Is KEF no longer relevant?

Part of the issue for Kef is simply brand proliferation. I owned the Kef Corelli in/around 1975. Kef, Celestion, and (then) Bowers & Wilkins were about the only Brit high end monitors widely available. Other highly regarded (non-Brit) imported speakers were fairly rare. US designs usually sounded quite different. If limited bass, mid-range centric accuracy was the tree you wanted to bark up, Kef was automatically on your short list.

When a million new brands came along, the company failed to maintain "share of mind" in an increasingly crowded marketplace. To some degree, it was the marketing types that screwed up, but that wasn't the whole story. In my experience the products have always been pretty good, but when the competition got a lot stiffer, they weren't quite good enough/distinctive enough to keep the market's attention.

To be fair, it's tough for any business to distinguish itself longterm in a rapidly evolving marketplace full of good, highly diverse choices. Maybe B&W is the exception, and Kef more the rule. I can't think of too many other brands (although there are a few) that have stayed on top since that time.

Marty

I always liked KEF speakers for the most part when I heard them and have wondered the same thing about why they are not talked about in these audio circles these days. They seem to target mainly the home theater markets these days is what I had gathered.

Also, I always liked the low fatigue KEF sound but it often was not the most exciting sound by US standards out there, so I assume that was part of it also.

I always found their more recent coincident driver designs interesting, but have never heard them.

They are ABSOLUTELY relevant! I've owned a pair of 102/2's since they were new and they've not only survived many upgrades but they also sound (to my ears) as good or better than most of the monitors i've listened to since then. I've also listened to their new reference 205/2 - unbelievable! I agree with the above post that said they combine the speed and imaging/transparency/neutrality of planars and stats yet have the dynamic slam of the best boxes out there. Their XQ line is also quite good.

There is an open argument about whether the new Revel series is superior to the new KEF reference series. There is little question that least in my judgment that they are right now the two best high-end lines in dynamic loudspeakers. Clearly, you won't be unhappy with either line of speakers. Obviously, planars and electrostatics have unique pluses in terms of the sense of transparency, and there is also the Orion system (designed by one of the original designers of the L-P fourth order crossover network used by most high-end speakers), but this system involves some rather large compromises because it is a bidirectional system, in terms of having the speakers 5 to 6 feet away from the rear wall at least.

The most interesting thing for me was to take a very careful look at the Stereophile review of the Kef 201/2 (http://stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/708kef/index4.html.) First of all, the on-axis response (averaged across a 30° window in front of the speaker) is probably (overall) the flattest curve that Stereophile has ever published. But just as important is looking at the off-axis performance, which is also the smoothest family of curves that I have ever seen (see figures 5/6 ). One of the things that most people don't appreciate is that if your off axis radiation patterns are also not relatively flat and smooth, on axis flatness truly isn't good enough. The off-axis behavior adds significant coloration. I believe if you look at the off axis curves of the Kef 201/2 and compare it even to the high-end Revel Ultima Salon 2 (available at http://stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/608revel/index5.html - see figures 6 and 7), you will see that the Kef 201/2 off-axis behavior is slightly superior (although admittedly Revel's off axis curve is also excellent, falling down only over about 10 K, which isn't terribly significant and losing points in my judgment for their less-than-great vertical dispersion patterns). Also take a look at the final graph in the 201/2 measurements, the so-called waterfall graph (Fig.9 KEF Reference 201/2, cumulative spectral-decay plot on tweeter axis at 50" (0.15ms risetime). It's about the smoothest decay from a tweeter that you'll ever see - virtually no ringing at all past 1 ms and not much ringing by the midrange driver either in its upper frequency domains. I've listened to the Kef 102/2 on multiple occasions, and I think it is simply the finest monitor (using the term loosely because it's actually rather large for a monitor) or small speaker that anyone has ever made. I listened head-to-head between this speaker (with a subwoofer) and a B&W 802D and also one of the Watt/Puppy systems, and I thought the Kef was significantly smoother and more neutral and simply more musical. I've also heard the 203/2 and the 205/2 but I've never heard the 207/2. The other floor standing systems also sound very close to the 201/2, obviously with a bit more bass.

An interesting question is whether the new Gallo 3.5 is going to force itself into the conversation (the very high-end elite dynamic loudspeakers conversation), at a much lower price point. The 3.1 (a pair of which I own and love), although glowingly reviewed, definitely has problems in the presence region around the crossover between the two midrange drivers and their quasi-planar tweeter. There is a definite and quite audible drop out of material in the so-called 'presence' region. The Gallo 3.1 also has major problems with vertical dispersion, although its horizontal dispersion is fairly good, again excepting some beaming by the midrange drivers around their relatively high crossover point. My understanding is that Gallo has addressed these problems, and the speaker is now going for about six grand (quite a price jump relative to the 3.1 going for less than three grand). With their proprietary subwoofer amp driving a second voice coil, the 3.1's get down to the 20 Hz range without any trouble, meaning that if the presence deficits can be corrected (and some of the various room correction programs on high-end receivers will mitigate this on the 3.1), this is a full range system without having to buy a separate subwoofer. However if I had my druthers, I'd still trade this for a 201/2 with a good subwoofer system. Just out of my price range unfortunately. My conclusion is that anybody who has not heard the reference series and who loves music owes it to themselves to take a listen. The only problem is you may go home to your existing speakers feeling a bit dismayed if you cannot afford them. (PS - the XQ series is not even remotely in the same ballpark as the reference series so my comments don't apply to that group of speakers which admittedly have some problems in terms of treble peaks)

best, DW

Clarification/Correction: I mistakenly referred to the KEF 102/2 instead of the 201/2 in the second paragraph. All my comments were about the 201/2 - the 102s were a much earlier 3-way speaker, and not currently state-of-the-art (although admittedly a fine speaker in its own right).