Kef 205/2


Good Morning All!

My setup consists of:

Kef 205/2
Mcintosh MC501's
Audio Research Ref 3
Fully Mod Primare CD31
PS Audio PPP (CD, Pre)
Shunyata Hydra 2 (Amps)
Nordost Quattro Fill CD to Pre
Nordost Red Dawn Pre to Amps
Nordost Red Dawn Bi-Wired Speaker cables
Analysis Plus Oval 9 Power Cords

My current issue with the above setup is that the Kef 205/2 produces very little bass comparing to my smaller system (in the same room with the same speakers positioning , etc) which consists of Dynaudio Focus 140 bookshelf, Cambridge Audio 740c and Meixing integrated tube amp (75w/ channel)! Due to the lack of bass, my main system seems to be brighter. I’ve tried to play the Kef on my smaller setup but the amp seems not to be to drive them.

Has anyone experience with the Kef205/2 or similar setup?
Can you please let me know how to improve the bass response?
I’ve tried with cables e.g. Chord Anthem, Cardas Golden Cross with mix result and ended with Nordost due to their high resolution. I do believe make differences but not substantially

Thanking you in advance for your advices
Primare_Cd31
primare_cd31
I had a similar beef with my 800d's powered by a Mc 500, which is 2 channel by 500 watts. All seemed well except the bass seemed lean. I was using monster biwire with monster balanced ics from my original system of the 90's. I always felt cables are important but as more of a tweak opposed to spending mucho denaro. I went ahead and tried some audioquest with the solid core copper. The Aq's vs.stranded monster were much better, there was the bass, and everything else you should hear. My gut tells me your nordost cables (which are great cables) are wrong for your application.
Hi Primare, if you remove all plugs, you loose bass. You need to keep both plugs in place with the middle one out. If you plug the middle as well, then you get additional hi freq boost.

For my 207/2, I use Stereovox LSP 600c
I never used them but Nordosts have a reputation for being fast and transparent but on the lean side, so cabling may be a good place to look for improvement.

If someone had told me this 2 months ago (before I exprienced it myself), I would thought this was a completely insane claim, but swapping out your cables for Transparent Audio reference will do as much for bass response as adding a subwoofer. At least it did in my system.

The question is what level cable to get - the current model references are prohibitively expensive, so you can either get old model reference or newer model of lower caliber. There has been some discussion about these on the forum which you may look into. I personally opted for buying old reference cable (i.e. over 10 year with so called XL technology). I paid between 650 and 1100 per pair for three pairs (2x balanced IC, 1x 10ft speaker cable). This was $15,000 worth of cabling 10 years ago. I could not be happier with the results.

The biggest improvement came from the DAC to Preamp IC. I suggest you shop around for a good deal on one, give one a try and see if you are getting the results you are looking for. If you don't, resell (loose may be a hundered bucks), if you do (like I did), get two more. Good luck.
I've recently had 2 dedicated circuits installed as the last cheaper option before swapping out cables!
Wow! I'm shock, the low and real extended bass are there now.
I re-did A/B test with the Dynaudio Focus 140. The Kefs are better this time, the bass is real extend and deep.
I couldn't believe how 2 dedicated circuits have made such a big difference!
However, I now wonder what more can do to take my system further:-).
I'm very tempting to replace:
1. The Bi-Wired Red Dawn SC's with the latest Grover Bi-Wired SC's
2. The Red Dawn IC's with Quattro Fil to make all IC's to be Quattro Fil
3. PS Audio PPP for CD, Pre with Shunyata Hydra 6 to make all conditioners to be Shunyata. May also swap power cords to Shunyata Python for amps, cd and 20amp Anaconda for pre. IMHO, Shunyata is better than PS Audio in conditioners and cables

Oh dear... the cost will be high. This is a very expensive hobby! But again...
Primare,

Have you done direct A/B comparison between PS audio power products and Shuyata? I have no experience with the latter, but to me PS audio are the only power products that did anything for me (I had Furman Reference and Stealth conditioners, and a bunch of different cables before).

So if your are planning on throwing some (more) money at power, I personally would much rather get the new PS Audio P5 which is supposedly a step up from the PPP. In fact this is precisely what I am planning to do.

Also, before spending obscene amounts on Shunyata power cables you owe it to yourself to audition the (slightly less obscenely priced) PS audio AC-12's. They are phenomenal cables.