KEF Q500 Floorstanding Speakers Black (Pair)

Product Information

All speakers have their merits. I also believe that the KEF's may be a little easier in placement , as far as distance apart and to the listener, proximity to walls, toe in or not etc... I've had both B&W's and KEF's before. The B&W's have always been great for long listening sessions, the KEF's a bit more engaging.

If the wood-fibre finish doesn’t feel too luxurious, don’t forget these speakers cost less than some obvious rivals. And, where robust floor-spike arrangements and elegant biwiring speaker terminals are concerned, the KEFs are supremely capable. The KEF’s party piece is the creation of a stereo image. Any matched pair of speakers should generate a sense of a complete space of sound in front of you with the performers arranged within it – or in the case of many modern recordings, how the engineer feels you should perceive the musicians. Most speakers do a solid job in this regard but the R500 is absolutely exceptional. Listening to the stunning recording of Spaces by Nils Frahm, the KEF is so utterly self-explanatory in the way it positions the piano, the stage and the audience, that your mind simply stops questioning what it hears and focusses on the music instead. Dynamic shifts were excellent while the speakers managed to keep control through all the dynamic range. Even at high volumes the cabinets were sturdy without any audible distortion which shows the great work KEF did during manufacturing. Great quality brinks great performance and this is the case also here. The cabinet is made out of recycled wood fibre if you are worried about the environment and KEF has included top-turnable, adjustable spikes for easy calibration showing how much thought has been put for even the smallest of details. But the real highlight of the Q500 speakers lies on it’s new Uni-Q array consisting of one 130mm (5.25in.) aluminium LF driver and two 130mm (5.25in.) aluminium ABRs for enhanced bass response while on top of them we find one 25mm (1in.) vented aluminium dome for the high frequencies and is based on the state-of-the-art HF driver developed for the Concept Blade.

Often compared with KEF Q500

The KEF Q550 uses a famous KEF technology to great effect, with the Uni-Q drive unit. This involves positioning the treble unit in the middle of the woofer, creating a single point source for sound across the frequency range. The end result of this is a broader, more cohesive sound that offers excellent stereo within a wider listening area. The LF/MF drivers feature very light aluminium cones for better and faster response while KEF have used a unique surround that they call Z-Flex that allows for better sound dispersion from the tweeter as well as better power from the drivers.

I collected the Q700´s yesterday and immediately set about setting them up. I went straight in for a Bi-Amp on them. After selecting the correct settings on my Onkyo 508 for Bi-amping I tried them out. The last to consider is that you need to have an amplifier to be able to use the KEF Q550 because it is a passive speaker. You need to have an amplifier with a power of 15 to 130 Watts RMS (Root Mean Square) and a nominal impedance of 8 ohms or a minimum of 3.5 ohms to be able to use the speakers. I run the Q500's, Q200, Q100's with a Definitive Technology Sub on a Yamaha RX-V1800 and the sound is incredible. Within its elegant floorstanding cabinet the Q550 house no fewer than three additional bass woofers. One of these is powered and is dedicated entirely to bass below the mid-range unit. Working rather like a subwoofer, this enables the Q550 to offer consistent and reliable bass that's both deep and sustained. Improving this further, twin ABRs (Auxcillary Bass Radiators) utilise energy within the cabinet to further enhance and sustain the bass response.In terms of driver complement, the R500 is unrelated to most other members of the R Series. The Uni-Q driver is shared across the range and we’ll cover this shortly but the bass drivers are 5.25 inch types which are only used in the smaller of the two centre speakers in the company range. Both drivers are aluminium and take the form of a concave dish with no dust cap or phase plug. This choice means that the R500 has a smaller bass driver than the R300. While there are two of these drivers, the crossover that KEF specifies in this instance is a three-way rather than a two-and-a-half-way design which means that the for bass duties, the R300 is technically less well-endowed than the standmount directly below it in the range. The major difference between the floorstanding models within the Q Series is the overall size of the drivers and the subsequent amount of air and sonic detail that they can push and reproduce. The drivers within the Q500 are 135mm (5.25"), which allows the speaker to move vast amounts of air, while retaining an exceptional level of precision. This impression is deepened by the Q700s’ driver-count. The 165mm aluminium Uni-Q driver with centre-mounted 25mm tweeter is taken from the class- leading Q300 standmounter. It’s joined by a 165mm low-frequency driver and two 165mm auxiliary bass radiators. The KEFs are equipped with high-quality five-way binding posts, allowing for the use of almost any home-audio connector available. In addition, the Q500s are designed to be bi-wireable with an additional pair of binding posts to facilitate independent connection to the tweeters. When not bi-wired, rather than being fitted with external shorting straps or bars, the Q series speakers utilize the KEF link—a clever, internal shorting mechanism. Per the manufacturer’s description: “The link is done internally with an impedance-neutral short-run copper circuit. The electrical connection is made to the link run via a threaded connector that opens or closes the connection based on the position of the external knob. By using the circuit-board-based shorting link, no skin effect or capacitance difference between the planes of the connectors is introduced .”

