KEF Reference 201/2 Loudspeakers (HiFi+ 74)

KEF’s Reference range is a 30+ year benchmark in loudspeakers. It has changed several times, but the line represents the pinnacle of what KEF can do with a production line. In the light of its excellent Blade concept loudspeaker, it’s clear the company can make a speaker of jaw-dropping performance for the show crowd, but what about something closer to the real world. The Reference 201/2 shows just how good the company’s real-world high-end sound can be.

The baby of the range, the 201/2 is a three-way standmount. By using the top-spec version of the Uni-Q coincident or coaxial drive unit, the 201/2 manages to make the speaker seem less large than many three-ways, presenting two 165mm cones to the listener. The first is a fibre-reinforced paper bass unit, with a crossover point at 450Hz. The second (and third) are a flared 165mm polypropylene cone midrange with a 25mm titanium dome tweeter in its acoustic centre and these cross over at 2.5kHz, the crossover network being a fourth-order, 24dB/octave design.

Coincident drivers are potentially a blessing and a curse; they act like a point source (excellent imagery and fewer room interaction problems), but there are potentially two drivers acting very differently at the same time and thereby clashing with one another. KEF’s way to get round this is to make the midrange unit behave like a waveguide for the tweeter, thanks to careful cone shaping. This optimises the dispersion of the tweeter relative to the midrange, without sacrificing performance of either. I have to admit that some seem to find the limitations of coincident drivers more troubling than I do and even before this џber-Uni-Q design, I remained something of a fan. That this iteration reduces the effects of those limitations is not lost on me, but it does make me want to make a few ‘told you so’ phone calls to the nay-sayers.

The reflex-loaded loudspeaker is moderately insensitive at a claimed 86dB, but a relatively easy eight ohm load (with minimum impedance hovering around four ohms). Rare in these times of a return to single wired performance, but the Reference 201/2 is tri-wired, with a set of screw in ‘caps’ to gently tailor high and low frequencies in room. You can leave the speaker flat, put a 2dB cut in the bass or a 0.75dB tilt up or a 0.75dB or 1.5dB down-tilt in the treble. You need the manual to decode this because there’s not much in the way of indication on the back panel. It comes with a 0.75dB treble tilt out of the box. I found this (or flat) to be the best setting in my room.

I also found the loudspeakers worked best with no toe-in whatsoever, but very accurate positioning in the room. I found a slightly staggered approach best, with the left speaker three inches behind the right in room, compared to the norm. But here’s the good part. The loudspeaker sounded good enough fine ‘plonked down’ in roughly the right place. There was a point where the sound suddenly improved, but the amount of effort finding that spot was not a vital component of good sound. Interestingly, having found that position, changing back to my regular ProAc Response D Two, I found the half-step forward position for the right speaker worked best with that speaker too. It simply wasn’t so obvious with the ProAc.

The Reference 201/2 is as good a speaker as you feed it. Put it on the end of good equipment and it will return a good performance, but put it on the end of remarkable equipment and it soundsЙ well, remarkable. That is something of a double-edged sword, because put the speaker on the end of something vexatious and it won’t hold back in giving you an honest assessment of that grade of performance too. In that respect, the KEF Reference 201/2 is the perfect reviewer loudspeaker. It brings nothing but honesty to the party and if products further up the chain don’t hold to the same ethos, it will expose them.

That doesn’t make the Ref 201/2 an unsatisfying speaker and it isn’t a loudspeaker in constant search of an amplifier, it’s just that you could use it on the end of a grand’s worth of Arcam amplifiers or more than Ј150,000 worth of DarTZeel and it will not short-change either. But it works best with a lot of power squeezed up its speaker terminals, and the recommended 50-150W specified by KEF should be taken as a starting place, because much lower than 50 watts is something of a struggle. The single best sound in my arsenal was from the Devialet D-Premier (reviewed next issue), which is nearly 100W past that upper limit, and an fine KEF life-partner.

Listening notes read like a Life of Brian script, as yet another positive aspect of the performance unfolded. So, apart from the integration, detail, vocal articulation, sumptuous finish, dynamic range, ability to play at almost any practical volume level, neutrality, flexibility and surprising amounts of bass for such a relatively small speakerЙ what have the KEF Reference 201/2s ever done for us?