Kef R series discount, new generation?

I suppose it’s possible there’s a mark 2 or something on the way, but I think it’s more likely because the warmer weather is here - and that’s bad for Hi-Fi sales. B&W are promoting the Diamond series too. You don’t usually get money off until the new models arrive, afaik.

Rather like luxury car makers, companies like these seldom offer a direct discount, but come up with generous part exchange or trade-in deals. I’m sure business is challenging, so I do have sympathy with dealers and manufacturers alike.
 
newlash09 said:
How the R900 compares to the competition from pmc and qacoustics concept 500. Pmc is lean and fast, QA is mellow and rich , and the R900's are :)
...probably not as good as the R500 or R700! I think davidf has some experience of these.

If you’re looking that far afield the ribbon tweetered Quad z series are rather lovely. I preferred the smaller 3 to the 4 though.

I’m not sure any of them are up with the big QA or the ATCs though!

More here:- https://www.whathifi.com/forum/hi-fi/kef-r500-vs-r700
 

Andrewjvt

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newlash09 said:
How the R900 compares to the competition from pmc and qacoustics concept 500. Pmc is lean and fast, QA is mellow and rich , and the R900's are :)

And imo the small atc scm11 beat them easy in all departments.
Bass definition and dynamics (quiet to loud passages) being g the most note worthy improvement but also the timbre of ATC v KEF r series.

Having said that you get a lot of speaker in the r900 but if it's not as good as the r700 I'd not even entertain the idea
 

emcc_3

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Having recently bought a set they are more than competitive against what are relatively new products in comparision. For me they comfortably bettered the similar priced B & W 700 series.

My only compliant, and this is minor, a slight more treble extension would make them perfect. Though I won't be changing these for at least a decade, I like them that much.
 

Gazzip

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I had the R500s and R700s in my listening room for a while. They are good loudspeakers, of that there is no doubt, although I preferred the R500s for their pace. However my next investment were PMC PB1is and they reset the bar in respect of neutrality.
 

emcc_3

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Not sure what you paid for them but the rrp of PMC PB1i's was £6650, though can see they went as high as £7300. Given they were over 4 times the price of the r500 and over 3 times the price of the r700 you would expect them to perform higher.

In there price category the r series ate very good value for money, though not really fair to compare them to significantly more expensive speakers.

A much more suitable and fairer comparison would be against the then equivalent of the reference 3.
 

lindsayt

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emcc_3 said:
Couldn't agree more. The fact they have lasted as a product so long is testament to how well they were engineered in the first place.
Given what andrewjvt said earlier in this thread. And I have no doubt that what he said was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the Kef r series would appear to be more of a triumph of marketing over engineering.

Please read what he said again.
 

Gazzip

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emcc_3 said:
Not sure what you paid for them but the rrp of PMC PB1i's was £6650, though can see they went as high as £7300. Given they were over 4 times the price of the r500 and over 3 times the price of the r700 you would expect them to perform higher.

In there price category the r series ate very good value for money, though not really fair to compare them to significantly more expensive speakers.

A much more suitable and fairer comparison would be against the then equivalent of the reference 3.

Fair point. The Kefs are great speakers at (and significantly above) their price point, that’s for sure. I was just highlighting why I upgraded.
 

newlash09

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davidf said:
emcc_3 said:
Having recently bought a set they are more than competitive against what are relatively new products in comparision. For me they comfortably bettered the similar priced B & W 700 series.
In my opinion, they're still a massively competitive product. Bear in mind they were released in 2012 - and back then the build and sound quality pretty redefined what was expected at the price points - and since then have never had a price increase, depsite virtually every other manufacturers speakers having gone up - and some quite considerably. No doubt any replacements will be more expensive (you can't improve something for the same amount of money!), so I doubt anyone would feel short changed buying the current range at the offer price in comparison to whatever price a next gen range will be.

+1
:)
 

lindsayt

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David, I trust andrewjvt's judgement on this 100%.

As he said. he's owned both the Kef r700 and ATC SCM11's.

He said the ATC's are the better sounding speaker. That's good enough for me.

I'm very familiar with how his ATC's sounded in his home with a fine Hegel amplifier.

Kef can UniQ all they want. It still doesn't make the Kef r700 a better sounding - and therefore engineered - speaker than the SCM11's.

Given the retail price and the size of the Kef r700's I can think of no reason why anyone would buy them, unless they got them for something like £20. Or for free out of a skip.
 

newlash09

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lindsayt said:
David, I trust andrewjvt's judgement on this 100%.

As he said. he's owned both the Kef r700 and ATC SCM11's.

He said the ATC's are the better sounding speaker. That's good enough for me.

I'm very familiar with how his ATC's sounded in his home with a fine Hegel amplifier.

 

Kef can UniQ all they want. It still doesn't make the Kef r700 a better sounding - and therefore engineered - speaker than the SCM11's.

Given the retail price and the size of the Kef r700's I can think of no reason why anyone would buy them, unless they got them for something like £20. Or for free out of a skip.

Just get out of your notion that noting sounds better than horns or whatever you have. I was waiting for some brit to say this .so it would all be in house . But .....

