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The new king of passive speakers - according to spinorama.org ranking - KEF Blade 2 Meta: preference Score without EQ 7.07 and with EQ 7.68

totti1965

totti1965

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The new king of passive speakers - according to spinorama.org ranking - KEF Blade 2 Meta: preference Score without EQ 7.07 and with EQ 7.68

Two months ago, Erin from Erin`s Audio Corner was very impressed by the KEF Blade 2 Meta.
The spinorama data were exceptionell - with an extremely good score also without EQ.

But on spinorama.org there was a bug in the Graphs of the estimated in-room response.
The frequency seemed not lower down at higher frequencies. So I contacted Pierre Aubert from spinorama.org.

Pierre was so nice and corrected the bug!

You can see the corrected data in the developer site of spinorama.org:

Measurements for speaker KEF Blade 2 Meta

dev.spinorama.org dev.spinorama.org

or at github with TWO DIFFERENT EQ Suggestions:

github.com

KEF Blade 2 Meta - Bug in In-Room-Frequency response "with EQ" · Issue #269 · pierreaubert/spinorama

*Bonjour Pierre, Il doit y avoir un problème avec les données d'Erins pour le Kef Blade 2 Meta ! Jetez un coup d'oeil aux données corrigées ! La correction rend la réponse en fréquence bien pire qu...
github.com github.com

Perhaps these new graphs are on the normal spinorama.org site from tomorrow on also.

There will be also 8 new speakers - including the Nubert NuVero 60 from germany which gets 6.88 points after equalisation.
Very good, but no one-in-a-century sensation.

And the beautifull XMechanik Mechano23 DIY with a score of 6.81 points after equalisation.



KEF Blade 2 Meta Speaker Review

KEF Blade 2 Meta Speaker
www.erinsaudiocorner.com



thorsten
 
Very good speakers. The funny thing is that i have a null in the 200hz area. And those speakers has a dip there too. I did use Dirac with awesome results. Honestly i would t touch a lot the 20hz frequency as they still has 4 6.5 inch woofers with hwavy bass songs they could suffer a lot. Instead i would put a safety eq under 25hz or soo too avoid very hard excursion but it does depends on volume too
 
Ciobi69 said:
Very good speakers. The funny thing is that i have a null in the 200hz area. And those speakers has a dip there too. I did use Dirac with awesome results. Honestly i would t touch a lot the 20hz frequency as they still has 4 6.5 inch woofers with hwavy bass songs they could suffer a lot. Instead i would put a safety eq under 25hz or soo too avoid very hard excursion but it does depends on volume too
Click to expand...
your in room measurements say the dip is small? what happen when you eq the dip, sound better or sounds the same?
 
BrokenEnglishGuy said:
your in room measurements say the dip is small? what happen when you eq the dip, sound better or sounds the same?
Click to expand...
Honestly its not the only problem but i have other peaks. With Dirac evrything sound more natural but i still have to make some more try. Because i just bought the pc suite.before i was using it on an avr.the rme sound better. But they are very good speaker and very easy to eq. Just dont stress them too much in the lower frequencies
 
Ciobi69 said:
Very good speakers. The funny thing is that i have a null in the 200hz area. And those speakers has a dip there too. I did use Dirac with awesome results. Honestly i would t touch a lot the 20hz frequency as they still has 4 6.5 inch woofers with hwavy bass songs they could suffer a lot. Instead i would put a safety eq under 25hz or soo too avoid very hard excursion but it does depends on volume too
Click to expand...
Erin´s compression data for the not equalized Blade 2 Meta are just awesome (even at 102 dB!) - so are the distorsion measurements! So it seems to have some "beef".
But I would tend to be also carefull with such a USD 25.000,-- Dollar gem.

KEF-Blade-2-Meta_Compression.png







KEF-Blade-2-Meta-Harmonic-Distortion-86dB-1m.png
 
totti1965 said:
Erin´s compression data for the not equalized Blade 2 Meta are just awesome (even at 102 dB!) - so are the distorsion measurements! So it seems to have some "beef".
But I would tend to be also carefull with such a USD 25.000,-- Dollar gem.

