Kef Blade or Kef Blade Two for bigger room


Hello all, I am thinking of changing my old bw 800 matrix speakers for the Kef Blade or Blade two.

My living room is 4.8m by 9.3m, with partially sloped high ceeling, and also in the middle going over into my open kitchen adding another 2.5m by 6m... 
Logically I would go for the biggest Blade to get the most and deepest bass response, as most speakers I have tried are too bass shy in my room, except for the big bw800 matrixes, which I set up in middle of the room, and sofa against wall to get bass...
Amplification are Rowland model 9T, so they should get the job done with both speakers.

However I heard from a dealer that the Blade two are better, more coherent sounding, even for bigger rooms; he claimed the big Blade sounds less coherent, with bass floating in the air somewhere and a bit disconnected from the rest...
In my personal experience I heard a Blade two driven by Electrocompaniet Nemos on a music show, im a large rectangular room, and they were brilliant, also in bass.
  i heard the big Blades at a dealer with my model 9t s and they were great as well, but strangely bass shy... room was large enough, but had sloped ceelings to the sides, and the speakers stood on small transporting rollers, so 10 cm higher then normal... Is it possible bass is better from the small blades after all??
Advice would be greatly appreciated! Maybe anyone heard them side by side in same room and with same amps?

blueskywalker

Showing 5 responses by audiotroy

The bigger Blades do sound bigger and pressurize the room better, the specs on Kef's website are very conservative. 

The big Blades having higher woofers give you less floor bounce which may be the reason they sound less over ripe.

The Blades are really special especially if you drive them correctly. What is the rest of your gear and what part of the world are you in?

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
Blueskywalker,

There is no difference in the sound quality or coherence between the Blade 2 and the Blade, they are exactly the same loudspeakers with the exception of larger bass drivers in the Blade in larger cabinet.

The one thing you found out is the Blades are room dependent, we have the Blades in a 26 foot long by 20 foot wide room with 10 foot ceilings and the bass out of the Blades is excellent but not room shaking our main listening room is open to two other rooms so we are pressurizing around 1,000 sq feet.

We has the same pair of Blades in the 2012 New York Audio Show in the Waldorf Astoria in a similar sized room and the bass was just spectacular and the room felt completely energized, this room was completely sealed. 

Also any high performance loudspeaker should never be on a transporting roller as the speakers will be moving which can definatly affect bass response in a negative way.

The 9t should sound excellent with the Blades they do like a wamer amplifier.

We should the Blades with all Chord Reference electronics and the sound of this $150k system was one of the best at the 2012 New York Audio show we felt the $107k YG Sonjas were not better on Solution gear and that system was $400k plus.

The moral of the story is the Kef Blades offer remarkable performance for the money, when feed with good gear and setup carefully their performance envelope is very very high.

You should use Isoacoustics footers instead of the stock spikes for a very nice improvement.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Kef Blade dealers
mzkmxcv you can't compare the Vivid B1 with a set of Blades, we had the B1 and they were very good they didn't compare to the Blades which just sound bigger with much more deep bass and are much more effortless.

The B1 decade is good for people looking for extreme resolution and don't have giant rooms, we were looking at  the Giya 1 or 2 but felt that were too similar to the Blades at twice the price, the speakers are acutally very similar. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Kef Blade dealers
Congrats Blueskywalker just wished you would have gotten em from us. 
Sigh!

Get a set of Isoacoustics they work wonders instead of the spikes. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
Actually he is in Belgium so we would not be able to sell him a pair.

You guys dont know the difference between serious discord and having a bit of fun.