KEF Reference 5 VS Blade 2 vs Muon

[Doodski]

They have Blades and References in Best Buy??? God damn, Im living in the wrong part of the world.

I agree. The Best Buy here is a mass of shelving with blister packs and a computer gear dept. They have a sign on the wall that says home audio and it's a mess. Nobody cares about that department and it shows.

 

[MarkWinston]

I agree. The Best Buy here is a mass of shelving with blister packs and a computer gear dept. They have a sign on the wall that says home audio and it's a mess. Nobody cares about that department and it shows.

I didnt know Best Buy carried such high end gear, always gave me an impression that all it had were Edifiers, lower end Klipsch and Polks... lol! It would be a waste if they didnt have a properly treated room for such high end stuff.

 

[Doodski]

I didnt know Best Buy carried such high end gear, always gave me an impression that all it had were Edifiers, lower end Klipsch and Polks... lol! It would be a waste if they didnt have a properly treated room for such high end stuff.

I checked the web page for Best Buy.ca and they sell speakers but it's a online marketer and no instore purchases for most of the gear they sell online. There is very little price discounting as in pretty much everything is at full pop. It's turned into a mass merchandising dept store with clerks manning the store.

 

[GDK]

I checked the web page for Best Buy.ca and they sell speakers but it's a online marketer and no instore purchases for most of the gear they sell online. There is very little price discounting as in pretty much everything is at full pop. It's turned into a mass merchandising dept store with clerks manning the store.

In Canada, they sell them at Visions.ca. I know that they do some discounting, as a friend of mine got a pair of LS50WIIs for around C$2300 during their Boxing Day sale. I do not know if that extends to the Blade and Reference lines though!

 

[Doodski]

In Canada, they sell them at Visions.ca. I know that they do some discounting, as a friend of mine got a pair of LS50WIIs for around C$2300 during their Boxing Day sale. I do not know if that extends to the Blade and Reference lines though!

Yes, I saw the blades offered as a special order item at Visions. I have no idea if they are wheelers and dealers on the prices. They sure do have some impressive sale prices on some products.

 

[GDK]

Yes, I saw the blades offered as a special order item at Visions. I have no idea if they are wheelers and dealers on the prices. They sure do have some impressive sale prices on some products.

I do think that the Kef marketing strategy is odd though. The only places you can purchase any of their speakers, regardless of range, is at mass market electronics retailers (or directly through them on-line). I can’t imagine many people are willing to drop $20 large+ to buy speakers from a pimply teenager who normally works in the video game section.

 

[Doodski]

I do think that the Kef marketing strategy is odd though. The only places you can purchase any of their speakers, regardless of range, is at mass market electronics retailers (or directly through them on-line). I can’t imagine many people are willing to drop $20 large+ to buy speakers from a pimply teenager who normally works in the video game section.

Visions must be selling enough KEF product if they have a sales agreement with KEF. I imagine KEF is a pretty big feather in a retailers cap and it is a big deal to get the sales territory. I used to service in-warranty electronics gear for Visions that they would freight to me but I've never been in a Visions store so I have no idea what kind of professionalism they have in-store. I order all my Visions purchases online. I agree that a major purchase does require some finesse and professionalism with the business structure to back up a big speaker sale. When I dealt with Visions many moons ago they where kind of excessively demanding and needed to be taught how to ask and what to provide the in-warranty service depot. Although responsive to training it did seem like newbie employees. The audio/video market in Canada has been competitive and very tough on retailers in the recent ~20 years. We have seen some pretty big stores close, go bankrupt and yet Visions is still here and offering decent product at decent prices so I imagine they have something going for them today. I should make my way over to a Visions and listen to those lesser big KEFs that they apparently have in stock. (Adds Visions to the do list.)

 

[Cadguy]

I'm in Canada and our Visions stores are dirty, disorganized and staffed by people who are poorly trained and disinterested. I called one place to listen to KEF R11s and when I got there they had the R11s but didn't have any electronics to demo them. Someone had moved the one receiver they had in the audio department and they had no idea where it went. I won't be going back there again.

