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KEF Reference 7.2 Turn over for more‌
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54 KEF Reference 7.2 ➜ £40,000 Approx ➜ www.kef.com
Best of British Having spent some quality time with KEF’s awesome 7.2 Reference speaker system, Adam Rayner is off to rob a bank
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ven if unaffordable to most, we all adore reading about (or experiencing) those fabulous things only the superrich can own; a Bugatti Veyron, a Riva powerboat, a family ticket at Alton Towers. The same probably applies to this Reference 7.2 speaker system from KEF. At around £40,000, this is home cinema for those for whom cost is not really an issue. Home theatre for folks with Ferraris in the heated garage. What you get for the enormous wedge is excellence, performance and sheer beauty. This system is not about built-in discretion, it’s not for hiding. These are some of the most astonishing loudspeakers in existence. They demand to be seen. The Reference series is designed to enhance a goodly-
Home Cinema Choice March 2009
Reviews 55 AV/CV Product: Extreme high-end 7.2 speaker system of practically limitless power and legendary heritage Position: The very best that one of the most revered British speaker makers can do after decades of development Peers: Bowers & Wilkins 800 Series; Procella DTS array; Dynaudio Grand Master Evidence
The Reference 7.2 system has more drivers than a Formula 1 grid
March 2009 Home Cinema Choice
56 Reviews sized cinema room. My home is far too humble for this level of ordnance, so I had to trundle to Maidstone to KEF’s headquarters. After a guided tour of their museum of KEF and Celestion, I was ushered into a room where, white-glove style, I was invited to audition the system. I confess to this being one time I just wanted to sit and watch a quality film right through. It was a struggle to keep my analytical hat on... The speakers were being run on one of the best electronic pairings in modern AV: the Denon AVP-A1 HD and the POA-A1 HD. Once described as the Death Star of home cinema pre- and power- combinations, this £10,000, 90kg, 3,000W RMS brace of behemoths are what you would term commensurate technology to go with a set of £40,000 speakers – and the images were being pushed by a Denon DVD-2500BT Blu-ray deck, so the food for the monster was top-quality Kobe beef.
Serious business The left and right 207/2 flagship loudspeaker enclosures of the range have three 10in drivers each, one of which is just for midband output, and the two subwoofers tout 18in drivers driven by 1,000W of onboard amplification. That’s obviously impressive, but the key technology here is the ultimate incarnation of KEF’s famous point-source Uni-Q wizardry. Each speaker has a 165mm Uni-Q driver in it, with a tweeter that can soar up into the very high frequencies. This means the system has resolution to spare for all the new lossless codecs from Dolby and DTS, as well as eating every other surround sound format you’ve ever heard of for breakfast. This co-axial and coplanar arrangement also provides the legendary coherency of imagery and soundstage that is KEF’s trademark. The 204/2c centre, like the main and side speakers, has a six-fold nest of WBT brand binding posts and connection points on the rear. The different options for hooking up the speakers’ terminals is probably a job for experts. Rearmounted Uni Balance controls allow for LF adjustments to take into account the possible close proximity of walls. There’s also a four-step adjustment to the high-frequency output, as shown by neat EQ curves in the perfect-bound manuals. Of course, you can bi-wire or bi-amp or even tri-wire or tri-amp these speakers if you wish. Home Cinema Choice March 2009
There is so much brilliant KEF-ness involved here, with different technologies – and their evolutions and applications– all culminating in these speakers, that I could go off into a serious geek-fest. Instead, I’ll concentrate more on how it all made me feel...
Utterly delicious If you can afford to buy these, don’t scrimp by choosing the cheaper satin finish, as the glossy one is utterly delicious. It’s like the finest Italian furniture, or the dash of a hand-crafted British car. The KEF technicians told me in loving detail about how many coats and how many hours of rubbing each cabinet got, but I was just drooling and itching to hear them.
