Arcam and KEF

[Stormboy]

Hi

I turn 39 + 1 in a few weeks and I am thinking of buying myself a nice AV present. I currently have a Pioneer VSX-LX70 receiver and I plan to replace it with the new Arcam AVR600. Currently, I have a KEF KHT3005 sub-sat system and I know that the Arcam is probably overkill. However, I intend to replace the front two speakers with full range ones and use the old KEF satelites as surround rears, giving me a better 7.1 sysrtem. I have two questions.

1) Will the Arcam receiver and KEF speakers work well together?

2) Can you recommend any full range speakers to replace the front left and right speakers, that will work well with the rest of the KEF speakers? My room is smallish so standmounters might be preferred to floorstanders.

Thankyou

Stormboy

 

[Frank Harvey]

Hi

The AVR600 will be overkill for your 3005's, but the positive side is that it's the best you're going to hear your speakers!! ANother positive point is that you will own one of the most capable AV amplifiers on the market, and leaves your speaker choice wide open, rather than it being more limited with some lesser amplifiers. KEF and Arcam do go extremely well together, as proved at our KEF/Arcam musical evening we held last November, where we were running two AVR600's: one with the iQ series, and one with the KEF Reference series.

The obvious choice to integrate with what you have would either be KEF XQ or the Reference range, as these use similar technology in the guise of KEF's UniQ driver arrangement, which I find lends itself very well to movie soundtracks. What sort of price point are you looking at? With an amplifier like the AVR600, you should really be looking at the XQ series as a starting point. There is the XQ10 and XQ20, which are very good speakers, with an excellent midrange and detail level, which has always been a strong point of KEF. If you'l be using a sub, floorstanders won't really be necessary anyway, so standmounts will be fine.

Another option would be something like the KEF Reference 201/2. It's an excellent step towards an extremely capable high end speaker package in the future. The Arcam has no problem driving these, where many other amps would struggle once the going gets tough. The Reference speakers are upwardly ported, and also have boundary room controls, so can be implemented successfully into virtually an room.

Any other questions feel free to ask.

Regards, David

 

[VoodooDoctor]

How do you think the Arcam compares with the Yamaha Z11, David?

 

[Anonymous]

I have also been wondering how the Arcam AVR600 compares against the Yamaha 'Z11. It would be very interesting to find out how it compares performance-wise - especially when it comes to audio quality.

Saying that, though, in the UK, the Arcam is considerably cheaper than the Yamaha. However, the Yamaha has an additional 4 'presence' channels rated at 50-watts per channel.

Here in Australia, though, the price difference is so minute; the Yamaha retails for only about 220GBP more than the Arcam, making the Yamaha appear to be an absolute bargain.

Dan.

 

[Anonymous]

David,
I don't intend to deviate too much from the question posed by Stormboy but I face a similar issue, as you may remember as I'm planning to buy an Arcam AVR600 too. Although I'm not neccesarily planning to change my Quad L speakers (12L + 11L + Central + subw) I have been offered the Kef Reference 201 (new) at 1.600 euros (roughly 1.400 GBP), which looks like a good price for them. Would they blend with my central Quad? (buying the central Kef now would probably push my budget too much).
Thanks and I apologize to Stormboy if he feels I'm deviating too much from his question.

 

[Frank Harvey]

201 or 201/2?

The voicing of KEF Reference is quite different to the Quads, so they wouldn't match up too well. If you did go for the KEF's, you'd be better off removing the Quad centre speaker altogether and using the 201/2's to reproduce centre ties as well.