To Doug Schneider,
I wanted to compliment you on your KEF Blade Two review. The observations you made in your review run parallel to my own with the original Blades I purchased two years ago. I still sometimes sit completely dumbfounded at the soundstage and imaging, the startling clarity, the frequency range, and overall enjoyment. I believe you used the term laser-focused imaging in your review. If so, it is a term I have used quite often. Perhaps it may be an overuse of a cliché, but the imaging the Blades and Blade Two present is eerily lifelike. Best of all, I don’t think I’ve yet reached the limit of the potential of just how wonderful they can sound. Each time I have made an improvement in a cable or a component, that improvement was readily and perceptibly obvious in the sonic presentation by the speakers. Of course, this can be a good and bad thing -- good because you actually hear what the upgrades are doing, bad because one upgrade will often lead to more and greater expenditures!
At the beginning of the track “South Side of the Sky,” from the Yes album Fragile, there is the sound of someone running that goes from one side to the other and finally towards the back. The Blades make it sound so lifelike it sounds like there is someone actually running around in your room. It can be quite amazing. Something that I don’t recall you mentioning, and maybe you didn’t notice, is the imaging, particularly the center image, is presented pretty high up in the room. On mine it is always above the Uni-Q and very often above the height of the speakers. I also have the pinpoint accuracy you describe both in-between and outside the boundaries of the speakers. I think all of those things make the presentation much more believable than imaging that is rather low to the floor and all on the same plane.
By any admission, the Blade and Blade Two are stunning achievements. I think your review hits the mark perfectly and I am confident you had particular enjoyment spending the required time to complete the review.
Best regards,
Paul
United States
It’s interesting for me to hear how your sonic impressions of the Blade mirror most of mine with the Blade Two. The one thing I didn’t find, though, is the imaging being all that high. In my room, the images were at about the height of the Uni-Qs, or occasionally a little above, but never at height of the speakers. Perhaps setup differences could account for that. . . . Doug Schneider
