I'm thinking about pulling the trigger on a pair of KEF reference 1's for my 10'x14' office (currently LS50's). Current electronic setup is all PS Audio (bhk monoblocks, bhk signature preamp, directstream dac). Incredible sound, zero complaints other than the fact that the monoblocks run hot. I'm getting cooked so the whole ps audio setup is listed for sale.... Although it just may end up at home for a future 2 channel setup!
So with that background, please share ideas for a high quality system that's cool running. Budget up to $15k. I'll add that I favor the warmer side of the spectrum. I'm a bass player and like tight, fast, deep bass..... Glorious mids, and smooth highs. Current ideas to match with the KEF Reference 1's include:
1. Bel Canto Black EX (integrated or the separates). My contact says the separates are far superior. I'm concerned this setup is too analytical. Anyone heard them?
2. Bel Canto Ref600m. Keep my directstream dac and bhk signature preamp. Probably more than good for an office!?!
3. Hegel 360 or the new forthcoming monster integrated (590)? They're not too pretty to look at but it seems like I've read about hegel and kef being matched at several audio shows. Is there a hegel house sound particularly with the KEF’s?
4. McIntosh mc611. I'll admit it.... I'm a sucker for the looks of McIntosh plus their easy listenability. I've never had ear fatigue listening to a McIntosh setup. I'd be keeping the directstream dac and bhk signature preamp for this combo. Afraid that is be giving up a lot going from the bhk monoblocks to the McIntosh with similar heat.
5. Luxman L509x. Brand new. Supposed to be very musical and runs cool. I'd probably run with the directstream dac.
Your thoughts / ideas are appreciated.... Especially if you've heard the recommendation with KEF reference 1's. It's all about system synergy, right!?!
keoliphant OP I’ve decided to wait for the upcoming Hegel 590 integrated.
This looks better to drive those Kef’s low impedance/-phase angle with in the bass, good choice, and it’s linear not Class-D always better to me so far ("the future is not set"). More output devices and bigger power supply, bodes for better current delivery than the H360 can give, and hopefully will drive that bass of the Kef’s without becoming a bit of a tone control.
"The Hegal H590’s class A/B output is executed by 12 transistors per channel (4 more than the H360) to deliver a very specific 301wpc into 8 Ohms. Hegel’s feed-forward loop wrestles distortion in real time. The power supply inside the H590 is twice the size of that found in the H360"
Ken, you should listen to the Bel Canto Black gear it does seem very interesting, personally we aren't so keen on very expensive amplifiers that digitize analog and don't play DSD but the overall reviews and features are excellent, we may contact Bel Canto and see about becoming a dealer for the Black gear as it is perfect NYC rig.
You may also want to check out the new Anthem STR gear which is less expensive and sounds extremely good, The amp and preamp/dac are $10k and offer the superb Anthem room correction system which may make an extraordinary difference in a small room with the Kef Ref 1. Anthem pictures the gear stacked so you may be able to save space that way.
If you are ever on the East Coast for business, we have the Ref 1 in a room with many superb contentenders including the Naim Nova which is excellent with the Ref 1, we also have the Naim 272/250Dr which sound mindblowing on the Ref 1, we also have the Anthem Separates, and the T+A gear, we also have the Micromega M150 has room correction.
As much as I said I was bowing out, I just want to chime in quick and thank audiotroy for being open minded about Bel Canto Black. I promise that you will not hear the digitization of analogue at all and their phono stage built in is very good as well. Bel Canto has displayed their Black gear with analogue front ends plenty of times and have always had great press about the sound quality. Bel Canto will do DSD64, but not natively. They opted for the MQA route and it does full MQA processing. You should definitely consider it for NYC. I'm not sure if there is a Bel Canto dealer in New York or not. I think it would be great for that market. Cheers.
Everest they chose to do convert DSD to PCM as part of their design. Not necessarily the best way to really play DSD and just because you do MQA doesnt' mean you can't play those files back at Quad Rate DSD we do exactly that on our $35k Light Hamonic Davinci and boy does it beat standard 24/192k MQA files.