KEF-Blade-2-Meta_Compression.png







KEF-Blade-2-Meta-Harmonic-Distortion-86dB-1m.png
Click to expand...
Yea it is impressive but in my room with my curve i have a little more bass. And imagine 4 6.5 inch in the 20-30hz zone at 100+db
 
Interesting find also in Spinorama, as long as we talk in numerical results, the 20 years old B&W 802N is scored higher:
  • Tonality (Preference) Score is 7.94 with an EQ and would be 8.91 with a perfect subwoofer and the same EQ
I suspect the stiffer cabinet and incredible build quality (150+ lbs) helps reducing unwanted vibrations.
 
Golftee99 said:
Interesting find also in Spinorama, as long as we talk in numerical results, the 20 years old B&W 802N is scored higher:
  • Tonality (Preference) Score is 7.94 with an EQ and would be 8.91 with a perfect subwoofer and the same EQ
I suspect the stiffer cabinet and incredible build quality (150+ lbs) helps reducing unwanted vibrations.
Click to expand...

The data quality is much lower for the B&W, so unknown if we can compare directly.
 
Golftee99 said:
Interesting find also in Spinorama, as long as we talk in numerical results, the 20 years old B&W 802N is scored higher:
  • Tonality (Preference) Score is 7.94 with an EQ and would be 8.91 with a perfect subwoofer and the same EQ
I suspect the stiffer cabinet and incredible build quality (150+ lbs) helps reducing unwanted vibrations.
Click to expand...
There is no way this scored higher:

1719934253336.png
 
The important thing to remember about the preference score is it in no way speaks to the dynamic range, power handling, or distortion characteristics of the speaker. Those factors, IMHO, are just as important as the things the preference score takes in account.
 
ban25 said:
Curious where you've set your crossover? I'm running a pair of KF92/KC92 subs and I've crossed the Blades over at 60 Hz.
Click to expand...
70Hz but still experimenting.
 
Golftee99 said:
Interesting find also in Spinorama, as long as we talk in numerical results, the 20 years old B&W 802N is scored higher:
  • Tonality (Preference) Score is 7.94 with an EQ and would be 8.91 with a perfect subwoofer and the same EQ
I suspect the stiffer cabinet and incredible build quality (150+ lbs) helps reducing unwanted vibrations.
Click to expand...
"with an EQ and a perfect subwoofer" involves a lot of assumptions, it's really not good to compare speakers like that. The baseline score itself already has such large error bars that it's mainly useful for sorting speakers into quality groups, not comparing one to another. Adding untested hypotheses like this increases the error bars even further.
 
Ciobi69 said:
Very good speakers. The funny thing is that i have a null in the 200hz area. And those speakers has a dip there too. I did use Dirac with awesome results. Honestly i would t touch a lot the 20hz frequency as they still has 4 6.5 inch woofers with hwavy bass songs they could suffer a lot. Instead i would put a safety eq under 25hz or soo too avoid very hard excursion but it does depends on volume too
Click to expand...
I suspect something to do with the opposing side woofers cancelling out at the forward and backward axis in this region, probably fixed when placed within a foot or two of a wall, or buried in room modes anyway. Interesting, nonetheless.
 
phoenixdogfan said:
The important thing to remember about the preference score is it in no way speaks to the dynamic range, power handling, or distortion characteristics of the speaker. Those factors, IMHO, are just as important as the things the preference score takes in account.
Click to expand...
I get it, been studying it since 1979 when B&W introduced the 801 using laser interferometry to study cone break ups and cabinet vibration. I’m all for flat FR and uniformed dispersion but where is the multi tones bursts to detect smearing and coloration at increasing volume? Nowadays you can use DSP to EQ any speaker to achieve flat response but you still can’t remove distortion and coloration. This is the reason I brought up the ratings, there’s a whole lot more going on that those with curiosity and a pair of good ears can continue to explore and learn.
 
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