Customer Reviews

KEF XQ20MA Bookshelf Speaker (Birdseye Maple)

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KEF has own many awards with their reference series. Any one who hasnt heard one, should visit the dealer once. Music is live and it will touch you. In the cheap consumer world, most of the speakers specs only talk about frequency range. The other parameters like resolution(how detailed the music is, can you pick one note from the other clearly), sound stage(how large the stage is, is it convex or concave..) never comes into picture. B&W 802, KEF Reference are some of the audiophile speakers that produce convex sound stage. It makes it feel like musicians are in your room. Most of the good speakers, even book shelf speakers start in $10K range. KEF XQ series is the only of the few non-audophile speakers with great sound stage.. it doesnt have the same resolving power as reference series.. but very very close. It also is easy to drive, with 88db sensitivity & 8ohm. Any marantz, rotels, denons will be able to drive them with ease. Give it a few weeks to break in and enjoy with high resolution music. CD, SACD, Uncompressed FLAC, 24 bit high res downloads... dont waste time with 128K mp3s.

This is a bookshelf speaker, if possible limit the lower frequency to 70Hz and use a sub-woofer. Book shelf are easier to drive than the full size behemoths like 207/2 or 802D. In low volume you can still appreciate the voices and orchestra. One of the big issues with the big floor standers are.. they shine in higher volumes. In low volumes they shrink the sound stage. Book shelfs are ideal for listening to music in low volumes and still feel the depth and width. Given that it is on sale at half the price.. grab it. No need to worry about frequency range, 1K response time etc. KEFs are very well reviewed and built. Lot of measurements are available in the internet, pretty flat and fast.