Arindal

In big record companies, things usually change slowly. Why should they not produce MQA if they still have a valid license agreement? If you check a downloadstore like https://www.prostudiomasters.com/featured/format/mqa offering a dedicated MQA section you would see hundreds of titles being released every week as MQA. Still. Was really hoping that some stores would be rethinking what they are offering finally adding any kind of Dolby Atmos or 5.1 option. But maybe the whole idea of downloading files is so much in decline they would not be willing to invest.

This is the frequency band in which directional effects of the woofers´ size and positioning (there are 4 of them) would come into play, but this is not contradicting the fact that overall it is pretty close to omnidirectional below 400Hz. The graph is showing another interesting thing which corresponds with the impression of ´dull´, midrange-heavy reflections and reverb: There is little to no directional effect in the midrange between 600 (this is where the woofers are sufficiently attenuated so midrange is dominating) and 1,500Hz with off-axis level dropping significantly between 1,500 and 4,000Hz (due to directional effects of the midrange plus waveguides). Note that we are talking about frequency response under 60 and 75deg which is corresponding pretty accurately with the tonal balance of the side wall reflections and having a significant influence on how the indirect sound field is perceived. That is a very good explanation for the fact that these speakers sound very differently in different rooms, particularly depending on reflexiveness of and distance to the sidewalls, absorption in the midrange region as well as listening distance. That is to be expected as the wavelength is equalling 75cm in this case making it pretty likely that dips around 450Hz are the result of a cancellation from the woofer duo of the other side of the loudspeaker and the added distance as well as cancellation between midrange and woofers. Both phenomena are a reason why I mentioned loudspeaker designers would usually avoid such constellation (or choose a much lower x-over frequency). On the other hand such cancellation effects usually affect only a very narrow range both frequency- and angle-wise so they do not really help for significant directivity index and would not be visible in any in-room measurement.

As wavelengths are pretty long below 400Hz and the speaker is rather slim, you can expect everything in the bass and lower midrange to be more or less omnidirectional so it does not really matter much where the exact source is located. Would rather say, below 400Hz we have something close to an omnidirectional source if you look at the 4pi energy. Moving up in frequency, still at 1K directivity has narrowed only a bit which is seemingly a sideeffect of high x-over frequency, moderate filter slopes, side-mounted woofers and comparably tiny midrange in a non-existent baffle (that's the whole concept of Blade). I was rather surprised seeing the side woofers going up to 600Hz before reaching the -10dB point which is a thing most loudspeaker designers would avoid under any condition. So we can expect significant amount of indirect sound in the room below 1K while above 1K the off-axis energy is dropping rapidly the higher you go. This does not mean it will be sounding like that in every room, but it is safe to say the performance is very much depending on room and positioning, much more than with other speakers.

Could be plausible for various reasons but does not change the fact that the angles behind the loudspeaker can make a significant difference. According to Erin´s isobaric plots you have the maximum of roll-off from 400 Hz (close to perfect 4pi radiator with almost no attenuation anywhere and directivity index close to 0 at this point) all the way to 7K where the plot is showing attenuation of approx,. -15dB at 90deg and almost nothing beyond that. That's actually the frequency range in which our ear is the most sensitive in general and the most capable of distinguishing between direct and indirect sound. If such a roll-off is audible at the listening possible solely in the indirect sound, you can be sure it leads to a coloration of the reverb and changing other aspects of reproduction as well. The problem is not the tweeter which shows indeed a pretty controlled directivity thanks to the inner waveguide construction. The problem is the transition from on almost omnidirectional pattern in the midrange to high directivity index pattern within like 3 octaves. This is clearly audible in the indirect sound field and depending on the room´s properties could easily lead to dull impression. That's a pretty confusing recommendation as positioning a speaker very close to the front wall is mainly a matter of bass boost and to which extent room resonances are excited. That is very much depending on the room and totally independent from the directivity pattern as the latter is anyways omnidirectional in this particularly frequency band.

Sounds like a contradiction to me as ´sounding dull´ is usually a result of something either added (boosted level or added indirect energy in the bass/midrange region) or selectively taken away (brilliance or treble energy). Music (reproduction) under technically neutral condition sounds surprisingly ´thin´ and presence/brillance-rich, subjectively lacking bass/midrange, to most of ears, may it be under free-field conditions or in neutrally overdamped rooms. Anyone who has ever listened to hi-fi loudspeakers outside of rooms or an open-air concert involving human voices might confirm this. I am not doubting some people are used to treble- or brilliance-rich hi-fi sound resulting from their tweeter´s overly broad dispersion pattern compared to their midranges. But I fail to see the difference to a boost in bass and lower midrange leading to a dull and overly ´fat´ perception for people who are used to linear reproduction. Cannot confirm this. The increase in directivity index towards higher frequencies is for sure not as significant and continuous as with the R5, but it is definitely there. You hardly see it in JA´s polar plot as this one is covering only a 90deg window. Look at what is happening at 100deg and more, particularly between 1K and 5K. I am not saying the treble roll-off is equally significant (and visible in an in-room frequency response graph) in every room as it seems to mostly originate from the speaker´s behavior far off-axis - that was exactly my initial point. The more uneven the tonal balance of the RT60 in a given room and the early/discrete reflections are audible at the listening position, the higher the risk it will actually sound dull, boring, lacking transparency, details, dynamic and alike.

