Daedalus Audio Vs. Kef

If I may give some unsolicited advice; likely worth what you are paying for...

I own Daedalus speakers and really enjoy them. I know the owner of Daedalus, Lou Hinkley, who is terrific. That said, I would be reluctant to purchase Daedalus speakers or any other audio component without auditioning them first. I would encourage you to contact Lou. I believe he has a 30 day(?) money back guarantee.

What is it about the KEFs that has you looking for alternatives?

I think that the Kefs are a good quality speaker overall. I think they don't really have any glaring weaknesses, but that being said, I don't feel as deep a connection with the music through them as I have experienced with some other systems. I listened to some Sonus Faber speakers a couple of times that gave me that connection, but were above my price range.

My hope is to find a lower cost alternative that might give me at least a little more of that connection I am looking for. I know that may be a little vague, but I think that the difference may be with the speaker's ability to reproduce the tone and timbre of real instruments or perhaps maybe a little more warmth in the sound quality. I'm still trying to figure it out. Thanks for the assistance.

Thanks, that makes sense. Connection with the music is what most of us what from our systems, but there's plenty of variation in what it takes to get us there. For you, it sounds like you need a little more warmth and tonal richness. Daedalus could be a good choice. You might also see if you can hear the Revel F206, which is price-competitive with your R700 but has a different sound. Another thought is something in the Dynaudio Focus range.

I'm also interested in Daedalus, primarily because of reviews indicating that they produce the open, uncompressed type of sound I'm looking for. I think that "connection" to music is to a large extent dependent on the ability of speakers to produce that open, dynamic sound.

I'm also looking at Legacy and Selah audio. The one question I'd like to know more about is the high frequency performance of the Daedalus, considering that, unlike many speaker manufacturers these days, Daedalus are using a silk dome tweeter, rather than ribbons.