Review: KEF R500 loudspeakers

Introduction: Last month I bought a pair of KEF Q350 speakers. I liked some of the attributes over the Wharfedale Denton speakers - mostly the sense of speed and some better detail. My plan was to eventually replace the Q350s with a pair of KEF R3s, speakers that were being sold via Accessories4Less for a very nice price. Things, however, began to move a little faster than I expected.

Fate stepped in: the Walnut R3s were no longer available. With my wife's blessing I instead purchased a pair of reconditioned R500s, the previous generation of the current production R5. It's been a few years since I've owned "full range" speakers so I was curious to see how these would sound in my narrow mid century listening room.

Shipping was fast with a Sunday (!) delivery from Fedex. I managed to unpack and setup the speakers without any help but be warned, the cabinets are heavier than they look. My weekly workout plan paid off! I also liked the spiked feed and the cups to stop damage to the new cork floors.

First Impressions: Where did all that bass and body come from? The two 5.25" woofers move a lot more air than I expected but perhaps I've been living in mini-monitor land for far too long. Sure it's not quite in the old UREI 813A territory with 15" woofers but the KEFs acquit themselves well with most rock music. The blending of the drivers - bass, uni-q midrange and tweeter - is also seamless.  Even though I only have 25Ws of Class A Aleph J on tap I had no urge for more power with the small listening room.

My friend rolled over and we listened to a few favorite records. It was obvious that these speakers still had some breaking in to do since changes were audible even in the middle of an LP side. After a few hours it seemed as if the treble had become more extended and the drivers even faster than before. Forwardness and depth changed with whatever turntable / preamp was being used. ie - the Thorens TD309 / Classe Five gave a "back in the hall sound" while the Dual CS5000 / Schiit Mani was more forward "mixing board" approach but with a little less resolution and bass depth.

Listening: After a week of daily use, it was time for a solid listening session with notebook in hand.   Turntable used was the Thorens TD309 paired with the Classe Five.

The Who - Tommy (Tracks) is an odd little album that I like but only in small bursts.  It is also an album I've heard on several of my systems.  The first side of this German pressed double-LP album has a lot of dynamics and a wide soundstage with a lot of things going on.  The KEFs did a very admirable job here; the firm foundation of Keith Moon's drumming and John Entwistle's bass was some of the best I've heard; only beaten by the massive UREI 813A speakers.  Where the R500s really shined was the attack of Pete Townshend's guitar work, sounding detailed and full of body.  There were a few times where my jaw literally dropped with surprise by the sheer dynamics of the album, not to mention the soundstage height(!) which is something I usually only hear on very expensive speakers.

Dead Can Dance - Into the Labyrinth (4AD) has a lot of acoustic instruments in a wide, sometimes shifting soundstage.  My original 1993 British pressing sounded marvelous.  On the song The Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove, Brendan Perry's voice had real weight and presence.  The fleshy finger strikes on the heads of the drums was readily apparent..  Dynamics, once again, were excellent as was soundstage depth and width.  Just a stunning album, one that I would use to demo any excellent hi-fi system.

Hiroshi Suzuki - Cat (Coumbia) has recently been re-issued on very clean and quiet Japanese vinyl.  The color of the Suzuki's trombone is vivid with astounding dynamics shifts.  The rest of his bandmates sound as if they are sitting in a living real space.  An example of ths is the song Walk Tall which begins with hand claps that echoed with a natural decay.  The treble is fast and transparent, especially for a metal tweeter driver.  The high end detail doesn't quite match the best I've heard - QUAD ESL-63s or Ionovac plasma tweeters - but still has less aggression than the horn tweeter of an Altec 604.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bayou Country (Liberty) is a classic rock 'n' roll album.  This original British pressing somehow bests the American copies I've heard with a cleaner, more see-through midrange.  The attack of the guitar has real body and presence; unlike the past mini monitors I've reviewed.  Once again the dynamics were impressive, especially the harmonica playing which had a real raw and dirty swamp sound.  It sounded as if a whole lot of air was being moved!  The instruments were each locked into their own space, separate but joined in the musical whole. 

