KEF Blade Two - Unbelieveable

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.