We set the speakers up in a THX Ultra2 array with dipoles at the sides and regular forward-firing units for rear-right and -left. Oh yes, and those two 18in subwoofers, one at the front of the room and one at the back, had been individually acoustically tailored to the space by use of the included microphone and the internal DSP. Being audio gurus, the KEF crew spun the Legends of Jazz Blu-ray. Being an HCC writer, I pulled out my Ratatouille Blu-ray, and skipped to the short film Lifted. This is set in an Indiana plain, like the one Barry Guiler was abducted from in Close Encounters. A flying saucer arrives over a lone house and the bass is supposed to shake the building. With this Reference system, it did, to a degree that when I emerged, the receptionist looked a bit bewildered. She had heard the demo room a thousand times, but I don’t think she had heard five kilowatts before. This audition may not have been quite up to the usual HCC standard but KEF definitely let me run the system with real level. The ceiling, which was suspended, is due a treatment with Dynamat vibration damping material or some such, as it did move about a bit. I felt like The
Take care: Each speaker comes with a ‘care pack’ including a cleaning cloth and spikes/feet, wrapped in a dandy case
Unique tech: Naturally, KEF’s proprietary Uni-Q technology is present
Stig let loose in a Bentley. The grip on the air and your soul, while keeping detail at all times, was wonderful. The KEF boffins were so impressed with the soundtrack on Lifted that they are going to use it as a top demo clip from now on. Ratatouille followed after and, again, it was fabulous. The opening
Reviews 57 scenes have a thousand rustly rats running, shotgun blasts and lots of screaming, mingled voices. I was able to pick out the most astonishing level of detail in the lossless soundtrack. Just the rainfall at the start was awe-inspiring. These KEFs are subtle, detailed, incredibly intricate and yet able to
reproduce explosions with a visceral grip that literally pressurises your entire world. It’s musical and mayhem all at once, and I absolutely love it. If I was planning a once-in-alifetime home cinema, I’d have these on my list. File under total genius. Now pass me that bottle of Cristal...
➜ Specifications
KEF Reference 207/2 Drive Units: 2 x 10in fibre reinforced pulp coned LF drivers; 1 x 10in low-mid; 1 x 6.5in Uni-Q mid with 1in titanium dome tweeter at its heart Enclosure type: Four-way bass reflex (ported) Frequency Response: 40Hz-60kHz +/-3dB (-6dB bass point is 26Hz) Sensitivity: 91dB Power Handling: 50-400W Dimensions: 400(w) x 1226(h) x 685(d)mm Weight: 66Kg KEF Reference 203/2 Drive Units: 2 x 6.5in LF; 1 x 6.5in Uni-Q mid with 1in titanium dome tweeter at its heart Enclosure type: Three-way bass reflex (ported) Frequency Response: 50Hz-60kHz +/-3dB (-6dB bass point is 40Hz) Sensitivity: 89dB Power Handling: 50-200W Dimensions: 248(w) x 1020(h) x 405(d)mm Weight: 26.5Kg KEF Reference 204/2c Centre Drive Units: 4 x 6.5in LF; 1 x 6.5in Uni-Q mid with 1in titanium dome tweeter at its heart Enclosure type: Three-way bass reflex (ported) Frequency Response: 53Hz-60kHz +/-3dB (-6dB bass point is 40Hz) Sensitivity: 90dB Power Handling: 50-300W Dimensions: 1100(w) x 200(h) x 425(d)mm Weight: 34.6Kg KEF Reference 206/2ds Dipole Drive Units: 1 x 8in LF; 2 x 6.5in Uni-Q mids with 1in titanium dome tweeters at their hearts Enclosure type: Sealed three-way Dipole Frequency Response: 65Hz-60kHz Sensitivity: 88dB Power Handling: 50-200W Dimensions: 400(w) x 324(h) x 200(d)mm Weight: 11.6Kg
Verdict KEF Reference 7.2 system £40,000 Approx Price check: www.techradar.com/496220 Highs: Awesome performance with incredibly rich textures and mindbending potency and weight Lows: Priced in the oligarch market; very, very big Performance: Design: Features:
Overall:
KEF Reference 209 Subwoofer Drive Unit: 18in long-throw driver with XMAX or peak-to-peak excursion of 60mm Enclosure type: Sealed Frequency Response: 15Hz-250Hz (-6dB point is 12Hz) On Board Power: 1,000W RMS Class D Dimensions: 629(w) x 530(h) x 629(d)mm Weight: 51.9Kg Connections: Single phono plus XLR socket for mono LFE input and the same each for Line input right and Line input left. Also XLR microphone socket and external Infra-Red ‘eye’ socket. Speaker input on WBT posts March 2009 Home Cinema Choice