 

Conclusion: As you can tell, I was taken away by the presence the KEF R500s could project.  The body of instruments and vocals were especially enjoyable.  These speakers seemed to sit in a middle ground between the UREI 813As and the Magnepan 1.6QRs, which is to say they could swing dynamically, soundstage quite well both in width and depth, and still provide musical enjoyment.  But they also didn't have the aggressive warts and all sound of the horn speaker, or the dark graininess of the planars.  After living several years with the limitations of small monitor speakers it will be difficult to go back; the ability of the larger KEFs to provide life-like body is something I cannot forget now.

In the future I will be playing with some wiring changes, a different cartridge, and maybe even a more powerful amplifier.  For now, however, the speaker quest is finished.

Review System:
Thorens TD-309 turntable with Ortofon 2M Bronze
 Classe Five preamplifier
First Watt Aleph J clone
Cardas Iridium interconnects
Cardas Twinlink speaker cable

Review: KEF Q350 speakers

 

Nothing too expensive or too exciting but for the price - brand new - from Accessories 4 Less, I couldn't pass them up. I've been a KEF fan for a long time, owning multiple iterations of the Uni-Q driver over the years. I was curious to see how this similarly priced speaker would sound versus my favorite budget Wharfedale Dentons.

I've been letting the speakers cook with daily usage from a vintage Dual CS5000, Schiit Mani, and Ortofon OM20 combination. At moderate levels the difference between the old *Wharfedale Denton and the KEF Q350 speakers are subtle. The Q350s are a touch cleaner with a brighter tone. Detail - neither are what I would call overachievers here - is also a little better, perhaps the difference between aluminum and woven Kevlar drivers.  The bass out of the 6.5" KEF woofers go down a touch deeper and with a bit more definition than the 5" unit on the Dentons.

With the family out of the way for an hour, I fired up the Thorens TD309 and spun my US copy of Pink Floyd's The Wall. At a higher listening level: within their dynamic limitations, the KEFs do a bit better here too. The busy sound effects come across cleanly and have real depth too. Definition - inner detail and body - are certainly not the best I've heard. These are, after all, no electrostatic speaker or an Altec 604 driver with a time-aligned crossover, but given the price the KEFs are more than acceptable. The old "PRAT" factor is high with lots of toe tapping enjoyment. Bass with the 6.5" driver is good but if you want to go deeper and louder a sub (or a larger Q-series) would be needed.

Further listening with a variety of records revealed a clean midrange with only some minor veiling - again, compared to the best I've heard. ie - there is an ever-so slight blurring of aggressive guitar work and the leading edges of high-hats. The treble is, however, extended with shimmer and shine but still not etched. I was expecting some overdone brightness from the aluminum tweeter but my (aged) ears weren't driven out of the room.

Overall I would give the KEF Q50s a solid thumbs up. They do punch quite above their cost point but these days that's no big surprise given the available computer modeling and testing that would have been a dream for speaker designers in the past.. I'm curious how the R Series would perform. But that's a future hope.

*Regarding the Wharfedale Denton speakers: these are equally good speakers but something I would recommend with a more aggressive digital front-end or amplification chain. In my case the smoothness of the Aleph J and the slight darkness of the Classe Five preamplifier was perhaps too much of a good thing. The Denton appears to have been voiced to have a vintage, smooth sound instead of the "hi-fi" approach of the KEFs.

System: 

Classe Five preamplifer

Aleph J amplifier

Thorens TD309 turntable with Ortofon Bronze phono cartridge

Belden 9497 speaker cable

various budget interconnect cables 

Review: Wharfedale Denton 80th Anniversary speakers

 

Introduction: I've been running with B&W Matrix 805 speakers for almost five years now.  They are good speakers but after such a long time I was interested in trying something new.  I first started concentrating on finding some KEFs, which is a speaker brand that I've always liked.  I had my eye on a pair of LS50s, Reference 1s, or even some small Q towers.  Instead I was drawn to a Wharefedale Denton review on the Steve Hoffman forums which had several fellow audio nuts being in love with this speaker.  One of them even sold his KEF LS50s and stayed with the Denton speakers. Given the low clearance price of these speakers I decided they were worth a try.

