Audiophilepure

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“Before hearing them, I was concerned that the Maargas would be hard-pressed to do justice to rock. I was wrong. The Rethms could indeed rock — not with the usual in-your-face, concussive, frontal assault, but in a more subterranean, earthquake kinda way when I turned them up loud. The flabbergasting thing was when I used them to listen to rock at low volumes. It’s hard to imagine that a speaker could deliver utterly compelling rock at a level of only 60dB, but that’s exactly what the Maargas did, and like no other speaker I’d heard.”

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“Like almost every hi-fi speaker now made by KEF, the Q750 is based on their Uni-Q driver technology. Uni-Qs are coaxial drivers; each one comprises a tweeter operating inside the cone of a midrange or midrange-woofer driver. This is done so that the soundwaves generated by the two drivers emanate from the same point in space, to make their combined output a “point source” of sound. (Only KEF’s lower-priced C models still use discrete tweeters and midrange or midrange-woofer cones.) The Q750’s Uni-Q has a 1” dome tweeter and a 6.5” midrange-woofer, the latter left unfiltered on its low end, to extend its output as low in the bass as possible. To add to the midrange-woofer’s bass to increase extension and output, the Q750 also has a 6.5” woofer augmented by two 6.5” passive radiators.”

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“The performances and recording quality of Owen Wingrave showed me the full measure of the Q350s’ ability to open a window on the recording venue, London’s Kingsway Hall. When I switched from the LS50s to the Q350s, the dimensions of the soundstage didn’t significantly change, but the sense of air became less dense. Unfortunately, that less dense air also seemed a bit dusty, and the performers less dense and defined. Instrumental and vocal tones became less saturated. But to its credit, the Q350s’ sound felt more direct, open, and fundamentally truthful than the LS50s.

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“The Resolution doesn’t match the scale or emphatic dynamic response of the Wilsons or Stenheims — or Wilson Benesch’s own Cardinal. It doesn’t provide the efficiency of a horn, or in standalone form, the bandwidth of part-active systems. But, above all, it delivers a level of musical coherence and insight, a balance of the convincing and the communicative, that puts it at the forefront of current loudspeaker performance. More refined and even than most paper-coned systems, more natural and richer than most aluminum- or ceramic-coned speakers, far more expressive and engaging than the “high-tech, high-res” brigade, for all its obvious engineering, this is at heart an essentially simple and unfailingly musical device. No speaker is all things to all people, but in a market that seems increasingly divided and polemic, the Resolution sits astride the middle ground, confidently answering many of the musical questions that other speakers ignore or quietly gloss over.”

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“The Altums gripped AC/DC’s raucous and edgy music so tightly nothing of any musical worth was pulled apart. T.N.T’s recording quality isn’t world class. That said, the enjoyment provided by the Altums as they opened up the recording’s acoustic and production values can be summed up in three words: loads of fun.

Over the following weeks, as I played different music in different formats, I got to understand what makes the Altum such a complete, high-end loudspeaker.”