Are the KEF Blade/Blade 2 Metas a Significant Upgrade from Blade?

My friend had the older Blade 2 speakers and I heard them at his house.....very, very good speakers......Well, he got brand new custom Apogee Duetta speakers in and then I made him a custom xover for them (the speakers took a year to have made in England and cost around $15K and the crossover, etc cost him another few thousand......so less than $20K total). When I went over to his house to install the upgraded xover (by the way, the xover that came with the speaker was already a custom tweaky thing) I first heard the stock xover and about cried....it was so good.....then we installed the new xover and OMG times infinity........this makes his old Blade speakers sound broken .....transparency beyond the beyond....since then he has tweaked the xover more, put the xover on better feet and done a million other things to his system including he is on full inverter power.....you can see pics of part of his stereo on my site. Yes, the Apogees are power hungry......something I don’t like.....He is using Parasound JC1+ amps........his older 400 watts into 4 ohm amps would not cut it with the Apogees......He can now play as loud as he wants. He listens to all kinds of music......has digital as well as analog (including field coil cartridge). Blades are a great box speaker......but like I said.....can be made to sound much more transparent if you made your own external xover, added bybee stuff and my tweaks, hardwired to the voice coils, etc....but, no one reading this will ever do this....so I am just talking to myself......I love myself....Nice talk Ric. Thanks for sharing.........he he.

No doubt, anyone buying a pair of new Blade 2 Metas will be very happy......Me, I like to be blissed out of my mind.......there is always more. I could make my own speaker for a few thousand that would be way better than a Kef.......but few have these skills or knowledge or desire.......by the way.....it is very simple......I am going to start a page on my website that will show you how to make your own speakers (at different price points).....that are amazing......this will be fun. I will share the link when done......a couple of months from now.

You are right of coarse, nobody is going to believe you're smarter than generations of engineers with access to measuring equipment and tools most mortals can only dream about. I respect the diy'r and the  community, but coming on and taking shots at current media favorites, and science driven companies isn't the most credible, sounds more like trolling tbh. Kef is making the blades to order so there's going to be a limited number of discounted pair available meaning for me the blades in my listening room are staying with no upgrade to meta in my future.

+1 @steve59 

Some of these guys are legends … only in their minds 😃

I took my second stop on the KEF train with the KEF LS50 Meta that arrived today. I spent the past week listening very intently to the old LS50 from 2012 because I replaced the driver. I think my son poked at one. Anyways, the driver replacement was easy and the old LS50 were sounding as they should. I am sending the old LS50 to my college bound nephew.

The new LS50 Meta with only 20 minutes of tunes is easy for me to hear the additional clarity of the sound. It is not as clear or clean sounding as my RAAL SR1a ribbons but it is better than the LS50. However, the goal for me was to get close to the SR1a in terms of clarity and I think the Meta are close.

The third stop for the KEF train will be the Blade 2 Meta. I got into a verbal agreement today to buy the DAC for the Blades, a used Musetec 005.

The Office system is now completed and will not be changed (ever). KEF LS50 Meta | KEF KC62 sub (using wireless) | Benchmark LA4 preamp | Benchmark AHB2 monos | Audience FrontRow speaker cable | Musetec 005 DAC

Still thinking of the amps for the Blade 2 Meta. I will try my existing KRELL Dou 175XD on them first with a CODA 07x peramp. It may need more power.

@ricevs I got your speaker tweak this weekend and have yet to try it out. I wanted to wait for the KEF LS50 Meta. Once the speakers are broken in I will plug then into the speaker terminations and give it a go. Unfortunately my speaker termination are banana. Spades would have been better for your tweak.

BTW - when Ric gives me some advice I listen, such as his recommendation of the Musetec DACs. He modded them in the past and told me to check it out.

Just listening to YYZ by Rush on the Metas. Wow, great choice to buy this speaker.

My listening room is 19 X 14 X 7.  Is that too small to realize the potential of Blade 2s?  I'm using KEF Reference 1s, low-passed to a pair of Velodyne HGS-15 with room correction and high-passed by a passive balanced Marchand filter.  Amps are Ayer VX-5 Twenty or Parasound JC 1s.