and even below 2OHMs. By looking at this, it seems this will be a considerable load on the amplifier.

Yep that’s why I use Classe CAM600

With 600 W into 8Ω, 1200W into 4Ω and 1200W into 2Ω it maintains composure and offers incredible, "killer" performance.

 

[boatheelmusic]

Thank you. Two McIntosh MC275 tube amps run as monoblocks, one MC452 solid state stereo amp, two D1100 dac/preamps, one C2600 stereo tube preamp, one MPC 1500 power controller, a McIntosh LB 200 light box, an Mcclk clock, an MT 5 turntable.

Essentially two systems, Tube and Solid State, with a turntable, mac mini and other goodies. My wife likes blue meters, who am I to argue?

 

[Mort]

'da hell is that little TV

 

[boatheelmusic]

My mac mini monitor. My projector throws an 11’ x6’ image on the wall above it for movies.

 

[KenM10759]

Yep that’s why I use Classe CAM600

With 600 W into 8Ω, 1200W into 4Ω and 1200W into 2Ω it maintains composure and offers incredible, "killer" performance.

My Luxman M-900U power amp is another that is stable to 1Ω, which is nice.

Not as powerful as yours, but still very much adequate for the speakers, my room, and my listening distance. I might add a second later this year.

 

[hvbias]

Night and day difference!

My favorite thing about this picture isn't the speakers or the amps, it's your double height ceiling, I have been trying to focus on houses with one living room that has that but I'm also very location constrained.

 

[Descartes]

Since the veracity of the measurements has been called into question, let's compare @Nuyes measurements with Erin's. It is not my intention to criticize Erin or Nuyes, I am only comparing the two measurement sets to see how similar/different they are.


View attachment 467710

On axis FR: Using an image editing program, I copy-pasted Nuyes' measurements on Erin's and adjusted the graph to the same scale. Black = Erin, green = Nuyes. Nuyes' measurements have too much smoothing. Above about 1kHz, the two measurements are quite comparable, including the small dip at about 1.5kHz and the treble roll-off at about 16kHz. Below 200Hz, Nuyes' measurements are more lumpy, probably indicating limitations of his measurement setup. But it does capture the roll-off below 25Hz, although it appears to roll-off a bit earlier with Nuyes.

View attachment 467711View attachment 467712

Horizontal Contour Plot, Erin (left) vs Nuyes (right). Both are using the same colour scale where one colour transition equals -3dB, but the difference is that Nuyes did not normalize his plot to 0dB so the contour plots are not strictly comparable. Regardless, with an eye of faith you can see that they are about the same.

View attachment 467715View attachment 467714

Polar Plot, Erin (left) vs. Nuyes (right). I took the liberty of flipping Erin's plot upside down for easier comparison. The difference is that Nuyes chose to normalize the plot to the same SPL so we can compare the directivity at different frequencies. Erin did not. So even though the two graphs are not directly comparable, it is remarkable how similar they look.

View attachment 467717View attachment 467716

Compression test, Erin (left) vs. Nuyes (right). Erin does his test down to 40Hz, Nuyes stops at 100Hz. Both tests use the conventional +/-3dB vertical scale. Erin starts his test at 86dB, Nuyes starts his test at 76dB. The results are dramatically different. Erin tested to a louder volume (102dB) than Nuyes (96dB), yet his results show remarkable linearity. Nuyes shows +/-1dB on the same test. Nuyes' results are also really jagged with a lot of tweeter distortion, despite testing at a lower SPL than Erin.

So: either Erin was measuring at a lower SPL than indicated, or Nuyes was testing at a higher SPL than indicated. Either that, or there is something wrong with Nuyes' sample.

View attachment 467720View attachment 467721

Impedance vs. Frequency, Erin (left) vs Nuyes (right). There is nothing to see here except different vertical scales.

IMO the two sets of measurements are very much in agreement with the exception of the compression test.

Thank you

 

[Descartes]

My Luxman M-900U power amp is another that is stable to 1Ω, which is nice.

Not as powerful as yours, but still very much adequate for the speakers, my room, and my listening distance. I might add a second later this year.

Been looking at Purify amplifiers for when my 15 year old amplifiers start dying!

 

[Mort]

From my Genelec glass house, I'm throwing a stone at those ugly KEFs.

 

[Pearljam5000]

From my Genelec glass house, I'm throwing a stone at those ugly KEFs.

Lol
I'm dying to hear Blade 1 next to 8361
They both should be the best coaxials

 

[Whoareyou]

With the drivers on side, how do these speakers react (measurements?) if placed close to walls ?

 

[boatheelmusic]

A good subject. Using REW, The speakers do best about 4’ from side walls, and about 5’ forward of front walls. My mlp is about 15’ back, and about 11 degrees of toe in with 8’ between speakers. My room is 18’ high, 20’ wide and, including kitchen area behind me, about 40’ long. About 14,400 cu ft in total. Either the 180 wpc in tube mode, or 452 wpc (tested at 600wpc) in ss mode, sound is full, rich and clear. And, the Blades, with four 9” woofers each need no subwoofer and are architecturally significant. Strong to 25hz per REW.

Very pleased with performance.

The inspiration:

Bird in Space - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org