1990 era KEF Reference 107/2s v current Reference 1s

Inserting an active Bryston high-pass filter between an Ayre preamp and amp coarsened the Ayre sound, making it more HiFi than music just flowing. Charles Hansen admonished not to put anything between the preamp and amp, but later Ayre approved adding a Marchand balanced passive high-pass filter that has performed flawlessly. In retrospect that has caused me to rethink a decision I made when I decided to go with an all-Ayre setup. I replaced a pair of 1990 era KEF Reference 107/2s that I loved with current KEF Reference 1s, because the 107/2s required an external unbalanced equalization device (KUBE) between the preamp and amp. The 107/2s had LF extension below 20 Hz; the pair of Velodyne HGS-15s with SMS-1 acoustic bass management that augment the R1s extend to 15 Hz. I thought the R1s were excellent for small groups and vocals but less good for large orchestrations until I dialed in the HGS-15s that eliminated the limitation.

db