adante

We sell both the KEF and the Adantes.

The Adantes actually sounded quite good when driven by warmer electronics as their top end was a bit peaky. 

Where  they excelled was at deep punchy bass, excellent dynamics, and created a very big sound stage. The Monitors at $2,500.00 were a lot of speaker for not a lot of money.

The flops were the floor standers which were too tall and not that much better sounding than the monitors. 

In terms of the KEF R3 being way better they are different smoother, less punchy with a more focused sound stage.

Given the right electronics and music the Adantes were quite enjoyable

Their issues were the monitors are huge, they required careful matching, and the floor standers are just huge for their size.

They were hard to sell for the price due to the fact that the Adante monitors were not really bookshelf sized loudspeakers so if you really wanted a monitor to sit on a shelf these were just too large.

Overall a decent line but not a standout more applicable to certain listener.

If anyone is interested we have both the monitors and floor standers priced really cheap.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Past 2 weeks i am listing Andante as61, they are absolutely sounds fantastic , vocals, drums and symbols so real, super dynamic.   i am coming from Kef r300 and Kefls50 w ( b)  and both were just ok.  Also with my own cds,  I demoed New dynaudio evoke and kef r series. only Evoke 50 and kef r11 were good in their line. however still i preferred Andante sound signature its just different feels music so real.  i am really trying to understand at what sense they are flop ?  

Raviker, if you referer to our post above we have listed the issues with the line, 

We agree with you that the speakers sounded quite good especially when used with warmer electronics, Naim, Parasound etc.

The issue is the monitors are huge, and can not fit on an actual bookshelf, and the floorstanders were really not that much better than the monitors. 

The real white elephant is shipping with increased tariffs from China a very heavy and bulky product that has the above listed issues and the reason for discontinuing the product makes sense.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Elac dealers

Adante are a great speaker for vocals. They have the same wide and uniform dispersion as the KEF, but is slightly flatter in response in the range of vocal harmonics (2-8K). Where the KEF is maybe +/- 1db in this range, the Adante is closer to +/- 0.5db.

Due to the soft dome, the dispersion is directional above 8K. This makes the KEFs sound like they have more air, while the Adante sounds much more vocal focused, since this increases the relative volume of the vocal range. Also the KEF R3 is warmer and has about 10db more of bass extension.

For the size the Adante sounds smaller than the R3 (less air/smaller soundstage, less bass extension) which is surprising for a speaker with 65% more internal volume than the R3. I would say the Adante’s biggest problem is that it’s just too big for what you get. It’s also about 25% bigger than the Kef Reference 1 but gives up about 15hz of bass extension.

Vocals are without a doubt the worst part about the Adante.  I laughed out loud at that.  Have you even heard them?  Shouty and glaring.  Absolutely rubbish.  I’ve heard them with MANY amp combinations, in two different houses that all other speakers sound great in.  
Again, if they weren’t designed by a like-able guy that everyone wants to respect and (reviewers) get along with on a social level, they would be complete unknowns.

Dont even get my started on the hilariously bad bass, even with the passive radiator and hidden driver gimmick.  Oh, and the excessively huge cabinet.  
Defend your purchases all you want, but there is a reason they’re already discontinued after such a short amount of time.  
Trash.