 

[Doodski]

I'm in Canada and our Visions stores are dirty, disorganized and staffed by people who are poorly trained and disinterested. I called one place to listen to KEF R11s and when I got there they had the R11s but didn't have any electronics to demo them. Someone had moved the one receiver they had in the audio department and they had no idea where it went. I won't be going back there again.

I retailed audio gear in the 80s and 90s while the AV heyday was still on and it was very hit and miss on finding people that could do sales, do it consistently everyday, merchandise the product, know the product, attend alll the meetings and constant dinners with PECS (Professional Education Seminars) and look presentable etc etc... There's a lot to it and it could be very rewarding back then. It used to be much more than a minimum wage job (At the time a dedicated commissioned salesperson could make ~45K-75K a year plus perks and spiffs and the the managers made significantly more, Newby salespeople made about 30K a year.) with many options for advancement that could be a career if somebody wanted it but today it seems the management apparently just want low pay clerks and bodies on the floor rather than professionals that have goals and are there to create a following of customers over the long term. I'll head over to the Visions store and scope em out.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I'm what way aren't they accurate?

I'm struggling to see how a speaker that has flat response, and good off axis response can have problematic resonances. I'm not suggesting that resonances that clearly show up in measurements are not an audible issue, but in well designed speakers that measures well how can there be problematic audible resonances? I can see how they can exist in low resolution or heavily smoothed measurements, but that's an issue with low quality measurements, and good reasons not to use them.

It isn't resonances that are the concern it is the broad band cabinet wall rumbling along with the music energised by pressure in the box and transmission from the driver.
It doesn't need resonance for the box to radiate like a NXT radiator ( which does it deliberately and in a controlled way of course) and it has a vast surface area compared to that of the cone, so it doesn't need to be much.
In fact it was one of the consultant engineers doing the calculation for NXT and eventually BMR that is a friend of mine.

 

[abdo123]

It isn't resonances that are the concern it is the broad band cabinet wall rumbling along with the music energised by pressure in the box and transmission from the driver.
It doesn't need resonance for the box to radiate like a NXT radiator ( which does it deliberately and in a controlled way of course) and it has a vast surface area compared to that of the cone, so it doesn't need to be much.
In fact it was one of the consultant engineers doing the calculation for NXT and eventually BMR that is a friend of mine.

Exactly the pressure of the sound inside the cabinet will bend the cabinet itself and produce sound (more like distortion).

 

[Frank Dernie]

You can get to the point that extra 10% is indistinguishable under proper blind testing if DSP applied.

If that last 10% is due to reducing cabinet radiation there is absolutely no mechanism by which DSP applied to the driver could compensate for it.
So no, absolutely not.

 

[Benedium]

https://pierreaubert.github.io/spinorama/scores.html

Not sure how useful or accurate this is... but from this webpage, one can see scores for Kef Reference vs Kef R series. Not sure if they all follow similar measurement standards though.

SM PIR score for Reference 5 is 0.99 while R3 is at 0.91. Anyone can explain what this means?

 

[Benedium]

Oh found an explanation here heheh...
https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/predicted-in-room-response.19733/

 

[bo_knows]

They have Blades and References in Best Buy??? God damn, Im living in the wrong part of the world.

Yes. Not every BestBuy has them on display. I guess it has to be designated Magnolia one.

 

[steve59]

Best buy (magnolia)stores here might have the 700 B&W, martin logan towers and elac bookshelves but I haven't seen anything but avr's to drive them so demanding speakers are probably going to sound lightweight.

Listening to a pair of speakers in this class it's so critical to use the intended amplification to get a clue how much the system is going to cost. The salon 2's I demoed were driven by ML 536's and I bought them but once home listening with what I thought was plenty of power all I could thing is where's the beef? Not having the money or inclination I resold the salons and continued my search for the best speaker I could afford.

If I was using my 75 wpc HK avr I bet I would like the R or even Q series better than the ref or blade. I know how redundant this post is, but also whenever I read guys having conflicting experiences I remember there's other stuff going on.

