New Kef 9000's

Stellavision

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I was eagerly anticipating collection of my new Kef KHT 9000ACE speakers this week, to see that my £1500 was well spent.
I picked them up from Audio-T on Tuesday and my first impression when I saw the boxes was, WOW, these things must be huge!:eek:
They were heavy too, and unlike carrying three boxes of VM1's to my car in one go (which I borrowed for trial last week) I could only carry one at a time with these.

When I got home I couldn't wait to set them up. Opening the boxes I found these very sleak silver satelite's with black cloth fronts. They are approximately 21" tall and 10" wide with rounded edges. Not the sort of size you expect of satelite speakers which these are supposed to be, and not the weight either, being surprisingly heavy.
You get the choice of wall brackets or stands with these and I went for the wall brackets. However, I'm not wall mounting them in my flat because I'm moving out soon, so I was confronted with the pain of seeing the speaker wires had to be connected to the wall mounts and the speakers then terminated when attached to the wall mount.

After a short fiddly proccess I had my L&R speakers stood tastefully on boxes with the center on top of the fire, all connected to the wall mounts.:) (But not wall mounted)
Put off yet? Don't be. I calibrated them and went through my usual tests using stereo music and a couple of films, in this case Terminator 3 and U-571. As well as not looking like conventional satelite speakers they certainly don't sound like them. They produce a nice full sound which is very clear and precise. I set them to large and turned off the sub and they could even produce vibrating bass when working without a sub.
Looking at whats inside you can see why. They have a Uni-Q Driver, the same of which are used in Kefs high end Q and QS series, and on either side of this are two long throw bass drivers with ultra low distorion motors.

I'm probably not getting the full benefit of them at the moment as it has adjustable filters depending whether it is wall or stand mounted. This is automatically detected, so when on the wall bracket the unit changes from free space to wall setting. Basically the wall filter corrects for both the fundamental wall reflection below 700Hz and the second mode at 700Hz.

It still hurts having shelled out £500 a piece for three of these, but before them I auditioned B&W VM1's, Kef 200's and the Kef 5005's and they didn't come close. They are satelite speakers but are far superior to any other I have come across before.
If you have money to burn they are worth a look and get a big thumbs up from me.:smashin:

The rest of my kit used with the testing was 4 Mission M7Ds and a B&W ASW675 driven using a Pioneer 2011 and a Toshiba 520 DVD player. Incidentally I should have had my ASW750 to go with these, but there's been a delay and I'm not expecting it while next Tuesday now.:thumbsdow
 
Hi Barrie

Coudl we have an update of how your 9000s sound.

I heard a pair last week and thought they sounded very detailed.

Tom.
 
I'm still happy with my Kefs and they do seem to have got a little better after some prolonged use.
However, I haven't moved into my new house yet (hopefully next weekend) so they still are'nt wall mounted, so I don't think I'm getting the full potential out of them yet.
 

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