LOUDSPEAKERS

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go to: Contents | Features | Bookshelf, Stand-Mount and Desktop | Floorstanding | Editors' Choice Awards KEF Blade A 21st Centry Statement Alan Taffel photography by Joel Salcido Let me begin by telling you what it’s like to watch television—yes, television— when a pair of KEF Blades flank the widescreen. If, like me, you run the cable box’s 48kHz digital output through a good DAC and electronics, HDTV sound can be quite acceptable. But when I first set ears on the Blades I really didn’t care about that, because the speakers had just arrived and I was merely giving them a chance to settle in. The Showtime theme came on, and it was at this point that I unexpectedly took notice of the sound. How had it escaped me, I wondered, that this synthesized tidbit trails off with nearly subterranean bass But there it was, plain as Next on was the show I had been waiting for, Dexter, my guilty pleasure. Its theme is a miniature macabre masterpiece with which I am intimately familiar. But this time it sounded different. Once again I was confronted with things I had never heard before. The harpsichord, for one, had a far more realistic bite. And who knew there was a terrific, burbling bass line underneath it The more I listened, the more I realized just how many musical intricacies I had been missing. But, I reminded myself, I wasn’t there to listen critically; it was too soon for that. I was there to watch my show. So I re-positioned myself to the comfortable corner of the sofa. I do this so often that I unconsciously accept the small inevitable shifts in image and tonal balance that accompany the movement. The strange thing was this time there were no such shifts. When Dexter spoke from the center of the screen, he stayed at the center of the screen. Nor did the usual tonal imbalance materialize. I started wondering: If these speakers can do this for TV, what will they do for real music When KEF decided to create a new flagship, it had one overriding design goal: to build a speaker that would behave as a true point source across the entire frequency range. Speaker designers know that point sources—in which all the sound fires from a single spot—have unique and desirable characteristics: They radiate sound spherically into a room (hemispherically if there is a baffle), and they exhibit a flat power response both on- and, to a generous degree, off-axis. As a result, point 98 Guide to High-Performance Loudspeakers www.theabsolutesound.com previous page NEXT page
go to: Contents | Features | Bookshelf, Stand-Mount and Desktop | Floorstanding | Editors' Choice Awards EQUIPMENT REVIEW - KEF Blade sources not only fill a room uniformly; they do so with relatively constant frequency balance and dynamic level. At the same time, the smooth power response reduces coloration. No wonder many speaker designers consider point sources the Holy Grail of their craft. But those same designers know that this theoretical ideal is devilishly difficult to realize—especially on a full-range basis. Nonetheless, the historical landscape of speaker design is dotted with efforts to do just that. In the 1940s, coaxial drivers—a tweeter mounted directly in front of a midrange cone—attempted to capitalize on the point-source paradigm. However, these early units made for imperfect point sources because the tweeter interfered with the dispersion pattern of the midrange. Also, they were, by nature, not full-range. (A few unwieldy tri-axial drivers appeared, then disappeared just as quickly.) In 1981, the groundbreaking Quad ESL-63 electrostatic speaker took a completely different approach; it used electronic “rings” to simulate a point source. Although the Quad was much closer to being full-range than coax systems, it had acknowledged limitations in low- and high-frequency extension, as well as in dynamics. More recently, single-dynamic-driver speakers, which are inherent point sources, have enjoyed resurgent popularity. These designs can pull off amazing imaging feats; however, once again, none are full-range. There seems to be no getting around the fact that greater bandwidth and full-fledged dynamics require more and varied drivers. Unfortunately, as soon as multiple drivers become involved, getting them to behave as if their waveforms all emanate from the same point is nearly impossible. Some recent high-end designs, notably those from TAD’s Andrew Jones—a former KEF engineer, not coincidentally—use concentrically mounted tweeter and midrange drivers. These highly refined units bear only a superficial resemblance to the coaxes of yore and yield true point-source behavior from the mid-frequencies up. However, they still necessarily exclude woofer territory. These incomplete past and present attempts to create a full- range point source make KEF’s achievement all the more impressive. The Blade behaves as a point source from ultrasonic frequencies all the way down to 30Hz. Even below that, it produces a cardioid waveform that approximates a hemisphere. KEF claims that this outcome would not have been possible without the company’s extensive computer-modeling capabilities (see “Inside the Innovation Centre”). Even those tools were not sufficiently advanced until quite recently, and still the Blade took five years to develop. Of course, all that effort to create a full-range point source would have been pointless (sorry) if the result did not deliver on the design’s theoretical benefits. As it turns out, the behavior I encountered while watching Dexter accurately foreshadowed what the Blade would do with higher-quality source material. Indeed, this speaker displays properties that are normally considered rare on such a consistent basis that, when I listen to them, there are several things I know will happen. First, I know that I will not have to sit in one specific sweetspot to hear a deep, wide soundstage with solid imaging. I can give the “money seat” to a friend, knowing I won’t be sacrificing much, if anything, in spatial terms. Unless I sit smack in front of one speaker, both speakers will disappear, leaving an intact soundstage between them. Even if I’m positioned outside the speakers, I won’t be able to discern the individual Blades, and there will still be a soundstage— albeit a Dali-esque one—between them. SPECS & PRICING Type: Three-way, dual-port, bass-reflex floorstander Frequency response: 40Hz-35kHz +/- 3dB Drivers: 5" Li-Mg-Al /LCP hybrid cone midrange; 1" Al dome tweeter Bass units: 4 x 9" with force-canceling Sensitivity: 90dB (2.83V, 1W/1m) Impedance: 4 ohms nominal Weight: 126 lbs. Dimensions: 14.3" x 62.5" x 21.2" Price: $30,000 per pair KEF America 10 Timber Lane Marlboro, NJ 07746 (732) 683-2356 kef.com/us CLICK HERE TO COMMENT at www.theabsolutesound.COM 99 Guide to High-Performance Loudspeakers www.theabsolutesound.com previous page NEXT page
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