Not really DIY but today I was at a demo of the new Kef Blade "50th aniversary" loudspeakers.
Boy what a bad loudspeakers these are. They sound like plastic, are very resonating in the lower mids. Bad definition in the low end. Mids and highs very polite plastic hifi sound. Shut in sound. In others words quite the opposite of what I'm used to at home. Oh man never been so happy to here my own DIY system again. Listening to them from outside the room was plain terrible. In fact that was what drew my attention in the first place. When I went over to see where this terrible sound came from they invited me in at the demo
Just googled the Kef's and found out they are asking 30.000 dollars for these. I guessed they would sell for 5000 dollars or so and even then they really needed some rewrk specially on the housing and the woofers. I allready read some forums where people try to copy some of the design without hearing it, please keep up your own ideas and design. The 'professionals' don,t do it any better in this case. I was pretty shocked to be honoust. (And very happy that I have followed my own ears and ideas in loudspeaker design)
Boy what a bad loudspeakers these are. They sound like plastic, are very resonating in the lower mids. Bad definition in the low end. Mids and highs very polite plastic hifi sound. Shut in sound. In others words quite the opposite of what I'm used to at home. Oh man never been so happy to here my own DIY system again. Listening to them from outside the room was plain terrible. In fact that was what drew my attention in the first place. When I went over to see where this terrible sound came from they invited me in at the demo
Just googled the Kef's and found out they are asking 30.000 dollars for these. I guessed they would sell for 5000 dollars or so and even then they really needed some rewrk specially on the housing and the woofers. I allready read some forums where people try to copy some of the design without hearing it, please keep up your own ideas and design. The 'professionals' don,t do it any better in this case. I was pretty shocked to be honoust. (And very happy that I have followed my own ears and ideas in loudspeaker design)
Where in the spectrum do you think this is happening? If possible would you attribute it to the coax drivers, the baffle, or do you think this is just cabinet resonances?
These look to me like an inside-out synergy horn. I just can't yet get my head around them working that way all the way down in a domestic environment.
These look to me like an inside-out synergy horn. I just can't yet get my head around them working that way all the way down in a domestic environment.
I've heard them twice now at a large show and a dealer demo and both times they sounded excellent, well balanced, even handed, with good timbre and dynamics. I thought the mids integrated well with the treble and the soundstage was wide and deep with very precise stereo.
Perhaps they were just set up badly for your demo.
Perhaps they were just set up badly for your demo.
£3k for special finishes, like the "Snow White" for the first UK owner.
The KEF Blade Thread | AVForums.com - UK Online - Page 7
Never give a hand to marketers, they want it all. What a piece of SSCCHHTT. Do they have metal cones (woofers)... or some kind of plastic composite? 4 ÕHms is for a car speaker. You have to found an Amp. I would go with B&W or Focals. I bet my "Sputnik's" Elipson Planet L, 90 dB/coaxial 2-way speakers beats them (without sub).
The KEF Blade Thread | AVForums.com - UK Online - Page 7
Never give a hand to marketers, they want it all. What a piece of SSCCHHTT. Do they have metal cones (woofers)... or some kind of plastic composite? 4 ÕHms is for a car speaker. You have to found an Amp. I would go with B&W or Focals. I bet my "Sputnik's" Elipson Planet L, 90 dB/coaxial 2-way speakers beats them (without sub).
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@ Allen B
It was most of all in the lower mids of the spectrum, internal cabinet resonances. What striked me most where two things. This low. lower mid problem and the pretty bad power response. They have 5 years off R&D in them, come on. Al what they have been doing is optimizing on-axis responce and stick to optimizing a couple of principles and forget about the rest it seems (a very common problem with loudspeaker designers, staring blind at a very few points, in this case the point source) Did not expect this for a 50th aniversy of a well respected loudspeaker company. Did not expect that most people consider this to be "high end" either. If this is High End then I do not like High End, I like something that sounds like a real band playing not a hologram of it.
It was most of all in the lower mids of the spectrum, internal cabinet resonances. What striked me most where two things. This low. lower mid problem and the pretty bad power response. They have 5 years off R&D in them, come on. Al what they have been doing is optimizing on-axis responce and stick to optimizing a couple of principles and forget about the rest it seems (a very common problem with loudspeaker designers, staring blind at a very few points, in this case the point source) Did not expect this for a 50th aniversy of a well respected loudspeaker company. Did not expect that most people consider this to be "high end" either. If this is High End then I do not like High End, I like something that sounds like a real band playing not a hologram of it.