 

The Wharfedale Denton is a small mini monitor sporting a 5" Kevlar woofer and a 1" textile dome tweeter, something you would find out of an 1980s speaker.  These particular units, with an original cost of $1000USD, were created for Whardale's 80th anniversary and as a homage to the original vintage version.  Sensitivity is only 86dB so low-powered amplifiers may have trouble driving them.  The speakers can be bi-wired via the gold binding posts outback.  Bonus - prices have dropped considerably with this speaker, now they can be purchased new for $400USD.

I bought my pair of Dentons used so they were already broken in.  The original Wharfedale box arrived quickly and without any damage.  Packing was excellent and the little cloth bags surrounding the speakers was a nice touch.  Build quality appears to be very high.  Rapping on the side of the cabinets gives a high "tink" instead of low, hollow "thunk" which reveals some heavy construction.  The veneer / wood combo and silver grille looks quite presentable in my mid-century modern furnished house.  Very high - at least in this domicile - wife acceptance factor.

After removing the Matrix 805s and associated line-level bass equalizer, I plunked the Wharfedale's on top of the speaker stands.  I then moved the speakers a little further out into the room.  Since I already had some Kimber 8PR/4PR cables in place I decided to bi-wire.  Amplification is the soon-to-be replaced Adcom GFP-555 preamplifier and GFA-545 amplifier while the front end is the Dual CS5000 with the soon-to-replaced Shure M97xe phono cartridge.  As you can tell, I'm in the middle of a system rebuild so stay tuned for further developments.  But right now this is a decent budget system, something that someone who has $400USD to spend on speakers might have.

Listening: Initial thoughts - a little boxed in sounding.  A little flat and very polite.  But these speakers were literally winter cold having sat in a UPS truck and on my doorstep for a few hours before I set them up.  After running some errands, and with a fully warmed up stereo, I finally sat down to do some serious listening.

One of the groups I've been collecting lately is The Police.  I now have all of their albums on Japanese pressed vinyl, but for this session I went with 12" British-pressing single of Wrapped Around Your Finger.  This is a really excellent sounding cut of this song, besting my LP version.  On the Wharfedales the bass had a lot of PRaT, laying down a solid foundation that only increased the enjoyment of this song.  Dynamics, considering the size of the woofer, was impressive.  I've heard similarly sized woofers in KEF and other speakers that get muddled in this part of the spectrum.  Perhaps there is some mid-bass hump here at play but it was still tight and well-done without any overhang.

The all important midrange was clean and lively with a touch of warmth.  Vocals sounded natural as did the other instruments.  Each sat in it's own space without sounding confused.  This made it easier to pick out the different threads of the song.  With the narrow front baffle, the Denton speakers also did a more than fair job at disappearing, only leaving a good left-to-right stereo spread.

The treble on this 12" cut was clean though perhaps a bit rolled-off.  Very British polite, if I do say so myself.  The brashness of the cymbals were muted, though to what degree would require further exploration.  But the first impression was of a very listenable speaker that didn't sound forward or overly bright.  That can be a difficult thing for many small speakers since the temptation for manufacturers is to make a speaker that has a lot of fake detail by having a tipped-up response.

Dan Bejar is the talented singer-songwriter that fronts Destroyer.  Kaputt may be the best realization of his vision: idiosyncratic lyrics mixed with breathless delivery, all held together by a tight multi-instrumented backing band.  It reminds me of the lighter moments of Roxy Music mixed with free form poetry.

