What is it with the KEF Blade (meta)?

[Tangband]

When I bought my Blade One Meta, it was my every intention of getting the Ref5M after a couple of auditions at the dealer. However, on my day of putting the deposit for the order(I wanted a custom color) of Ref5M, I asked them to put on the BOM for me for a quick listen. That quick listen turned out to be 2 hours later and an order of the BOM and costing me 10k more.
The BOM sounded bigger. The sound just wraps around you and has that aura of every single instruments and singer(s) around you. Not to mention the bass coming from the larger LF drivers. Is it worth 10k more? To me, yes. Because I know how they sound and how the Ref5M sound.
I’m more than a year in with the BOM and loving them like day one. I’m driving them with 2x Luxman M-10X in mono.
I think the Ref5M is probably more in line with Bade Two Meta as they share the same LF drivers. I didn’t audition the BTM after the BOM. I was ready to pay the price after hearing the BOM.
BUT you should get a Genelec!

What you heard regarding the differences between Blade Meta and Ref5M is probably the lack of diffraction from the cabinet with the Kef blade Meta.

 

[Tangband]

LS50 (Meta or not) drivers cannot be even directly compared to Genelec ones as the first are midwoofers with tweeter and the second ones mids with tweeters, which should be compared with the KEF coaxes used in their 3-way speakers.
Till someone measures the individual drivers separately like for example Erin used to do https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/driveunits/kef-r300-drive-unit/ also anything is just speculation, as we only know for now that both of them measure very well in the loudspeakers they are used. And as I wrote before I am sure in some disciplines one will be better and in some the other so noone can say A is better then B and only choose which compromise fulfils better his needs. And in the end only the total system integrations implementation matters not just components, to give another silly car analogy, in my current situation (mainly long relaxed highway driving) I rather prefer a Mercedes although BMW makes usually the better engines.

Genelecs coaxial is probably developed to be used in a dsp speaker with frequency correction. Not having to deal with a ruler flat response from the driver, as one must do in a passive construction ( Kef ), one can instead optimize other parameters, like sensitivity.

 

[thewas]

Genelecs coaxial is probably developed to be used in a dsp speaker with frequency correction. Not having to deal with a ruler flat response from the driver, as one must do in a passive construction ( Kef ), one can instead optimize other parameters, like sensitivity.

Although sensitivity is not really an important issue for active loudspeakers and smooth response means lack of resonances which I am sure also Genelec took good care of as even correcting them with EQ is not the same.

 

[srrxr71]

Although sensitivity is not really an important issue for active loudspeakers and smooth response means lack of resonances which I am sure also Genelec took good care of as even correcting them with EQ is not the same

The tweeter and midrange each get 150w. I don’t know if they actually use all that but they have it on tap.