Made from lightweight yet rigid aluminium, the woofer units are fast to respond and linear in their response. This helps give life-like dynamics and low levels of distortion. Using technologies developed in their high-end Concept Blade speakers, the Q550 offers attention to detail not usually seen in speakers at this level. The Z-Flex woofer surround gives superior cone control, helping it blend seamlessly with the treble unit for a more even and consistent sound. The KEF Q550 uses a Q Series Advance Cabinet Design. The Uni-Q driver has been placed in the sealed box within the cabinet in this setup. This design reduces the load on the Uni-Q midrange cone, resulting in increased clarity and detail while delivering cleaner and punchier bass. Queue the KEF Q500 vs Bowers and Wilkins 684 S2. These were connected to a Marantz SR5010 AV receiver in stereo mode. The heart and soul of the loudspeaker series is the Uni-Q array, which provides the mid and high frequencies. The current version of the array resulted from engineering development during the company’s recent Concept Blade program. In brief, the Uni-Q array places both the midrange and tweeter drivers concentrically within the same mechanical structure to form a single acoustic source that’s coherent in position, directivity, and time. This is in contrast to the old “whizzer cone” drivers, which placed the tweeter in front of the lower-frequency driver, and not at the same acoustic point. Moreover, the manufacturer states that this alignment of the midrange (which provides many of the spatial clues in stereo listening) and the tweeter improves the tonal balance characteristics and broadens the listening area rather than limiting it to a sweet spot. The KEF’s speakers are usually equipped with their highly touted Uni-Q driver handling the highs and mids. In the Q550 case, KEF placed the aluminium tweeter in the midrange cone to optimize the time alignment between the two drivers and minimize any phase issues you normally experience when using a traditional tweeter and midrange configuration.Drivers: Aluminum Uni-Q with 5.25″ midrange and 1″ teeter, one 5.25″ aluminum woofer, and two 5.23″ passive radiators The tweeter used in the KEF Q550 utilizes a Tangerine waveguide to minimize interference between the tweeter and the midrange driver. The unique technology from KEF, the “Tangerine” waveguide system, helps the treble integrate more smoothly with the mid-range frequencies. It has also an additional damped tweeter loading tube which helps improve low treble performance and a new low-distortion inductor on the crossover which provides cleaner bass. The speakers have to have front reflex ports as far as I'm concerned and I want floor standing speakers. I'm a bit out of the hifi game these days, but what new speakers that I have looked at so far seem to have rear ports which is a big no no for me. I've been looking at used Kef Q4's and used Mission 752 Freedom speakers, as my brother has some and they are great speakers.

to the same dealer today. I decided to have another listen to the R500 and CM8 S2's. They had not yet changed the position in the listeningroom, and still connected to the same cambridge amp. The Q500 is KEF's starting floor-stander model within the Q series and utilises the same audiophile-standard of technology and precise componentry found within all Q series models. It also features the new generation of KEF's critically acclaimed Uni-Q mid-frequency/high-frequency driver array, paired with an impressive long-throw bass drive of the same size, and two matching ABRs. In terms of dimensions, the speaker measures 180 x 272 x 870 millimeters (WxDxH). It is crafted with precision, providing an optimal listening experience. The KEF Q500 is designed to bring out the best in your audio, delivering high-quality sound with accuracy and clarity. It is really difficult to find fault for its sound quality. The Uni-Q technology is really integral to the quality of this speaker. The KEF Q550 is one of the best floorstanding speakers in the market. Build Quality

USER REVIEWS

Kent Engineering & Foundry, or KEF, do things a bit differently than most other well known speaker manufacturers, but they have always managed to provide us with exceptional sound quality at a price level that most people can afford. This is particularly true with the new generation of the Q-series, and for this generation, the overall design has been revamped with a more contemporary and straightforward look. So I was searching for a floostanding speaker and auditioned in various stores at least the following: Monitor Audio BX5, RX6. Dali Zensor 5/7, Icon6 mk2, Rega rs3, Epos epic?, some Dynaudio, some Elac, some cheap Boston Acoustics, some System Audio and some Amphion and finally Kef Q500. All around or under 1000€. Such is the visual difference between the R500 and more dramatic speakers like the LS50, it can be hard to accept that there is going to be any similarity in the way that the two models perform. Give the R500 a slight toe-in relative to your listening position and ensure that they are 30 centimetres out from the wall though, and there are some clear and immediate points in common between the two. I tried the speaker in different position ,it is currently placed in top of a shelf . I have also tried some isolation at the bottom with some rubber and it acually had an effect on the bass as it became nuch more tighter. An also tried to bung the front port, though the sound was less bass but the clarity of the SQ enhanced a bit. As of now I am listening without the bungs after a month or so with the bungs. As I am writing this, the Q100 are playing 'The call of the Valley' a must listen Indian classic music the ambience it creates is excellent. So they are way better than my previous Monitor Audio BR2's, but they also should be since they are floorstanders (which i prefer) and more expensive.