KEF R11 Meta Tower Speaker Review

[taotone]

Great speakers, really hit the value sweet spot in the KEF lineup. Sure the Reference Meta series have better drivers, but the R11 holds up very well even when played loud.

Duking it out with the Perlisten R series perhaps for engineering excellence at a sensible price, though the Perlisten R7T are £8,800 v £5,500 for the R11 Meta.

Great review @amirm thank you.

 

[nawfal07]

A decade of listening both stereo and home theater, I settled with KEF around 15 years ago, Monitor Audio is my secondary choice. I'm glad the R11 Meta measures handsomely, this feels good.

 

[valerianf]

Shelved down bass and 1.2khz dip are real flaws for this $6.5k speaker.
I would have expected a more flat FR curve.
The 3.2 Ohms impedance dip will require a top amplifier.
Some AVRs may have difficulty to properly drive it.

But compared to other Kef products it a has an advantage: it can sustain a high sound level without to much distortion.
That is a plus.

 

[LiviuTM]

As expected from KEF. Not terribly expensive comparatively speaking. And, I'm sure you can get some kind of a discount on them from a dealer.

AND, I'll take this over the PS Audio FR10, thank you very much.

You are right, you can definitely get a discount. Out of curiosity, I checked the price at a local big store (in Bucharest, Romania) and they have a pretty good deal - a pair of these at ~4600 Euro / 5000 USD. This price includes VAT, which here is 19%.

 

[welwynnick]

I've always had a soft spot for KEF, and I do fancy a pair of these.
The R3 initially measured well but had a surprisingly poor subjective review. But these are different?
I wonder how the R11M compare with some of the Revel floor standers?

 

[Koeitje]

Not perfectly flat, but that is more than made up for by the SPL output and reasonable pricing.

 

[thewas]

The R3 initially measured well but had a surprisingly poor subjective review.

That what due to a room mode, Amir later added this edit to his review:

"EDIT: later testing showed that the room mode at about 105 Hz was impacting the tonality of the speaker. Once I filtered that, the sound was very good. I have since made this part of the protocol."

KEF R3 Speaker Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the KEF R3 stand-mount (bookshelf) speaker. It is on kind loan from a member who sent a pair to me at great cost (they come two in a box). The R3 costs US $1,999 for a pair. The R3 is an example of superb industrial design by KEF: It oozes...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Snafu]

I wonder how much better KEF R11 meta is vs older "just" R11 model. In Europe KEF sells older model for 3998€ (some stores offer way under that) and meta is 6500€.

Is the difference worth 2500€ ?

 

[Mnyb]

I've always had a soft spot for KEF, and I do fancy a pair of these.
The R3 initially measured well but had a surprisingly poor subjective review. But these are different?
I wonder how the R11M compare with some of the Revel floor standers?

The R3 non meta review .

* amir discovered that it excited a bass node in his room later on so he amended his opinions slightly. Nowadays he always counters the room issues before stating any opinions.

* now there is also an R3 META . KEF has done an overhaul of many small details besides the MAT damper . So the R meta should be improved across the whole series.

* it is still subjective, the listening , just saying.

 

[bakker_be]

Your listening notes are exactly why I've never bought KEF speakers (back in an age where I had disposable income and electronic means of correction weren't as easily accessible, nor were the measurements): I always found them to be too "polite", not engaging enough. I went with Focal (then still sold as JM Lab, Focal were the drivers) instead ...

 

[DSJR]

Thank you.

nice to see a reasonably priced speaker with a nice review. Maybe I don’t need to save my milk money for the Genelec.

Yes you do

 

[SunnyRehde]

Preference Rating
SCORE: 6.2
SCORE w/ sub: 7.5

Sensitivity: 89.8dB (300Hz-3kHz ; spec: 90dB)
Frequency response: +/- 4.5dB 46Hz-20kHz ; +/- 4.5dB 80Hz-20kHz

View attachment 359192
View attachment 359193View attachment 359194
View attachment 359195View attachment 359196
View attachment 359197
​

Link to all graphs/data

Hi,
I suppose, the underlined numbers shouldn‘t be identical, right?

Frequency response: +/- 4.5dB 46Hz-20kHz ; +/- 4.5dB 80Hz-20kHz

 

[Mnyb]

I wonder how much better KEF R11 meta is vs older "just" R11 model. In Europe KEF sells older model for 3998€ (some stores offer way under that) and meta is 6500€.

Is the difference worth 2500€ ?

Some say it can be EQ'd to be similar ? but lets face that how many of us has the skills and information needed to actually implement such EQ .

You can probably scrutinize spinorama.org and teas out the difference's and with a lot of peq make small adjustments .

EQ the direct response of speaker is a can of worms , it should then be obvious errors ( like the 1,2 dip in this review or a genral tonality flaw ).
Below the transition frequncy then your figthing room modes thats different .

Above the transition frequency you should use the anechoic data ( spinorama ) not the in room response to make small well informed adjustments ( if any ).
I would be carefull here , what's the right solution you cant know due to circle of confusion . KEF ,Genelec, Revel et all , picked a target they think works well.
It's not obvious that i know better

 

[AudioSceptic]

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.

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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/

"Designed and engineered in the UK"

"Made in China"

Even KEF!!!

 

[Laserjock]

Was subjective listening on-axis?

 

[fredoamigo]

Your listening notes are exactly why I've never bought KEF speakers (back in an age where I had disposable income and electronic means of correction weren't as easily accessible, nor were the measurements): I always found them to be too "polite", not engaging enough. I went with Focal (then still sold as JM Lab, Focal were the drivers) instead ...

You are partly right, some speakers may not immediately impress upon first listen because they are designed to provide an accurate and balanced frequency response. However, they offer great flexibility for EQ to suit personal taste without causing significant damage, because they are fundamentally sound and the R11s are. If you want, it will be possible to play with the EQ settings to make your speakers sound like B&W, which are designed to quickly impress in showrooms and please the first comer, However, it is important to note that the opposite will not be possible, because it is easier to add or accentuate certain frequencies than to try to correct speakers which already have a very marked sound signature.

 

[Mnyb]

"Designed and engineered in the UK"

"Made in China"

Even KEF!!!

If you buy something containing atoms . It's only very special luxury items that does not contain anything made in china.

If your electronic device has components on the circuit board where are those made ?

Buy artisan pottery

 

[Mnyb]

You are partly right, some speakers may not immediately impress upon first listen because they are designed to provide an accurate and balanced frequency response. However, they offer great flexibility for EQ to suit personal taste without causing significant damage, because they are fundamentally sound and the R11s are. If you want, it will be possible to play with the EQ settings to make your speakers sound like B&W, which are designed to quickly impress in showrooms and please the first comer, However, it is important to note that the opposite will not be possible, because it is easier to add or accentuate certain frequencies than to try to correct speakers which already have a very marked sound signature.

B&W also have directivity errors who makes them finicky to EQ .
Its only in general only speakers with reasonable directivity who are suitable to EQ above the transition frequency , with knowledge you may be able to do something with any speaker . But not as easy and the results may vary .

 

[welwynnick]

"Designed and engineered in the UK"
"Made in China"
Even KEF!!!

The Reference series are made in the UK, and look at the price

 

[taotone]

"Designed and engineered in the UK"

"Made in China"

Even KEF!!!

Global manufacturing is fleeing China at an astonishing rate as their economy implodes. I would expect them to be made somewhere else quite soon, may well still be SE Asia but could easily move elsewhere, even back to the UK or USA.