Kef Blade or Wilson Audio Alexia?


Please give your advise, if I am to buy a floor standing speakers and place it in a 28 sq ft room, would you prefer a Wilson Audio Alexia or Kef Blade?
jerrypan

As a displaying Blade dealer and someone with 25 years of experience and I was also one of the top Wilson salespersons in the country I think I am uber qualified to discuss both companies products.

The Blade is a totally polarizing speaker from a company that is emerging out of its long slumber. Kef's current product line is competitive with any of the best high end brands, their earlier products were good but too flawed.

In terms of design, technology and research and development KEF can outspend Wilson, Magico, YG acoustics and ten other speaker companies combined. The Blade program was over 1 million dollars spent in R&D over five years, out of the Blade program came exciting technological advances in cabinet and driver construction.

We had the Blades setup in the poorly covered NY Audio Show, where reviewers did not bring their own music, nor did they spend any private time in the rooms like they do when they are at CES.

I walked the show and listened to both the big YG and the MBL's and the sound we were getting out of the Blades was as good as the big YG which were $120,000 speakers being driven by $160,000.00 worth of electronics!

In my shop I don't get the extremely deep bass we got in
the Waldorf, which demonstrates that the Blades are more room dependent than most other speakers, and this should be self evident when you have side firing woofers.

What the Blades did do in this setup was a gigantic soundstage, thrilling dynamics, extremely deep bass, with a fully coherent sound. To my ears and experience they sounded very much like a pair of $70k Wilson Maxx with greater coherence and a more relaxed top end.

I have never heard a $30k speaker sound like a $70k speaker until the Blade came along.

Now part of the reason with this other dealer may be his room or partnering gear, people who heard the Blades at shows have either been impressed or not. We sell Parasound gear which is excellent for the price but pales in comparison to the sound we get from the Blades when driven by Chord electronics, so as I said you have a magnificent but very tricky speaker with the Blades, at many shows Kef showed with the good Parasound gear but not with the more exotic and expensive electronics, sources and cabling which most people would pair with them, at a recent show with Mac gear the reviewer was very impressed.

The Wilson Alexia is basically a Watt Puppy with a more flexible way of increasing the speakers coherence than the WP's alignment.

Now the Wilson sound has always been dramatic and very vivid. The overall presentation of the Alexia will not be as big as the Blade so it will come down to personal taste and what you value, both speaker image very well and are very dynamic.

I would listen to both and then make up my mind, I would advise you that if you can set up the Blades well you can not find a better speaker for that amount of money, the Blades are a steal for what they do.
I have not heard the new Wilsons, but I have heard the Blades. I love everything about them!!!!! I can't justify the expense, but did purchase the R700 in Rosewood to get as close to the Blade sound as possible.
208 sq ft is 13x16 feet. A Wilson Sophia is about the biggest speaker you would want in a room that size unless it's part of a bigger open architecture.

As I said in my previous post the Blade is a chameleon of a speaker, and it depends where and what you heard it on.

Some of the dealers do not have them setup correctly or do not have the right sized rooms to make them sing, my pair sounds amazing, except that I do not get the extreme deep bass that I have heard come out of them in a different room.

What is interesting in Sound Stage's article titled the speakers I would buy for $100k he listed both the Blades and the more expensive Vivids.

In the review on the Blades from I think Hifi news or hifi plus came away with the same conclusions I have which is if you set them up right, they sound like a $70k speaker.

I also have the 207.2 and the Blades are vastly superior to the 207.2. I have heard the Sasha, and the Blades are again a vastly superior speaker, same with the Blades vs the Magico products in the same range.

You owe it to yourself to hear them well setup, they are amazing.
The Absolute Sound review of the KEF Blade was unequivocally favorable. So much so that I was also thinking of getting a pair of Q900s as an affordable consolation prize, or maybe since I have a matched pair of compact subs, the R-300 or 50th Anniversary stand-mounts.

Also, here's a Stereophile evaluation that acknowledges that demos at previous shows were not good, but that this demo was done under much better circumstances and would be on the reviewer's short list.