The British loudspeaker maker KEF, a name well known to audiophiles, has broken out both the high-tech and marketing razzle-dazzle for its desktop X300A speakers.
For starters, it talks about the “Uni-Q driver array,” which joins two speakers in one – a fancy version of a good old coaxial speaker, which puts a woofer for low tones and a tweeter for high tones in the same chassis.
Then it boasts that each speaker has a class AB amplifier, a kind of dual circuit that is used in some higher quality amplifiers and car amps as well. It pumps up to 50 watts to the low frequency speaker and 20 watts to the high.
Neither of these is quite the breakthrough it is made to appear, but you don’t often find either in a speaker built for computers.
The end result is a very solid set of speakers – 16.5 pounds of solid each.
They aren’t for people concerned about desk space. The size of typical bookshelf speakers, they are nearly a foot high, with a roughly 7-by-10-inch footprint.
Nor are they for people concerned about running skeins of cables. Each speaker takes an industrial strength power cord, a USB cable to the computer or player and another cord between the speakers themselves.
With gun-metal-colored cabinets and no grill to obscure (or protect) the speakers, the X300As have a utilitarian look, but alas, not a utilitarian price: They list for $800 a pair.
The price could be excused if the sound were exceptional. Because the speakers can be customized to achieve different sounds, it’s hard to make a blanket assessment. But I’ll try.
After fiddling with the bias and balance controls, the EQ setting and a set of foam stoppers to rein in the bass, I can say the speakers sound very, very good in some cases – “Honky Tonk Woman” was lively, and the cowbell (more cowbell!) was just perfect.
In other cases, they were not as impressive – in the overture for “The Mikado,” the oboes sounded like they had tin cans over them.
But overall, they are a very good pair of speakers if money and desk space are no object.
Gadgetwise Blog: Speakers With a Big Sound for Big Desks
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Gadgetwise Blog: Speakers With a Big Sound for Big Desks