That sounds nothing like a KEF speaker. Their Reference 207/2s are the definition of great box design and excellent power response.
I haven't heard these KEF Blades but your observations don't really seem to jive with what KEF does.
I wonder if they were hooked up to some amp or whack recording.
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I bet it was a badly set up demo but , yeah this is High-end and thats how it sounds . Manufacturers have to produce what MP3 market demands to stay alive. It's not their fault most peoples are deaf morons manipulated by corrupted media. DIY scene follows closely trying to immitate those pitful achievments and cheers itself up how much they can save by cloning this crap. KEF is an old, respected company and while I'm not a fan they know how to make a neutral speaker without any resonating cabinet problem. It supposed to be their flagship so I'ts hard to believe.
Yep I would have to agree, one of the best speakers I've heard is the ref 104/2, but then I haven't heard that many
I read an article from the old head of R&D and he said that Kef is about engineering principles, its primarily done by measurement and specs based on science. The other end of the spectrum is tuned by ear, ie this sounds nice to me.
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Once KEF was acquired by a Chinese company in the early 2000s I stopped looking forward to whatever they sold, especially when their gear showed up in places like Circuit City. To me they are no longer the KEF I grew up with.
Back to the Blades: those woofers sure are far off the floor and based on the photos in that linked thread, in fact they look to be equidistant between the floor and the ceiling, which I thought was a design no-no as far as good bass response was concerned.
To me they are no longer the KEF I grew up with. Back to the Blades: those woofers sure are far off the floor and based on the photos in that linked thread, in fact they look to be equidistant between the floor and the ceiling, which I thought was a design no-no as far as good bass response was concerned.
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Once KEF was acquired by a Chinese company in the early 2000s I stopped looking forward to whatever they sold, especially when their gear showed up in places like Circuit City.
I don't know what difference Chineese ownership makes, they are business man, better owned by them than a bank
But I think this is a trend the world over. Here we have small hifi shops annoyed that Perreaux is now sold in chain stores, these are upto $10K plus for a very nice amp and traditionally sold in exclusive hifi shops, the same for a couple of local speaker brands.
The hifi stores can't compete with these retailers so they look to other exotic brands where they can command a better margin. Never the less, I imagine by the amount of dedicated hifi store left in my town, they are a dyeing breed.
Assuming they are at half floor - ceiling height, then that would mean they would minimally excite the 1st floor to ceiling mode circa 71Hz for an 8' ceiling.
I don't think they're that high as that would make the centre of the coax too high for most people in typical seats.
Assuming that guy was being hyperbolic when he said "no highs", in my opinion the fact that he believes a live venue doesn't sound correct* possibly means either 1) his hearing may be deficient in its ability to sense the higher frequencies; 2) his speakers at home are unnaturally "bright" i.e. they are overaccentuating the higher frequencies like so many commercial speakers do these days IMO (some designers seem to design their speakers to be used only in an anechoic chamber
); or 3) a combination of both of these scenarios.Btw I believe that many speaker designers deliberately "soften" the sound of their speakers to move them closer to what a person hears at a live performance e.g. via choice of drivers or maybe using a bipolar design to add indirect/delayed reflections.....or both of these. This would be especially helpful with a lot of rock & pop recordings, which even before the latest trend of overcompression (probably to overcome the deficiencies of all those crummy $5 earbuds and horrible laptop speakers out there) were almost always TOO bright and just not recorded very well, and such speakers can make such recordings more palatable and in turn, make the music itself more enjoyable to listen to.
* obviously live venues CAN sound bad because of incorrect speaker location, sloppy EQ, lousy acoustics etc but for the sake of this post I'll write it as if I am discussing a well-configured venue
You learn something new every day - thanks for the info.
I had read somewhere years ago that placing a speaker directly at the midpoint between floor and ceiling, no matter what the height of the room, would result in the least amount of bass for that speaker since that point would be sort of a null zone. I never actually tried any experiments to prove this because I always place my speakers at ear level (the tweeters and mids anyway) and had no shelves at that height that could support the weight of the larger speakers I owned that could reproduce bass below @80Hz.
