A kick-ass FUTURE-FI system (feat. KEF Q150)

this episode is brought to you by Marantz model 40n isa's smart amplifier of the year the most musical sound simplified futify we made a video about the concept of future fight a few months ago and it went all the way from pretty much nothing to a full set of streaming active loudspeakers but I think the sweet spot for futify for most people especially you old school enthusiasts and you know what I'm talking about there don't you I think the sweet spot is a pair of passive speakers and then a streaming amplifier so an amplifier that has the DAC and the streamer and maybe a phono stage built in and today we're going to build such a system for fifteen hundred dollars and the kicker is that it's going to be all white [Music] [Music] and we start with the loudspeakers that you can see behind me they are the kef q150 they're a fairly sort of mid-sized stand Mount speaker they're a two-way and they utilize kef's uniq driver array where we have a 13 centimeter mid bass driver that's made of aluminum or aluminum if you get the European version and a two and a half centimeter aluminum Tweeter and the reason that the the Tweeter sort of sits in the middle of the mid bass driver is for something really I think the concept is called point source so that all the sound seems to emanate from the same point on the loudspeaker and I think the idea behind that is to basically just improve well I think Imaging but also off-axis response of the loudspeaker although that's not the only thing that feeds into it and if you have a good off-axis response then apparently according to people like Paul Barton and Jack Oakley Brown at kef you have a very just altogether better sounding loudspeaker anyway I'm going way off track here because I want to pull it back to talk about pricing normally these loudspeakers sell for 599 US dollars or I think 599 Euros or 499 Euros anyway for most of this year they've been discounted quite heavily and in the US right now you can pick them up for a pretty damn good 299 so I think really what I'm talking about today relies on the fact that you can pick up a pair of the kefq 150 at a discounted price and the q150 also has a rear firing Port because it's a base reflex design and I believe that Port was designed using computational fluid dynamics I think that's what it says on kev's website in order to basically optimize the flow of air so we don't get noise coming out of the ports when we're listening to sort of more bass intensive music but also just to improve the the Dynamics of the speaker now this is a very big sounding speaker and by big I mean big soundstage and Sound Stage depth is also above average I think for this price point but the bass is a little bit loose and maybe that's because the cabinet on the q150 isn't the sort of fully braced super thick super inert cabinet that we get from something like the ls50 meta I'll come back the ls50 meta in a moment but the q150 give us more than enough Dynamic thrust in the low end to properly Mainline the sort of dub techno bass throb that we get from a record from say somebody like deep chord or deadbeat but also a more direct treble I guess the yeah the lower treble or maybe the mid treble is also a little bit spicier a little bit more direct than our previous choice for I guess really affordable stand mounts at 300 bucks and those were the Dali Spector 2. and I'm giving away the Dali on my patreon I think either this month or next month because these q150 are going to take their place because yes I think All Things Considered they are a better speaker at 300 bucks if you had to pay 600 bucks for these and put them up against the Dali no not so much but at 300 bucks abs are bloody lutely [Music] now I said I'll talk about the ls50 meta for also from kefa much more expensive loudspeaker what something like 13 1400 euros and they also use a uniq driver array but I think the driver is slightly different and the cabinet as I've said before on the ls50 is much I guess it's much stronger it's much more inert it's just more you know than the q150 you tap the ls50 and you get a very kind of unsatisfying sound like it doesn't really do much but if you tap the side of the q150 you hear this thonking sound you can definitely hear it's almost inside the cabinet and despite a slight lift in the treble that I mentioned earlier the q150 to me come on as a little bit I guess they're just a little bit more laid back than the ls50 they just sound like a more easy going speaker to me they sound looser and also maybe a little bit livelier and maybe that comes down to that cabinet issue that I've spoken about not an issue the fact that the the ls50s cabinet is much stronger and more robust than the the q150s God I'm really talking too much about the cabinet really aren't I here but the q150 are plainly plainly more opaque sounding than the ls50 meta we don't get the ls50 metal transparency but that also means that the q150 aren't as analytical as their more expensive brother so if we play something like spiritualized debut album laser guided melodies through the q150 it's just more of a sort of easy breezy listen even though we don't kind of get to see as far or as deep into the mix as we do with the ls50 meta and for some listeners for some listeners that actually might be a good thing and the q150 is comparatively lackluster presence region so the upper mids where something like Snappy percussion might live might suit listeners who prefer a mellower less yeah less incisive sounding loudspeaker and that's especially true of people rocking I guess you might call them brighter sounding amplifiers or brighter sounding AV receivers and we'll come to that in a moment but I just want to talk about an album and I've got to pick it up from over here because I've left it down here just slide out of shot come back Okay so I had um I had a thumbnail on a previous video where I spoke about CDs and vinyl that I'd purchased in in recent months and the the CD included on the thumbnail was not actually I didn't speak about it at all in the video so I need to talk about it today it's this it's called No photos no photos on the Dance Floor Berlin techno 1992 to today now this CD was compiled by a chap called haiko Hoffman and it was done basically as a follow-up to an exhibition he ran over at an art gallery in I guess you'd call it the western side of the city here way back in way back yeah pre-kovic 2019. and there was an exhibition that we really centered on Club life or club culture in Berlin since reunification Berlin is pretty much the Techno capital of the world even though techno technically originated in Chicago and Detroit but yeah there's a there's a whole back story as to how it came to Berlin and heiko Hoffman has written about this I guess he's a bit of an expert in this field but what's great and the reason I'm telling you this is what's great about this compilation apart from it being a really good sort of compendium of yeah