Take a look at his measurements, particularly the behavior far off-axis (100+ deg) and the calculated in-room frequency response (which is seemingly calculated with unrealistically small listening distance and should not be taken as a precise prediction how subjective tonality will be, but it is, as mentioned, giving a first hint if there are incompatibilities with room response and directivity). And yes the comments on the measurements are surprisingly not addressing this important aspect. Subjective sound quality assessment I would put aside as it is possible that they were made under conditions in which the aforementioned incompatibilities are not relevant. I have already explained why and under which conditions this is the case. To be clear here: I do not mean to doubt the measurements which look plausible and just judging from the on-axis graph there is little to critize. But if you have listened to the speakers in different rooms under different conditions, you would know that the on-axis FR does not tell the whole story. I am absolutely not surprised by other people reporting the speakers in their environment sounding dull, distant, overly soft in the treble region, lacking presence and dynamics or anything alike. I tried to explain where such contradictive reports most probably result from. You can accept this explanation or not.

Maybe I have not made myself clear and will try to explain. The attempt to predict solely based on measurements whether a speaker will sound neutral, dull, bright, present, bass-heavy or alike, requiring equalization or not, how loud it will go, how will be its staging, localization and other factors, is impossible according to my experience. I might want to add that there is a certain correlation when it comes to the question how low the bass will reach to the lower cutoff frequency but this will also not allow a prediction what will happen with the bass in the room and how it will be perceived. On the other hand measurements like the directivity plot allow a pretty good estimation whether a combination of a loudspeaker, room and desired loudspeaker placement will lead to acoustical mismatches which cannot be equalized later or not. This is particularly the case with expected dominating indirect sound at a given listener´s position or tonally imbalanced indirect sound (which we are discussing here as the KEF Blade is a textbook example of a speaker showing continously increasing directivity index towards higher frequencies). Please note that the latter is not a precise prediction how it will sound. It is just a strong hint that certain mismatches will most probably occur, which is particularly useful for making an informed choice as the resulting acoustical problems in most of cases cannot be cured by equalization, reasonable amount of room treatment and speaker placement within a reasonable range (true nearfield placement is an exception here as well as building a matching room from the scratch). I know that this concept of continuously increasing directivity index is pretty popular and in some applications (like nearfield listening, midrange-overdamped rooms, open spaces with no reflective side or back walls in proximity or alike), it is proven to work without major flaws. That said, we should not forget that in many cases it will not work but lead to the dull tonality described by another poster. Not necessarily. Depends on the speaker, the room and how things will be placed. Unfortunately such models are only reliable in rectangularly-shaped rooms with all 6 sides solid concrete/stone/brickwall behavior, no overly huge windows. That is not the norm anymore, as light and resonant walls are pretty popular nowadays, or always have been like in the US or Canada. That would not be necessary as overdamping in bass and (lower) midrange is on purpose, like in a studio room, and the aforementioned increasing directivity index of the speaker will acoustically cure this "problem". In untreated living rooms this behavior is basically non-existent. In most cases you find a rather high amount of bass and lower midrange energy while having more or less well-damped treble which contributes to the described problem of a ´dull-sounding´ speaker due to its increasing DI towards higher frequencies. Please note that these two problems add up so I call it an incurable incompatibility. This is absolutely not matching my experience. If you have an untreated room with usual acoustical problems, a speaker with low or very uneven directivity index over frequency will most likely highlight all the problems making listening to music on a certain level or reproduction quality impossible. The longer the distance between listener and speakers, the more. Nearfield listening might help in these cases. If you, on the other hand, take a speaker which was designed as a higher DI and/or constant DI model for such rooms, you can avoid most of the problems originating from reflections as the directivity pattern is to a certain extent simply ´fading out the room´ or making a majority of the reflective walls ´acoustically invisible´ to the sound originating from the speaker, if that makes sense. Which dispersion pattern is best and how much room treatment job might be left to do in order to achieve perfection, is a matter of listening distance and how the room actually behaves in terms of early reflections. Most of loudspeakers getting this constant directivity requirement right are limiting it to the midrange and treble. Some specialized models exist, though, with offer a directional bass as well, mostly dipoles and cardioids. There are also speakers which, in contrary, tend to emphasize bass resonances and most likely cause booming but you would not find any hint in the measurements. I might want to add that sound reinforcement systems particularly in acoustically problematic environments work like this for a long time already. And there is also a long history of dedicated hi-fi speakers relying on a narrow directivity pattern such as electrostatic panel speaker, line arrays, broadband-horns, dipoles and many others. In the past these have been very popular but far from flawless but since we have DSP technology in active speakers it is astonishing what can be achieved. I do not think this would be the right place to start such a discussion as the phenomena related to the particular series of KEF speakers are not those which you are capable of countering with digital equalization. You cannot equalize a frequency-dependant mismatch between direct and indirect sound and that is in my understanding the main reason why reports on the Blade´s sound characteristics are widely incompatible with each other.