On the Denton speakers the music jelled together very nicely, making a cohesive picture that allowed me, to repeat myself, hear the different threads of the song but experience them as a whole.  Bass, once again. was very tuneful.  The midrange was smooth as was the treble.  I also noticed some extra detail retrieval that I hadn't heard before with the Matrix 805s speakers.  With the Dentons there was some synth that was low in the mix, along with extra breathiness in the backup vocals.  I've heard this album many, many times so this extra detail came as a bit of a surprise.  Nor was it hyped up detail from a bright treble, but instead seemed a completely natural part of the song.  Color me impressed.


 It was time to try an album that I am very familiar with, one that I have heard across several systems - a British pressing of Supertramp, Crime of the Century.  The lead in song, School, is bombastic with very deep bass and explosive dynamic contrasts.  How does the Wharfedale hold up compared to my departed UREI 813A speakers, which could really deliver the goods?  In a word (or three), not so well.

The deepest bass here - and there is a lot of it - becomes rather one-note and plodding, missing out on the subtle shadings I hear on much larger speakers.  The same was true with the dynamics which did not have the swell and force it should have had.  This is hardly a surprise given the physics of a 5" woofer; after all there is only so much air that it can move.  An added subwoofer would really help out here.  It really was surprising how nice the bass sounded on the Police cut versus the Supertramp track, showing the physical limitations of the small woofer on some material.

The midrange and treble, however, were still very pleasing but the muddiness of the bass did distract from the overall presentation.  Depth was foreshortened compared to the best I've heard, but the left-to-right stereo spread was marvelous.

A non-audiophile favorite of mine is John Moreland's High on Tulsa Heat.  The simpler tracks, which feature John's emotional voice and guitar, sounded pretty satisfying.  I was reminded of the time I saw him play live at the Ark in Ann Arbor.  The full band songs, however, were dark sounding and lacked air and detail.  I put the blame on the home studio recording equipment and microphones used, but just to be sure I listened to some brighter albums to see if they were noticeably rolled off on the top end.

The Stranger Things Volume 2 soundtrack is nothing but synth music made in a retro-70s style.  The higher frequencies were well-controlled and didn't display any massive roll-offs.  I would expect this to be a tad brighter than what I heard but not by much. 

Next up was The Blue Nile - A Walk Across the Rooftops, which features swooping synths and austere guitar work.  The top end was prominent but a small touch of top end loss was still apparent to these middle-aged ears.  It is obvious that this treble roll-off was an intentional design decision, made to replicate the sound of more vintage speakers.  So the Dentons are not the most accurate of speakers but a flaw that I can live with given the rest of the system budget.

Conclusion: In the sub-$1000USD range, the Dentons are the best that I've heard - period.  Highly recommended.

Life is about compromise, and speakers are among the worst in this regard.  The reality is that when dealing at this price range, it takes a lot of first-class engineering and careful listening to make a speaker work this well.   These are transducers that carry the music in an engrossing, melodic fashion.  Poised is the word that comes to mind, making lesser speakers in this cost bracket sound positively brash and unsophisticated.  The toe-tapping enjoyment I get from the Wharfedales make their sins ones of omission, which though are many, mostly fade into the background.

Limitations?  Many.  These are not party speakers. If you want something that rocks and plays harder, I would suggest you research any number of larger brands and models; especially something with a bigger woofer.   Another option is to add a subwoofer.  If you need even more finesse or bandwidth, then you're looking at spending more money.  The Denton speakers are well-balanced for their size, drivers complement, and price point but there are a lot of possibilities out there for better sound.  We shall be exploring these as my system changes.  But for now I will stick with the Denton speakers and see how they respond with tube amplification and a better phono cartridge.  Stay tuned!

System:
Adcom GFP-555 preamplifier
Adcom GFA-545 amplifier
Dual CS5000 turntable with Shure M97xe phono cartridges
Pioneer DVD-V7400 DVD player
Kimber 8PR/4PR bi-wire speaker cables
various budget interconnect cables

Update: The replacement of the Shure cartridge with an Ortofon Super OM 20 really broadened the bandwidth of the Wharfedale speakers.  Treble no longer sounds rolled off and bass -within middling listening levels - has a lot more composure.  It's a nice little match.  See the Ortofon review for more details.