This is one of the reasons why we thiink you really didn't experience the T+A Dac 8 DSD the absolute magic with that Dac is running everything as Quad rate DSD, a DAC like the DAC 8 gives the listener total control to play back DSD as DSD or PCM as PCM.
Personally never have been too keen on digitizing vinyl playback.
We will see about getting a sample of the Black EX as this piece might be as stated the perfect NYC apartment rig. We first tried that with Devialet and the Devialet although very impressive in many areas, never was musical enough for us to fall in love with the Devialet sound.
The new Hegel might also be a very nice contender. We have so far found real magic with the KEF's with the Naim and T+A gear.
Everest we have one up on you on that one we are one of the very few dealers in the country to display the entire KEF line, we have Ref 1, Ref 3, Ref 5, Blades, and our Ref 3 are in a full Atmos KEF theater which rocks.
We know that you didn't carry the higher end T+A gear which is a pitty the HV gear is amazing you might just prefer it over the Black, however, the simplicity of the Black might be very appealing to some people.
Dave and Troy Audio Doctor NJ, Dealer for KEF, T+A, Naim, etc
Initial impressions with KEF Reference 1's. Note that it's only been on for about 12 hours.
1. Solid midrange and powerful bass. 2. Streaming tidal and hearing far more depth/detail than ever before. 3. Treble seems a little thin (not harsh) so hoping break in will solve this.
I'm very please thus far and hoping break in will really make the system shine. Stay tuned.
No demo. I figured KEF and Hegel join forces at so many audio shows that it wouldn't be a system synergy risk.
Small office, no acoustical treatment. Been awhile since I measured but I figure approximately 10'x14'. KEF's bear on IsoAcoustics isolation stands that sit atop a custom standing desk (X-Desk, expensive but very worth it). The desk measures 3.5'x8'. The extra desk width and depth allows the KEF's to be on the desk with no crowding of my workspace and provides some additional speaker distance/separation.
Bass is incredible. I'm a bass player so I demand tight, fast, deep bass. Very happy thus far.
That is great to hear that it is working out well for you. I know how much of a pain it is to setup a small room and the additional complexity of a desk. How about a photo, your room sounds very interesting.
My room is 12 x 11 x 9 and when I put in $700 of GIK acoustic treatments(9 panels) in my office the room was transformed. I have a photo on the virtual systems.
What is your current setup yyz and what prompted you to go for treatments? Do you listen at low, medium, or high volume? Most of my listening is at low volume but I crank it when no one is around!
@keoliphant My current setup is rather simple, KEF LS50 + PeachTree Nova 150. Prior to the treatments the sound stage was not good, the imaging was not focused and I would get ear fatigue when I listened to certain albums, such as the Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream.
I was not able to listen too loud because it was just louder bad sound. After I added the treatments everything improved. It was just amazing how good the LS50 + Peachtree NOVA 150 now sounded. I am now excited to upgrade this system soon because the acoustics are rather good in this room. I am likely going to get a Paradigm Persona 3F + Anthem STR preamp with ARC3 DSP + Anthem STR amp or something else.
After the room treatments I find that I can play music much loader though most of the time it is at a moderate to low levels. My prior bad sounding recording, Siamese Dream, sounds so good now. This is one disc that I want to crank up. I also keep my room door open which helps add volume to the room.
I was recently listening to Damien and Stephan Marley albums and prior to the treatments they were almost impossible to listen to due to the heavy reggae bass, however, after the treatments they are easily listenable.
When I get the floor stander I will also get a audio rack and move that to the side and put only the amp between the speakers.
I was seriously considering the Hegel H590 in the past but I decided that I wanted DSP in my peamp because of the room limitations I would face with a floor stander. I also could not find a place to demo the Hegel even though I contacted Hegel a few times.
I have a pair of cherry kef reference 1 on the way but am also scratching my head about amplification. Was planning tube driven process with my McIntosh 275 VI but now am worried about under powering them...
my listening room is small but should I be thinking about bi-amping?