I have immense respect for quiet some forum members here..mr.davidf included. And you should be judicious about how you use others opinions . And iam not sure even andrewjvt will agree with his opinion quoted this way. He voiced what he felt to his ears. Its not the ten commandments in audio. Each to his own is the mantra here
 

emcc_3

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Have you heard the r700s? If you haven't you have a very strong opinion based on no knowledge.

Andrewjvts comments stated he preferred the ATCs. I cannot see how you could infer the rest from his statement.
 

lindsayt

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newlash09 said:
lindsayt said:
David, I trust andrewjvt's judgement on this 100%.

As he said. he's owned both the Kef r700 and ATC SCM11's.

He said the ATC's are the better sounding speaker. That's good enough for me.

I'm very familiar with how his ATC's sounded in his home with a fine Hegel amplifier.

Kef can UniQ all they want. It still doesn't make the Kef r700 a better sounding - and therefore engineered - speaker than the SCM11's.

Given the retail price and the size of the Kef r700's I can think of no reason why anyone would buy them, unless they got them for something like £20. Or for free out of a skip.

Just get out of your notion that noting sounds better than horns or whatever you have. I was waiting for some brit to say this .so it would all be in house . But .....

I have immense respect for quiet some forum members here..mr.davidf included. And you should be judicious about how you use others opinions . And iam not sure even andrewjvt will agree with his opinion quoted this way. He voiced what he felt to his ears. Its not the ten commandments in audio. Each to his own is the mantra here
Horns? That's a straw man argument. I haven't even mentioned horns yet in this thread.

Why should I be judicious in using andrewjvt's opinions? When I have a lot of respect for what he says on hi-fi - especially when it's 2 items that he has owned.

As far as I'm concerned, his comments earlier in this thread ARE the 10 Commandments on KEF r700.

I am also using very simple logic here. It's like a series of games of conkers. Where if a speakers B sound better than speakers A and if speakers C sound better than speakers B then speakers C sound better than speakers A too. Making speakers C a 2'er in conkers terms.
 

lindsayt

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davidf said:
lindsayt said:
David, I trust andrewjvt's judgement on this 100%.

As he said. he's owned both the Kef r700 and ATC SCM11's.

He said the ATC's are the better sounding speaker. That's good enough for me.

I'm very familiar with how his ATC's sounded in his home with a fine Hegel amplifier.

Kef can UniQ all they want. It still doesn't make the Kef r700 a better sounding - and therefore engineered - speaker than the SCM11's.

Given the retail price and the size of the Kef r700's I can think of no reason why anyone would buy them, unless they got them for something like £20. Or for free out of a skip.
I'm not saying that the KEFs are better sounding because of the UniQ, they're two quite different speakers - even I have some non UniQ models that I like, and in some cases prefer. You're making a lot of assumptions based on zero experience of the technology and/or model itself though. Fair enough if you're best buds and know each other's preferences well as we all have friends we trust with this and that, but I'm sure we all know that audio preferences is a subjective thing. If you fully trust Andrew's judgement, that's fine, but I don't think that qualifies you to make the statement regarding marketing over engineering - we're not talking Bose here.

A fairer comparison would be SCM11s vs R300s anyway. Oddly enough, I once got a pair of R300s to sound tonally similar to a pair of SCM11s by using the supplied bungs when I was comparing them. Well, they sounded similar in MY opinion, of course, others may feel differently based on their own experiences...

note: I'm in no way playing down Andrew's opinion here (hi Andrew!) as it's just as valid as mine or yours - but at least his opinion is based on his experience.
david, are you seriously suggesting that the much cheaper (retail price) r300's sound better than the more expensive r700's?

If you are, then that would underline how poorly engineered the r700's are.

If you're implying that small speakers work better in his room- for sound quality - then I can assure you that I have personally put that to the test and it's not true. His room has relatively good acoustics.

In hi-fi there are a few people whose opinions I am willing to take as gospel. andrewjvt is one of them. There are others.

The marketing over engineering comment is simple logic. If KEF r700's were given a fair demo against ATC SCM11's and AVI DM10's with a sub, nobody in their right mind would ever buy KEF r700's at anywhere near the full retail price. The fact that some people have bought r700's indicates a triumph of marketing over engineering.
 
newlash09 said:
How the R900 compares to the competition from pmc and qacoustics concept 500. Pmc is lean and fast, QA is mellow and rich , and the R900's are :)
I see the R900 as more of a model for the US market, and for those with very large spaces to fill. I’d say they’re not as well balanced as the rest of the range, but that’s probably to do with not hearing them in a large enough space. Given a 7/8m square room, they’ll probably sing with suitable amplification.
 
jjbomber said:
After a Q series and an R series, my guess is that it will bring an S series! *biggrin*
That'd be nice, but I doubt there'd be enough of a viable price gap for them to squeeze into, and could end up as being filler for filler's sake. When products are too closely price, one suffers - I remember when the R Series came out - you just wouldn't buy Q Series because you could get an equivalently priced (albeit sometimes smaller) speaker from the R Series which just sounded much better. The Q500 went from £700 to £850 for the Q550, so even closer to R Series, but they improved enough to still be relevant.
 

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