That is absolutely matching my experience. Measurements are very useful to understand how a speaker works and give a good idea if it would be acoustically compatible with a given environment. The moment anyone would be trying to extrapolate how it will actually sound solely based on measurements, this will inevitably fail. In the real world the result is in most cases far from the prediction. That is accurate as well if it is about predicting sound characteristics. If you just want to know if a speaker is a match for the given room or which major flaws are to expected in case of a clear incompatibility, the directivity plot is very useful and pretty reliable. That is particularly true to the most common incompatibilities like overly broad dispersion (low directive index) either full range or in some frequency bands (typically lowest octave of a tweeter or a midrange) or continuously increasing directivity index i.e. dispersion pattern narrowing down towards higher frequencies. The latter might work perfectly in some rooms, like those showing signs of overdamping in the bass and lowers mids or overly huge ´open spaces´ with almost no reflective side walls. In smaller rooms like a typical living room with reflective walls on the sides and decreasing RT60 towards higher frequency, you will almost certainly get a lower-midrage-heavy, dull and softened tonality resulting from the indirect sound. There is not much that can be done against it, particularly speaker positioning or DSP equalization cannot provide any solution.

I recommend to check the polar directivity plot and in-room made be Erin's Audio corner: https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loudspeakers/kef_blade2_meta/ In this case it is important to focus on the angles way off-axis as the sweet-spot is pretty broad, i.e. the 100-180deg range which has a great impact on the calculated reflections and total energy of indirect sound in the room. Please see post above: That is exactly the phenomenon I tried to explain knowing that it will very much depend on the room if you get such a result or not.

Setup and placement should not be that difficult if there are none of the aforementioned substantial problems with woofers and resonances. I suspect difficulties in combining them with different rooms and getting pretty opposite tonal results can be merely prescribed to the directivity pattern over frequency. It ranges from 0 or even (theoretically) negative directivity index while woofers are still active to something close to omnidirectional in the (lower) midrange due to curved and narrow baffle to steadily decreasing off-axis energy the moment tweeter with waveguide comes into the equation. Means if any of the aforementioned problems with tonality occur you cannot do much with placement

The biggest variable for listening to a pair of KEF Blades (all generations) is the room. They have a specific way of interacting with the tonality of the room so people perceiving them as neutral and those describing them as dull can be both right at the same time. It very much depends on the given reverberation characteristics of the room with open spaces, ´thin-sounding´ or broad-band damped rooms being advantageous. My guess would be this has to do with the directivity pattern which is not the same over the relevant frequency band.

The halls in Vienna are much bigger so they might construct more of listening cabins of various sizes. Regarding closed demo rooms I am not sure about their number as the local Austrian show in 2023 seemingly was using only a fraction of what was available. If you are not aware of the background: High End Society was hosting a local show called ´Finest Audio show Vienna´ last year in exactly that venue they are planning to move HIGH END 2026 to. There are several videos on Youtube giving a good impression of an audio show in that particular venue:

I doubt that such is actually the psychological root why some reviewers got extreme (and as blind as lonely) in their support for MQA. I heard a long presentation by a very respected reviewer back then when this thing started, and it told me something about their motives. It was mainly about having something in their hands that other music lovers have no access to, similar to possessing a master tape which sets you apart from all audiophiles in the world. The other aspect was the sheer number of Kilohertz on the display appearing once the stream got unfolded. The higher the sampling rate displayed the better. Maybe MQA should have pushed DACs into the market which show ´1536kHz´ the moment a suitable stream comes in which might have prevented the economical disaster...

I have understood their original announcement when founding MQAlabs in a way they want the ´new technologies´ to exist parallelly to MQA. Particularly AIRIA which is some kind of competitor to Apt-X in the bluetooth world and the latter seems to bring its owner some solid and constant cash. Does not mean it will be easy and the market is crying for another Bluetooth codec but for investors it might looks attractive. Mentioning Sony is particularly interesting as they see themselves as a competitor to Apt-X and AIRIA trying to market their LDAC codec as an alternative.

ML system was confirmed by the OP. My car is a 2023 model using an entertainment system of the same provenance and it definitely has this digital USB-in option you are mentioning. Not sure about ML and Lexus but chances are pretty high there is something like that.