I have a pair of cherry kef reference 1 on the way but am also scratching my head about amplification. Was planning tube driven process with my McIntosh 275 VI but now am worried about under powering them...
my listening room is small but should I be thinking about bi-amping?
I ran LS50s with Ayre KX-5 Twenty preamp and VX-5 Twenty amp, with Roon via Ethernet to a QX-5 digital hub and a DX-5 DSD disc player as sources. I've since replaced the LS50s with Ref 1s. The sound with LS50s or Ref 1s is excellent in our 14' X 19' room. Only caveat is the amp runs a bit warm, but we're about a block from the beach in Montecito (AKA Santa Barbara).
We have mixed feelings on the Hegel, Keoliphant finds the treble a bit thin so we are wondering what is causing that? We had a demo earlier in the year of the Hegel 190 and the Nuprime STA 9 combo with the Nad C658 dac/preamp far outperformed it for the same money.
The new 390 is supposed to sound great.
As per Darko's video, on the Hegel/Ref 1 although we often respect his opinions he liked the Kii speakers and we really don't like them at all so it is hard to tell if this combo sounds great or just better than the Kii or are there other similarly priced amplifiers that will offer the great bass of the Hegel amplifier with other qualities.
When we had the older Hegel series we found that the Luxman and the Unision Research or Coda CS ib intergrated amplifiers were often chossen over the Hegel in our shootouts at the shop.
At one time we had the Hegel, Luxman, Coda, Unison Reseach, Naim and Devialet integrated amplifiers all in the
The other point is that the OP made is that Kef often shows with Hegel, that may be more of a corporate decision than the sonic one, many times these pairing occurs because of a corporate relationship rather than through rigorous testing of lots of other components.
@audiotroy The thin treble comment was when the unit had about a dozen hours on it. The H590 is fully broken in and glorious. Great combo with Kef Reference 1’s. Tara Labs The Muse Speaker Cables, Wireworld power cable and USB from MacBook Pro.
@keoliphant Thanks for the update on the 590. Today, I was in contact with KEF regarding speaker choice (for my downstairs) and I was thinking the 590 would be perfect if the speakers were to fit. Especially for other members of the family to use with it's ease of use. I am happy to hear that is also sounds great.
It would be an interesting and cheap way to cleanup Ethernet noise. I don't think the Hegel 590 or 390 is ROON READY yet, but when they are, Ethernet streaming seems like something to try.
I just saw the post by the Audio Doctor, I was thinking the same thing on the USB from the MAC directly to the Hegel. I know Hegel has done some things to make that type of connection sound better than average. If I were to use USB I would go either the way Audio Doctor suggested or my preferred way (since I like my computer(s) in my office), a Sonore xxxxRendu.
So my problem with doing anything but direct from my laptop is that I’m in a flex office (Regus). In order to establish WiFi or Ethernet connection to a new network device, I need to provide my email and password from the device being activated to the network. Obviously, simple if you’re logging in with a laptop or a iPad. I dont see any ability to connect a streamer or the H590 to a system like this.
@keoliphant I imagine you have a docking station or a network switch that can send packets to your logged on laptop. If you have a Network switch then the Sonore microRendu is a digital-2-digital converter. In this case converting the Ethernet-2-USB. This is the older technology from Sonore but likely perfect for you and what I use in my office, until I upgrade to something more complicated.
This will be miles ahead of your direct USB connection. I know because I had the same years ago before I went to the Rendu. A huge improvement in sound quality. I imagine that Sonore will have some Black Friday sales on the Rendu's.
If you click on the second link you will see a menu option called FIND MY UNIT. When I click that link, the web site located my Rendu on my private network. The Rendu guys wrote the SonicOrbitor operating system that runs on the Rendu’s so they have hooks into everything, including possibly passing a file with user name and pwd that can be read from some software hook on the SonicOrbitor operating system. This software is amazingly reliable and robust. I just love this companies products, especially for my office environment.
You could also pose a question on the Sonore sponsored Computer Audiophile forum,
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