Loudspeakers

Just for once, I am going to give you the meat and potatoes straight away, we can wait for a moment for the narrative… These speakers are bloody brilliant, in many ways and on a good few levels. They draw upon lots of their predecessors’ technology, and while KEF makes speakers going right up to cost-no-object levels, this new Q Series (as against the still-sold ‘Classic Q Series’) have been made to a remarkably keen price for what they do. This has been done both by cutting corners where possible (the grilles aren’t magnetic, for instance) and using evolved, proven design cunning for the sonic result to be so amazingly uncompromised everywhere else.

Many speaker brands are in the habit of releasing new model ranges as an entirely new entity – new name, new driver configurations, even new price points – in the pursuit of 'going with the market.' At the other end of the scale, you have companies like KEF, which has had a Q Series, R Series and Reference Series for a very long time.

In the world of high-end hi-fi, loudspeakers are routinely objects of reverence and desire, no more so than KEF's recent Blade. Styled like a shark's fin and packing exquisite technology, it's the kind of speaker to make grown men weep.

KEF’s new T-Series range of home cinema speakers are definitely a sign of the times. They’ve been designed with a clear purpose in mind – to be an aesthetic match to newer, thinner, flatscreen TVs, enabling buyers to couple their hi-def movies with authentic 5.1 sound without their living room looking like a branch of Sevenoaks. The question is: has KEF sold out? Can these skinny speakers deliver the audio quality that everyone knows the brand is capable of?

The popularity of this type of compact speaker package has mostly been driven by the switch from CRTs to flatscreen TVs.