KEF Blade Two - Unbelieveable

or leave California, lol

KEF R3 + subs... damn fine!  

Before I spend $25k on any set of speakers, my room must be in perfect shape/treated so I can get the best out of my speaker.

yyz, for your room, I wouldn’t make a $25k investment and put them in this room. The room is the most important piece of your system, bad room, bad sound, no matter what you put in it.

As for Hegel, I e owned a few of their integrateds. They were nice but compromised. Their power is decent, but when you compare their power vs a standalone amp with the same claimed power, the Hegel falls short. I had the top of the line Hegel at the time and when I went with separates with the same power, the new power amp controlled the speaker much better.

The 2nd thing that’s compromised in the Hegel is the dac. I never used the internal dac because it just wasn’t that good. I have a really nice highly rated external dac. But 1 year at rmaf, in the Hegel room, I had them compare the built in dac in the h360 to their standalone dac, no comparison. Hegel isn’t the only vendor that compromises, when I went with separates, my new McIntosh preamp had a so called high quality dac built in and it was also just so so, I didn’t use it either. I bring this up because the h590 is up near $12k now, why compromise at this price? Depending on your setup, if you have an all digital setup, $12k will get you a high quality dac and amp (no preamp necessary), just go from dac to the amp

Everyone says the Dac in the Hegel is really good but honestly they are comparing them to $2-3k dacs

The hegel is amazing at its price point, but it’s honestly lacking in general.

I also like to separate my streaming as well, isolate the power supply, ext. The hegel has everything in one box which is convenient but it simply isnt as good as separates and that’s just science and engineering.

If you truly want to go the integrated route, something like the gryphon diablo which uses a passive pre-amp is preferable. you get the good without sacrificing while taking away the need for an additional power, cord interconnect, and the noise they add while saving substantial money

no matter what though i would look into a separate dac

I don’t want to stray too much but what is a smart purchase to replace the dac in the h360 or 590?

@steve59 A Musetec 005 will get you a lot of sound for $3K. A slightly warm sounding DAC. I have one.

I was re-reading this thread again and wanted to update with some placement observations I had.

I moved my Thiel CS3.7’s to my living room and placed them on the LONG wall placement. I have about 7 feet on the left side and about 5 feet on the right side before any wall. The wall on the right side is only 3 feet tall with a big opening to the family room. My Livingroom ceiling is 25+ feet. I put the Thiel CS3.7 1 foot from the front wall.

The sound was excellent. Very wide soundstage, imaging was excellent. I think the large amount of space on either side of the speaker and also the tall height made the close front wall placement not a huge detriment.

I contacted KEF UK and they told me that the BLADE 2 META only needs 9 inches at a minimum from the front wall, maybe even less on some rooms. This is even closer than where I placed the Thiel CS3.7.

So, I am a happy camper now. I sold my CS3.7 yesterday and put that money to grow into the Blades. I was thinking of using the Benchmark AHB2 monos (just need to buy 1 more AHB2). Though a KRELL 300XD or the CODA #16 seem like the smarter choice.

Do you have a way to compare the H590 with the Blades? If a used H30 was available it might be worth a try, my only concern with hegel is local service.

I heard the Hegel H360 and then the H30 (I believe). It was their top-of-the-line mono block with the Blade 1. The H30 did sound better, more powerful and exciting. The H30 is now replaced by the H30a. Something to do with a parts issue.

I decided to go with the CODA #16 for my Blade 2. I owned the CODA #8 and heard the #16. It will be an excellent match, 150, 300, 600 at 8, 4, 2 and the first 100 watts in Class A.

I went and demoed the Rotel Mitchi X3 integrated. I really wanted to hear the massively powerful monoblocks that people are raving about. The dealer only had the integrated. It was rather good and super quiet. A definite competitor to the Hegel H390 (based on my experience with the H360). I was wondering if I should try it with the Blade 2. If I want the massive power I figured I could get the #16 as monos.

@rbstehno …”Before I spend $25k on any set of speakers, my room must be in perfect shape/treated so I can get the best out of my speaker.”

Interesting approach. With the exception of not getting speakers that are wildly inappropriate in size, I approach it the opposite way. I get the speakers… break them in at an “theoretically” appropriate location. Then start working on fine tuning positioning and treatments.

As an example my former ribbon speakers sounded best without front wall treatments. In my previous house the required a 4’ wide x 1’ high treatment at ~6’ high. My newer dynamic speakers require full wall treatments. I couple have predicted none of the stuff without the speakers.

Anyway, that is my approach.

What if you woke up with a half a million more than you went to bed with, personally, I would keep the blades. I might start looking for a better house to put them in, but the speakers are as good as I can appreciate.

we are a kef dealer 

you can't upgrade a non meta to ameta  kef will not allow that

if you want a meta you have to buy a meta kef ref 3 sound similar but are not as magical however the ref 3 setup correctly areawesome under 20k

Dave and Troy

Audio intellect  nj

Kef dealers 

Latest Blades are probably the most expensive speaker I could see myself ever splurging on.  Still getting by with my big Ohms for the foreseeable future though. Have ls50 meta and sub in another room just for kicks. 

bit of a bump,  Instead of reselling these Blade's, probably the last off the production line before kef moved to the Meta tech I put a couple MC611's on them and there's no doubt in my mind that upgrade made a bigger difference than moving to the blade metas. There's just something fundamentally 'right' about how they sound and these amps brought out more bass detail and while the size of the soundstage was always boundaryless it's gotten more depth and detail with good recordings. There's a review on the meta's suggesting tracks with nasal vocals will be less pleasant , something I experienced with the old R105/3 and has no trace of in the original Blade. That and the fact that new speaker demos don't leave me wanting anymore only confirm these truly prove to remain endgame for me. If I find something that bumps these off the podium ya'll will be the first to know.