 

[SS55]

I've never even seen a Muon, but I have heard the Blade (not the Blade 2) at a dealer and, oddly, a Porsche event. Apparently Porsche and KEF have some sort of lifestyle co-marketing agreement. Anyway, I was interested in the Blade originally because it is a point source, and I wondered how it would sound compared to my Salon2s. I like the Salon2s, a lot, but I'm always looking for something better (and an excuse to move the Salon2s into our HT system, ahem).

For most classical music, which has relatively limited spectrum below 32Hz, it was difficult for me to develop a preference for the KEF or the Revel. I never felt any sense of loss with the Blades. Overall, I thought the Blade was very, very good. The Blade was one of the few speakers I've ever heard that made cymbals sound as real as the Salon2. If there was sub-30Hz bass involved though, the Salon2 had an advantage that was apparent even on some well-recorded solo piano music. So I was impressed by the Blades, and thought that adding a couple of subs with the right system tuning would probably make the Salon2 and the Blade a real toss-up. Anyone who tells you they've heard better than the Blade 2 is either reacting to the bass response, or perhaps just trying to be difficult.

As far as I know the Blade has a minor directivity error around 1khz region and they fixed that in the Blade 2.
It wasn’t the bass response they disliked, I could turn on the subs if that was the case. It was the sound signature. Blade 2 were dull sounding to them. The most praise I’ve got for the Blade 2 was from girls, they liked how realistic and smooth it sounds without me even asking or telling them anything about it. I’ve had sleepless nights thinking about these speakers as to why nobody loves them as much as I do. It’s down to what some people are used to listening, they have these large Klipsch old school speakers or B&W which sounds bright to me but balanced to them.

 

[abdo123]

Best buy (magnolia)stores here might have the 700 B&W, martin logan towers and elac bookshelves but I haven't seen anything but avr's to drive them so demanding speakers are probably going to sound lightweight.

Listening to a pair of speakers in this class it's so critical to use the intended amplification to get a clue how much the system is going to cost. The salon 2's I demoed were driven by ML 536's and I bought them but once home listening with what I thought was plenty of power all I could thing is where's the beef? Not having the money or inclination I resold the salons and continued my search for the best speaker I could afford.

If I was using my 75 wpc HK avr I bet I would like the R or even Q series better than the ref or blade. I know how redundant this post is, but also whenever I read guys having conflicting experiences I remember there's other stuff going on.

You did what?

 

[blueone]

As far as I know the Blade has a minor directivity error around 1khz region and they fixed that in the Blade 2.
It wasn’t the bass response they disliked, I could turn on the subs if that was the case. It was the sound signature. Blade 2 were dull sounding to them. The most praise I’ve got for the Blade 2 was from girls, they liked how realistic and smooth it sounds without me even asking or telling them anything about it. I’ve had sleepless nights thinking about these speakers as to why nobody loves them as much as I do. It’s down to what some people are used to listening, they have these large Klipsch old school speakers or B&W which sounds bright to me but balanced to them.

Just ignore the crap from B&W owners. I get the same comments about the Salon2s from them. When I lived in the Pacific Northwest I knew three people with 802Ds, and all of them thought the Salon2s were dull-sounding. Of course they were, if your frame of reference is the 802D. Whatever, the 802D owners all loved their speakers. I'll say this for the 802D1 & D2, on the right recordings with a female vocalist you could believe you're hearing the best speaker on the planet. Until you play a recording that isn't so complementary to the 802Ds. I've said for years, if someone has a special collection of tracks that are "must hear" recordings with their speakers, there's an excellent chance their speakers have easily audible colorations.

 

[bo_knows]

We all have different perspective and value of the things, is a good thing not to aggre in everything
Personally i think something better will be a MINI BLADES META made in china pls for get that cheap. lol.
edit: i add measurements from KEF white paper

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I hope you notice the word "Prototype" there. Who's to say that the final product doesn't measure better or worse.