KEF R11 Meta Tower Speaker Review

[exm]

Hope you guys have some guidance on this topic.

I am planning a Home Cinema with R7 Meta, R6 Meta and just couldn’t help myself and got a pair of R5 (non-meta) as rears in perfect condition for 1k€. Seller told me he couldn’t tell the difference to the METAs in a blind test. My thinking was that saving >1000€ compared to the R3 Metas plus stands is worth it.

Well, now I found a pair of R11s (non-META) for 2600€. But that would be too wild, right?Room has 25sqm. Talk me out of this

R7 Metas will be 4000€ the pair (new).

If you're using a home cinema, you really want the Meta center. I think that R11s will be great in your setup.

 

[kumizi]

This. I have the Reference 3 and even they are surprisingly lacking in bass probably because they only come with two 6,5" woofers. I think the limit is volume since the KEF are usually really sleek. But as long as you let a sub do a job, it's fine. If you want full range only from speakers you'd need to have huge towers.

There are many speakers on the market smaller than the R11 and play much lower. That is my biggest problem with Kef. Even with a huge floorstander, you needs subs.

 

[BBSPeter]

a safe upgrade might be the magnat signature 909

Hello

. I have the Magnat Signature 909.

Amplifier from Nord Aucostic Hypex 4 channel/350w in 8 Ohm so I have 2 channel on 1 speaker.

To get the best sound and response from my magnate, I have improved the crossower with much better cable in the speaker to each driver and on the crossower to and the connectors in to the speaker.

. It was a time job that is worth it any day.

And I put the best sound attenuation on each wall in 100% of the box.

From a very good normal speaker in the price range to 2500 - 3500 euros.

To measure up to 10000-13000 euro speakers.

I had Swan's f.f2a speakers before and they play much clearer and deeper with a very clear midrange.

 

[thewas]

First of all welcome here.

To get the best sound and response from my magnate, I have improved the crossower with much better cable in the speaker to each driver and on the crossower to and the connectors in to the speaker.

And I put the best sound attenuation on each wall in 100% of the box.

That can actually make an audible difference.

 

[pdefina]

I've always wondered about measerments with speakers and now I know!

I spent hours today, comparing speakers and the Kefs sounded terrible to me! Even the Martin Logan f20s blew them away, I mean by a long shot.

I also bought the polk r200s based on reviews that they measure well. They were OK, but boring as heck. Well built but a dry speaker with bloated mid bass.

I have since acquired B&W 603 s2 anniversary edition for 700 bucks and in my room after some tweaking they sound very good to ME.

For DACs, amps, preamps etc... I'll look at the measurements to a degree. But so far, it's proven to mean nothing for speakers, at least in these cases and to my ears.

Now I know to trust my ears over measurements. If I had to listen Kefs every day I'd give up music

 

[dfuller]

I've always wondered about measerments with speakers and now I know!

I spent hours today, comparing speakers and the Kefs sounded terrible to me! Even the Martin Logan f20s blew them away, I mean by a long shot.

I also bought the polk r200s based on reviews that they measure well. They were OK, but boring as heck. Well built but a dry speaker with bloated mid bass.

I have since acquired B&W 603 s2 anniversary edition for 700 bucks and in my room after some tweaking they sound very good to ME.

For DACs, amps, preamps etc... I'll look at the measurements to a degree. But so far, it's proven to mean nothing for speakers, at least in these cases and to my ears.

Now I know to trust my ears over measurements. If I had to listen Kefs every day I'd give up music

Speaker measurements are only so predictive. Better to use them to correlate what you like vs blindly trusting that Toole/Olive informed designs will always sound good to you. You seem to prefer speakers with tilted up top end and a relatively wide dispersion pattern - that's fine. Nothing wrong there. KEFs are not that, they tend to be relatively relaxed in the mids with a quite narrow dispersion pattern - in room they'll sound quite different, the KEF being waaaaaay darker by comparison.

The "estimated in room response" assumes a mode-less room. These are meaningful generally from ~500-1000hz and above.

.

 

[Purité Audio]

Quite not everyone enjoys high fidelity.
Keith

 

[dfuller]

Quite not everyone enjoys high fidelity.
Keith

This is the kind of attitude on ASR I can't stand.

 

[xaxxon]

This is why I am on team KEF. A stunningly good performer, and as much of a "bargain" as anything in audio priced at $6500 can be said to be. Good looking and understated considering its size.

don't be on teams. Companies don't care about you, you should only are about specific good products.

