Loudspeakers

KEF's innovative 'MAT' absorber has pushed the performance of Uni-Q to new heights. Now it's in the seven-strong R series

It still surprises me that KEF's R series, which features seven models in total, includes only one standmount/bookshelf option. Surprising because compact speakers are extremely popular, and because the R series is the company's mid-tier proposition, above the entry-level Q and a considerable way below the Reference range. Yet the previous generation, which launched in 2018, featured just one standmount – the R3 – so it's deja vu five years later.

The 'Blade' models fly the flag for KEF's speaker tech, but its Reference 5 offers a more accessible route to 'high-end Uni-Q'

Fortunately, the Reference 5 Meta is the £17,500 flagship of KEF's 'conventional' speaker range, bettered only by the striking-looking Blade designs [HFN May '22]. Fortunately? Well, yes, because this is an imposingly huge design, standing just over 1.4m tall, even if some of that impression of scale is minimised by the slenderness of the cabinets. Indeed, if the enclosures were any narrower than their 205mm, there wouldn't be room on the front baffle for the quartet of 165mm aluminium-coned bass drivers, arranged in pairs above and below the company's 12th-generation Uni-Q treble/midrange unit.

If the BeoLab 90 wowed you with its tech but daunted you with its size and price, here’s a pint-sized alternative

Kii Audio’s THREE is an exemplar of what can be achieved when the hi-fi industry’s, and hi-fi buyers’, lingering obsession with passive loudspeakers is set aside and a 21st century approach – active operation in conjunction with digital signal processing (DSP) – is adopted instead. In short order we’ve experienced the B&O BeoLab 90 [HFN Dec ’16], the KEF LS50 Wireless [HFN Oct ’17] and now the Kii (pronounced ‘key’) THREE.

From crude prototype in 1938 to its initial production run in 1947, the Klipschorn was founder Paul W Klipsch's 'cornerstone' horn loudspeaker. How does it fare today?

Viewed from a modern perspective, there's more than an element of 'forget everything you know' about the latest incarnation of the Klipsch Klipschorn AK6, a classic now heading for its 80th birthday. It was designed in 1946 from earlier prototypes by company founder Paul W Klipsch – officially described by the US brand as 'genius, madman and maverick' – in an Arkansas tin shed, and it's been continuously made and refined ever since.

Redesigned from the ground up, Klipsch's all-new Reference Premiere series leverages over 70 years of loudspeaker history. We audition the largest of its bookshelf trio...

With no shortage of standmount loudspeakers vying for our attention, any newcomer needs to stand out from the crowd. And few stand out as boldly as Klipsch's £625 'Reference Premiere' series RP-600M, arriving from a company with an auspicious portfolio of exciting-sounding horn-loaded loudspeakers [HFN Jun '19], all dating back to the first ever Klipschorn model launched in 1946.

Arguably the most durable model in the Kudos catalogue, the C20 has witnessed a graceful 12-year evolution

As is so often the case, last time I was at a hi-fi show – c'mon, you remember shows – I was amused by the reaction of a visitor. Having listened to a fully active system using Naim electronics and a pair of Kudos Titan speakers, 'Hmmm,' he said to no-one in particular, and with deadpan seriousness, 'Not bad for a stand company…'. Well, stands may have been the beginnings of Kudos, but it's come a long way since then.

Not many audio companies, to my recollection, have made the transition from manufacturing speaker stands to making the boxes atop them, but that’s the journey undergone by Kudos Audio. Its stands are still winning awards but today the marque is as well known for the five-model range of Cardea loudspeakers, ranging from the compact C1 – joint winner of our group test last year (HFN Nov ’08) – to the recently introduced, top-of-the-range C30. Slotted beneath the latter and previous alpha male is the C20, a two-way floorstander that uses the same cabinet and bass-mid driver as the lesser C2 but is equipped with a superior SEAS Crescendo tweeter and higher-grade crossover components. Included in the latter are the bespoke silver-wired capacitors that also feature in the C10 – the cut-above version of the C1.