Ok just got back from the audition. I took about an hour listening material spanning new and older jazz, oldish rock, prog, electronic and classical. Plus The Expert by Yello
On the positive side, what's immediately obvious is the wonderful midrange, amazing horizontal dispersion and precise imaging. They are not fatiguing speakers in any way, without being overly polite.
However the wide dispersion is a double edged sword, as it mostly robs you of using toe-in to control the brightness, I experimented with this and the sound changes only very slightly.
I was hoping that the famous Kef Reference 5, with all that driver tech will put to bed my belief that no great bass can be had with 6.5" drivers. Alas they couldn't do it.
I did not like the bass. I will grant all the bad room interaction, obviously I had no opportunity to experiment with the port tubes, there was no DSP and no bass control. However the bass wasn't very deep and to me it sounded tubby. Full range just isn't here in my opinion.
The other issue was the top end. While instruments sounded realistic and there was generally a fluid, very pleasant presentation - it made tracks like "Love song" from Timeless (Abercrombie) really lovely and intimate - they also felt claustrophobic with other material. On the same album, the last track, "Timeless", was unpleasant, like the top was just lobbed off. It could be that I'm used to brighter sound, after all I was listening to music in the car on the way there and the car has ribbon tweeters but I didn't like it, I think it's too rolled off.
Overall this wasn't a huge issue for me and it was overshadowed by the positives, and bass can probably be fixed with DSP and a subwoofer. These are good speakers no doubt.
I think the wheels come off in the value for money department. In my opinion the Revel F208 sounded better. Better bass, a bit more open, equally precise, for a fraction of the price. I imagine the 328Be would blow the KEFs out of the water and they still cost less.
What the Revels (excepting the Salon 2) don't do is good looks, which these KEFs have in spades.
It was an interesting but in the end rather disappointing experience. For potential end game speakers, given the list price, I expected to be blown away and I really wasn't.