Are the KEF Blade/Blade 2 Metas a Significant Upgrade from Blade?


I’ve enjoyed my KEF Blade 2 for over 5 years. Just wondering if anyone has compared the Blade/2 Metas to the original and how significant an upgrade in sound observed. With 65 yo ears improving on excellent is not always a sure thing. Thanks so much!

audiobrian

with my R105/3 even with a 93.5 db sensitivity I still horizontal bi-amped them with a krell kav 300il on top and a B&K 4420 driving the bass. The Blades are a much easier load and the quality of the uniq is miles ahead. IDK how big a room you're trying to pressurize but the Hegel H590 is powerful enough to drive the blades full range to +100 levels in my 17x27x7' basement listening room and with full, hard hitting bass I find I don't need to turn the dial quite so high.

I personally would never be interested in a speaker with such low sensitiviy and has tons of parts in the crossover. The crossover parts and the binding posts and wiring are very, very good in the Kef Meta......but pale against parts you could use if you are going all out. Also the wires from the crossover are not wired to the voice coil wires on the drivers. There are ton of other speakers that I woulld choose over the Kef and/also DIY speakers you could make real simply that would better the Kef.

For instance....check out the NSMT 100 speaker......for $13K you get powered built in sub.....NO....I mean NO crossover on the bass/midrange.......and just a single cap on the tweeter....with fully time and PHASE aligned design. The top end is something ike 92db effeciency so you can use lower powered amps. Of course, I would remove the binding posts and use a clamping system using plastic hardware, use better wire, hardwire the midrange to its voice coil wire, add bybee clarifier to the back of the midrange....add my Music Purifiers and Ground Enhancers......and be in heaven. NSMT is not on the cover of Stereophile, so is little known.......but check out the few reviews there are.....pretty much all raves. I bet these would be much better than the Kef......and with my simple mods would be mindblowing. You could also get some full range drivers and blow your mind as well.....you can augment full range drivers on the bottom with active bass and add super tweeter.......Lii Audio drivers from China are incredible for the money....more serious money can get you Cube drivers or Voxative drivers, etc.   Kef....nah....too dang many parts in the thing. If I had one I would remove the entire xover boards and completely rebuild them using state of the art parts, etc.....then the thing would sound like OMG.......but stock.....just another very good speaker.

For me the top of the speaker food chain is the KEF Blade. Everything else is behind them. Now not everyone has the same ears or listening objective as me, but when I heard the Blade 10 years ago I said this is the one to get.

I have heard a lot of speakers in the past decade. Though never had the room to put a Blade until now.

My friend had the older Blade 2 speakers and I heard them at his house.....very, very good speakers......Well, he got brand new custom Apogee Duetta speakers in and then I made him a custom xover for them (the speakers took a year to have made in England and cost around $15K and the crossover, etc cost him another few thousand......so less than $20K total). When I went over to his house to install the upgraded xover (by the way, the xover that came with the speaker was already a custom tweaky thing) I first heard the stock xover and about cried....it was so good.....then we installed the new xover and OMG times infinity........this makes his old Blade speakers sound broken .....transparency beyond the beyond....since then he has tweaked the xover more, put the xover on better feet and done a million other things to his system including he is on full inverter power.....you can see pics of part of his stereo on my site. Yes, the Apogees are power hungry......something I don’t like.....He is using Parasound JC1+ amps........his older 400 watts into 4 ohm amps would not cut it with the Apogees......He can now play as loud as he wants. He listens to all kinds of music......has digital as well as analog (including field coil cartridge). Blades are a great box speaker......but like I said.....can be made to sound much more transparent if you made your own external xover, added bybee stuff and my tweaks, hardwired to the voice coils, etc....but, no one reading this will ever do this....so I am just talking to myself......I love myself....Nice talk Ric. Thanks for sharing.........he he.

No doubt, anyone buying a pair of new Blade 2 Metas will be very happy......Me, I like to be blissed out of my mind.......there is always more. I could make my own speaker for a few thousand that would be way better than a Kef.......but few have these skills or knowledge or desire.......by the way.....it is very simple......I am going to start a page on my website that will show you how to make your own speakers (at different price points).....that are amazing......this will be fun. I will share the link when done......a couple of months from now.

You are right of coarse, nobody is going to believe you're smarter than generations of engineers with access to measuring equipment and tools most mortals can only dream about. I respect the diy'r and the  community, but coming on and taking shots at current media favorites, and science driven companies isn't the most credible, sounds more like trolling tbh. Kef is making the blades to order so there's going to be a limited number of discounted pair available meaning for me the blades in my listening room are staying with no upgrade to meta in my future.