You learn something new every day - thanks for the info.
I had read somewhere years ago that placing a speaker directly at the midpoint between floor and ceiling, no matter what the height of the room, would result in the least amount of bass for that speaker since that point would be sort of a null zone. I never actually tried any experiments to prove this because I always place my speakers at ear level (the tweeters and mids anyway) and had no shelves at that height that could support the weight of the larger speakers I owned that could reproduce bass below @80Hz.
Maybe in mono, if you really simplify things, but room modes are far more complex than that, and so it stereo.
There's a lot going on.
Of course, a high end setup should really have multiple subwoofers below 100hz, anyways.
Once KEF was acquired by a Chinese company in the early 2000s I stopped looking forward to whatever they sold, especially when their gear showed up in places like Circuit City.
That's just based on ignorance and prejudice.
Fact of the matter is, KEF speakers have markedly improved under Chinese ownership, from the bottom of the line to the flagships.
Let's take the base model of their Q-series, the British-made Q15 ca. 1997, and the Chinese-made Q-Compact ca. 2005.
The two speakers had a few things in common. They both sounded very good for the price, because of the sophisticated Uni-Q drive-unit and technically competent crossover design. End-user cost was also similar, though the later Q-Compact might have been ~$50/pr cheaper or thereabouts. Bass extension and output were even surprisingly similar, though the smaller Q-Compact did have lower efficiency. But in terms of parts and build quality, the Chinese speaker makes its old British ancestor look cheap.
Cabinet-wise, there is simply no comparison.
The old Q15 used cheap pressboard in a simple box, except for the baffle, which was a flimsy, thin ribbed plastic piece and that was simply press-fitted onto the front of the particleboard box. (My old ones fell apart a few times, and I ended up gluing the baffles on.) There was a lone particleboard horizontal shelf brace.
The Q-Compact's cabinet was a finer (less grainy-looking, more like furniture grade MDF) pressboard, molded into a curved shape. The baffle was part of this molding, and there was a plastic trim ring around the Uni-Q to hide the basket and lower diffraction. (Yes, that allowed them to save costs by not painting the basket black or sculpting its rim for lower diffraction.)
As for a comparison of the drivers, let's look at the two of them and see which one hits more of the "good" traits discussed in the article:
Made-in-UK Q15 (1997) driver:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Made-in-China (2005) driver:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Rigid cast alloy basket with under-spider ventilation and much less reflective area behind the cone. Also (not visible) a motor with a Faraday ring inside.
Now let's look at higher-end models, the Reference Model Four designed under British ownership, and the Reference 201/2.
Both of them are superbly designed speakers. Stereophile measured them both. Here's the Model Four:
Ref4 On-axis FR:
Ref4 Horizontal map:
Overall, I daresay, better than 99% of speakers sold as new in 2012, at any price. But not better than the Reference 201/2, which not only has flatter overall FR but also has smoother overall horizontal measurements and maintains consistent directivity even higher in frequency.
(The Ref4 is a much bigger speaker, and a 4-way rather than a 3-way, so it will be more efficient and go down lower. Especially since the bass drivers are loaded in a bandpass cabinet.)
201/2 FR:
201/2 horizontal map:
So believe it or not, nonwhite people can also run speaker companies!
And as for the "Circuit City" quip, frankly the little KEF home theater set eggs image better than anything else I've heard, probably due to the combination of the coincident driver with phase plug on the tweeter and the minimal, egg-shaped, dished baffle. (They also measure quite appropriately for a smaller room, too, with very smooth FR that steadily declines with frequency. Which makes them sound more natural in a smaller room than speakers voiced with flat treble, IMO.)
If the Blade image like the KHT3005SE satellites but that but with lower dynamic compression and more balls...I'd love to hear them. And own them.
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I heard the Blades late last year, with a load of Cyrus kit (4x X300 Mono's) and thought it was very good. Bass definition being the best part, simply amazing depth with control and dynamics (and with virtually no cabinet vibration).
Soundstage was very well defined, and imagine was fantastic! Overall, they were very very good, not perfect though, they can sound a little too in your face with certain stuff.
What amps did you hear the Blades with?