 

[Vacceo]

I've always wondered about measerments with speakers and now I know!

I spent hours today, comparing speakers and the Kefs sounded terrible to me! Even the Martin Logan f20s blew them away, I mean by a long shot.

I also bought the polk r200s based on reviews that they measure well. They were OK, but boring as heck. Well built but a dry speaker with bloated mid bass.

I have since acquired B&W 603 s2 anniversary edition for 700 bucks and in my room after some tweaking they sound very good to ME.

For DACs, amps, preamps etc... I'll look at the measurements to a degree. But so far, it's proven to mean nothing for speakers, at least in these cases and to my ears.

Now I know to trust my ears over measurements. If I had to listen Kefs every day I'd give up music

Measurements tell you what happens, not what you like.

Since your preference is what it is, measurements will help you "see" what your prefer to listen to. And that is perfectly fine.

 

[MaxBuck]

don't be on teams. Companies don't care about you, you should only are about specific good products.

KEF couldn't care less about whether I exist. The converse isn't true. My respect for what KEF does is unrelated to their affection for me, specifically. So far their products seem almost without exception to be very good performers and good values.

 

[avanti1960]

This is a review, listening tests, EQ and detailed measurements of the KEF R11 Meta floorstanding speaker. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $3250 each.
View attachment 359169
The R11 Meta is gorgeous looking with high gloss finish and cabinet that has been shrunk as much as possible to basically hug the drivers. The coax center driver is the star of the show carrying most of the audible band from 200 Hz up (see measurement below). I was impressed with the engineering that went into binding terminal of all things:
View attachment 359170

With a turn of a knob, you connect the bass to the coaxial and vice versa! No jumpers here. Even the cardboard that the speaker came in has clever features like plastic that you pinch and it releases the sides of the box so you can get it out easier. First class execution all around.

KEF R11 Meta Speaker Measurements
As usual we start with our Klippel NFS robotic measurements of frequency response with acoustic center set to center of coaxial driver and grill left out (as well as port plug):
View attachment 359171
I sent out the measurement to KEF and correlation was excellent with their measurements. Their response was a bit smoother than mine but otherwise showed the same dip around 1.2 kHz and dip in bass response. Company explained that the former is diffraction related and goes away off axis and bass shelving was doing was done to accommodate room gain. I will check for this in listening tests later. For now, we can admire the nice directivity which is highlighted in off-axis response that is smooth and sloping down as we want to see it:
View attachment 359172

Very nice. Simulating room response we get:
View attachment 359173
The dip is not as pronounced now which is good.

I forgot to measure the port response but here is one of the woofers and coaxial driver:
View attachment 359175
Even in good speakers I am used to seeing woofer break up/resonances but here, that is so suppressed. Credit goes to the coaxial driver which goes so low, allowing earlier roll off of the woofer response.

Coaxial driver brings uniform directivity and that is precisely what we see:
View attachment 359177View attachment 359178
View attachment 359179

While competing waveguide solutions manage similar behavior horizontally, vertically they are usually a mess. Not so here. Vertical response of the R11 Meta is almost as good as horizontal -- a nice bonus!

Those quad woofers work to bring ease of bass and SPL handling:
View attachment 359181
View attachment 359182

It sounded clean even during sweeps. So I decided to push it to 102 dBSPL:
View attachment 359183
This is why you buy a high-performance tower speaker folks instead of bookshelf. Same amount of floor space but far better handling of music at elevated levels.

Some of you worry about the misnamed speaker "compression" so here are the three responses adjusted to land on top of each other, with proper vertical scale:
View attachment 359184
There is just no audible consequence as a result of going from 86 dBSPL all the way up to 102 dBSPL.

Impedance minimum falls at higher frequencies making it easier to handle as music is not as loud there:
View attachment 359185

There are some resonances as is the case with just about every speaker I measure:
View attachment 359186
And here is the step function for fans of that:
View attachment 359187

KEF R11 Meta Listening Tests and Equalization
Due to heaviness of the speaker, I tested the R11 Meta in our living room as you see in the review picture. This is a massive open floor space with ceiling at some 25 feet. Speaker was away from the rear wall to the tune of 5 to 6 feet (about 2 meters). Stock sound seemed "accurate" for the lack of a better term. I was curious what effect EQ would have on the two things that were visible in on-axis response: dip at 1.2 kHz and bass shelving:
View attachment 359188
I started with the 1.2 KHz (Band 2). This gave female voices more brilliance and pulled them out in front of the speaker a bit. Depending on the clip I played, I could see how someone would prefer it without EQ, while others would want it with that small correction. It was a trade off between sounding a bit bright (with EQ) vs a bit recessed (stock).

