KEF show at Alpha High End with the Reference Series & Blade 2 - March 2016
 

Show time again in Antwerp (Brasschaat), where Alpha High End celebrates its 30th birthday this year.
After outstanding shows with Martin Logan (and ARC) and Vivid Audio earlier this year now KEF, driven by Musical Fidelity (and Accuphase).

For those other shows see here:

http://www.audioaficionado.org/event...28-2016-a.html
http://www.audioaficionado.org/event...ref-750-a.html

The show was already announced last month:

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The large room: Musical Fidelity NU-Vista integrated & CD player with the KEF Reference 3 & the Blade 2.

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KEF's engineer Johan Coorg was explaining about KEF, and how they designed the speakers.

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The Uni-Q point source driver array is an important element of the excellent off-axis dispersion of KEF's speakers.
It is quite difficult to produce and expensive.

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The Uni-Q driver in the Ref 3 is slightly different from the Blade 2.
The woofers are the same: 6.5 inch, 2 in the Ref 3, 4 in the Blade 2, 4 in the Ref 5 (see later).

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First we heard the Reference 3.

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The short port was compared to the long port.
I clearly preferred the short port. It sounded more musical, what the engineer also found.
But some people in the audience liked the long ports more.
Those sounded more "hi-fi".

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Musical Fidelity NU-Vista: impressively built.

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The CD player weighs 41 lbs.

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The NU-Vista 800 integrated: 39 kg (86 lbs), 330W into 8 ohms.

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The Blade 2 unemployed while the Ref 3s were connected.

Impressions of the KEF Reference 3:

I was a bit disappointed I must admit.
With the short port a bit better than with the long port, but there was still this "boxy" sound.
When I talked to him personally, Mr Coorg admitted that the shape of the speaker is the ultimate nightmare of a designer.
With the Blade, the team didn't have that restriction.
The mids and treble were nice, good imaging, a forte of the brand.
But you were always aware of the speaker, it did come in the way of the music.

So, over to the Blade 2!
The Ref 3s were moved (heavy speakers! Even more so than the Blades!).

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We see our friend Stefan from AA here also.


A couple of good tracks were played.
Michel Jonasz, Bach's Toccata.
I was impressed by the bass those relatively small drivers could produce.

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Now the music was floating into the room.

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Source was also a MacBook Pro.

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The Blade 2 is a slender, elegant speaker.

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Very graceful.

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Now the music was in the room, somewhere in between, around, in front of and behind the speakers.

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More than enough power to drive the Blades:

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Very solid combination this was.
Detail, scale, depth, subtlety.
And (almost) no colouration of the enclosure.
Made me think of the qualities of the Vivid speakers we heard last month, and that we know so well.
The Blade 2 comes close, but still misses that last bit of clarity and musicality.
This is something I experienced myself, and heard from a couple of listeners who attended also last time.

I forgot to ask the price of the NU-Vista gear.
I thought it looked and sounded very decent.

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Johan Coorg.

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He told us he first had the Blade.
The 9"" woofers overpowered his room, so he changed them for the Blade 2s and all worked out well.
The Blade is 3K more than the Blade 2 (22K €).
They go 3 Hz deeper.