KEF Blade Two - Unbelieveable

IMO, just because you liked a set of speakers at some show doesn’t mean you can get the same performance: good or bad. There are many things that you have to consider before making a purchase of some speaker you liked:

1) listening room. You might have loved the sound of the Wilson Chronosonic XVX speakers in a treated room of 30’ x 20’ x 15’ but don’t think you can get the same sound in a 15’ x 12’ x 8’ room.

2) audio equipment/system synergy matched to your speakers. You might have heard these Wilson’s with $300k or more worth of equipment and you might not have that level of equipment that might be needed to get the best sound out of a certain speaker.

The best bet is to find a speaker you like and demo it in your house with your equipment to tell if you like the sound quality or not

The Blades go down to 3 Ohms if I remember the Stereophile review correctly. Most SS amps are rated at 4-Ohms and 8-Ohms continuous power. Here are some amps I would consider for the Blades that are not outrageously expensive. The KRELL and CODA can go down to 2-Ohms, I asked the designers on that. I have not owned the other 2, except a Parasound A21+ which is also a low-cost powerhouse.

- CODA #8, CODA #16 

- KRELL Duo 300XD 

- Parasound JC5

- Hegel 360, 390, 590

in terms of the resolution,

The blades are very resolving and I found them to be excellent, but not the best out there. I am friends with the owner of vivid giya g1s. Now THAT is highly resolving. Although honestly i wouldnt trade with him as the vivids lack in other areas.

The blades have such a tremendous soundstage.. the width, the imaging, the base response...it had almost everything.....But i wanted it ALL.

So, what did I do to give me what I wanted? I bought a pair of silver speaker cables from stealth audio. The cloud 99. Even the ends are terminated in silver. They are quite literally the most airy speaker cables I have ever heard and I’m comparing them to cables costing 4 times as much. The speed, the transparency and clarity.

Yet, it came with drawbacks. Is it a tad bit of brightness that I heard? How did i fix that to give me all the pros and no cons?

I went ahead and upgraded some other cables. One of which was the Galileo SX pc on my power conditioner. In particular, it was the gold tuning bullet that balanced out the silver speaker cables and gave me the sound that I have been looking for.

Now i compare the blades with speakers I’ve heard costing $75k+ and they are in line and in many cases better sounding to me than those

For those who want even more resolution, remember that the speakers are part of a larger overall system that can easily be balanced to give you what you want.

The blades have so so much going for them at that price point that it’s easy to make them sound like some ultra flagships from uber high end companies.

They are really end game speakers

The imaging and soundstage are really something to behold. When i listen to some older recordings I actually dont like how wide it can image....like i can pinpoint certain instruments all the way deep to the right or left and sometimes it seems so far that it goes past the width of my room. It can be distracting actually because the imaging is so good you cant even ignore it you might literally stare at the sides of the room lol. It’s probably accurate though. Older recordings didnt digitally correct everything and if for example a guitarist was recording at the side of a large recoding studio you will hear that and pin point exactly where he was standing during the recording. It’s quite accurate though

On good recordings they are truly amazing

@rbstehno 

I am driving my system with Audio Research Reference 160s… I actually keep it in triode mode so 1/2 the power ~ 75 wats per channel. 

I don’t doubt these speakers are being held back in my system, The hegel h360 is doing the job good enough, but the dealer I bought it from has a H590 store demo that we were starting to talk about that I will be trying at home shortly after Xmas. That will be interesting.