I then dialed in the bass response with that boost. I was prepared for some distortion but nothing remotely was audible in that front. Instead, I was greeted with glorious, deep bass that was substantially more rewarding than stock response. What's more it helped to balance the overall tonality with the 1.2 kHz filter, no longer having that tad brightness effect.

I cranked up my amplifier to 0dB reference and started to play track after track. Every piece of music was glorious. Deep, deep bass that was clean as a whistle. Upper range response was delightful while not being accentuated at all. With my wife and dogs around, my testing especially at these playback levels is usually limited but I was enjoying the speaker so much I kept going. Next thing I know, our female dog is worried, running to my wife to hold her. And the male dog coming to me giving me that look of: "what are these loud sounds???" After they did this three times I decided to sadly quit.

Let me summarize it for you: the stock tuning is designed to not remotely offend. The shelving in bass will mean even if there are significant room modes, speaker will not get boomy as I routinely hear from flat response speakers. And the small dip at 1.2 kHz means it will never sound sharp either even if the recording is such. In that regard, I would call the R11 Meta tuning "conservative." There may indeed by something to this tuning as starting point. Since we must measure the response and EQ in bass anyway, we can make the correction I did. But for those who don't, they will get a better response. So the choices here seem wise even though I like very much preferred the filtering I applied (especially in bass).

Conclusions
We expect excellence, objectively optimized response from KEF speakers and we have that in R11 Meta. My experience with budget coaxial designs is that they give up power handling which to me is a poor trade off. Not here. The R11 Meta has excellent bass handling with very low distortion allowing me to EQ it with no degradation as far as distortion of playback ability. There is a bit of room left here in there for enthusiasts who want the optimal performance to get there with EQ. Result was that even in our living room with many hard surfaces and large space to boot, a single R11 Meta roared to action, delivering optimal and super enjoyable response on every reference track I threw at it. Science and excellent engineering works!

I am happy to recommend the KEF R11 Meta speaker. Not only does it perform well, it is well priced as well.

------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Thanks for the review, nicely done !
The one question I had was about the enclosure resonance. Those standing waves below 250 Hz have been the bane of my speaker existence- typically these droning frequencies can muddy up the higher frequencies and render the overall sound as unacceptable.
It's been quite a while since you did the review but does that ring a bell at all from your recollection?

 

[testp]

Thanks for the review, nicely done !
The one question I had was about the enclosure resonance. Those standing waves below 250 Hz have been the bane of my speaker existence- typically these droning frequencies can muddy up the higher frequencies and render the overall sound as unacceptable.
It's been quite a while since you did the review but does that ring a bell at all from your recollection?

arent those <250Hz decay's rather bass waves that take longer to dissipate. I've read from 'i think' Adam audio papers, that shorter decays from low bass can be achieved if you dont tune the drivers that low and/or use a closed box solution.

 

[avanti1960]

arent those <250Hz decay's rather bass waves that take longer to dissipate. I've read from 'i think' Adam audio papers, that shorter decays from low bass can be achieved if you dont tune the drivers that low and/or use a closed box solution.

correct but the source is cabinet resonance as mentioned in the review. good pobability of hard sounding bass and midrange noticeably blurred. very similar to speakers I have owned.

 

[testp]

correct but the source is cabinet resonance as mentioned in the review. good pobability of hard sounding bass and midrange noticeably blurred. very similar to speakers I have owned.

maybe so...,

here i believe amir was talking about resonances at the ~500-2kHz range and that they are very low there

i also believe that to show those low level resonances, he would need to make a longer 'zoomed-in' capture of the waves and that makes the bass look like its decays are very long, but that is just my guess.

i do know amir does not like this kind of a graph because it does not indicate much.

 

[traind]

KEF couldn't care less about whether I exist. The converse isn't true. My respect for what KEF does is unrelated to their affection for me, specifically. So far their products seem almost without exception to be very good performers and good values.

Agree about companies like Kef.

I would add that although a company may not know about an individual customer, great companies do indeed care about their customers, what they think, what they experience, the value they get etc. Yes, companies want to make money but that does not mean they are completely mercenary. You can be both profit oriented and customer focused. Sure, there are plenty of companies that don't seem to care much but there are also many that do.