Berlin techno in the last 30 years is that I shared that photo on Instagram and then heiko I didn't know the guy but he messaged me and said like hey I do follow you and let's meet and have have a chat so we did on Monday we had a great chat about yeah I guess about techno so it was really cool for me to talk about all the artists normally when I mention them I get blank stares from people so I just think it's really cool that my sharing this out on Instagram begets a connection with with the chap who compiled the CD and also curated the exhibition and also there's a book as well oh God I'm really rambling on about this we need to get back to our 1500 future five system because we need to talk about the amplifier [Music] [Music] so the q150 is slightly more laid back disposition plays a neat counterbalance to the more sprightly sounding power node Edge from bluesound which sells for 649 dollars so that brings our running total to 649 plus 299 so we're looking at 948 so far right just keep that in mind 948 is our running total because both the amplifier and the speakers are white and that sets the stage nicely for uh all white future5 system so my canax unit that I store the records in behind me here the Ikea calax unit that is obviously all white and the speaker stands the solid steel ss6 are also all white now those speaker stands sell for 600 bucks so if we add those to our running total we'd get to like 1557 or something like that or four sorry 1547 um dollars in for the total cost of our system now if I was building this system for real forever for me I wouldn't use these stands I'd opt for a much cheaper pair of white stands you can get a pair of Nexus 6i from Atacama in the UK for about a hundred bucks or so because if you save on the stands you can then Step Up The Amplifier from the power node Edge to the the normal Power node which I think sounds a little bit plumper in the low end a little bits of fleshier and it's possibly a little bit smoother and less sprightly in the top and that sells for 949. we mustn't forget about speaker cables I'm using some just off the off the spool off the Reel cables from audioquest 50 bucks worth also white now we've reviewed both blue sounds before so I'm not going to go over their sound or anything like that in this video but I do want to remind you that the blue OS platform that lives inside these amps gives us room Readiness tidal connect Spa Spotify connect and apple AirPlay 2. but there's no Google Chromecast so if you want Chromecast you could cut over to something like the SVS Prime Wireless PRO Sound base that's a new streaming amplifier from them it's the same sort of thing as a blue sound except it doesn't have roon Readiness it doesn't have title connect but it does have Google Chromecast on board it also has DTS play five but we won't talk about that here and the SBS amp sells for 699 dollars but I guess the catch here is for our all-white futify system is the SBS unit only comes in Black but if you're okay with that you could also get the Sonos amp which sells for 6.99 that obviously adopts the Sonos ecosystem but we do get Spotify connect on top and roon can stream to Sonos devices even though they're not technically roon ready but there's no tidal connect and no Chromecast inside the Sonos amp but the blue sound the SVS and the Sonos all have one very very important feature to this futify system or for this futify system and that is HDMI ARC and in fact the blue sound and the SVS specify the higher bandwidth HDMI e-arc I think the Sonos is just normal HDMI ARC but it doesn't really matter because the The crucial thing here is that we can connect very easily our streaming amplifier to our TV I do this quite a lot I use apple music on an Apple TV box and have that stream into my TV and then from my TV into a streaming amp now it is restricted I believe to 48 kilohertz because of my TV but that doesn't really worry me and that's really only what I would call an audio file nerd issue in the context of this system but being able to use my Apple TV remote or my TVs remote to change the volume actually on the amplifier I know it sounds in theory like a really simple dumb thing and I think you really have to experience it to appreciate how convenient it is especially when with some HDMI but not all HDMI ARC implementations the power button also turns the TV off and the amp off when you're done you know listening to music or watching TV but it just integrates the TV the the TV viewing experience into the Hi-Fi system really easily you just have to connect the cable from the back of the streaming amp to the back of your TV using the HDMI ARC socket on the back of your telly and what I love about this particular setup so the kefq 150 with a streaming amplifier in my case today I've Got The Power node Edge but like I say you could use the SVS or the Sonos or the other power node what I love about this is how wide and how big the sound is especially with these kef loud speakers and I emphasize this because it's much much wider and deeper the kef are really good with Sound Stage depth so it's wider and deeper audio file cliche really isn't it but it's wider and deeper than any sound bar that I've ever heard now I admit I've not heard too many sound bars but everyone I've heard I'm like the vocal Clarity is pretty good and the the bass reaches pretty good but it's this wide it's like why why would you do that if you you know listen to music so really for me my message today is the reason I've well one of the reasons I've put together this system is to give you some insight or some ideas how to put together something that's very low maintenance easy set up easy to use and here it has I guess a bit more of a physical presence than a sound bar but if you listen to let's say more more than 50 of your entertainment time is music I would urge you please please go and listen to a pair of stand mounts on stands before you put your money into a sound bar I know the sound bar looks nice and discreet and maybe the other people that you live with prefer it's sort of low profile on a low board yeah you can barely see it and yes speakers stick out and yes some people that you might live with might go oh they're really ugly but they sound so much more enveloping and so much more engaging with music than a bloody Soundbar sorry I'm I I didn't want to get into a rant about Soundbars here but I think generally speaking sound bars for music they're pretty compared to a system like this [Music] thank you so this system fifteen hundred dollars or thereabouts depending upon the configuration that you go for depending mainly upon how much you spend on your speaker stands so you might even be able to get this like for 1200 if you go for the Atacama stands and the power node Edge and get these speakers for 299. it's not going to cost you a lot of money at all so the reason I made this video was to kind of showcase that the fact that it's also an all-white system the fact that I think it beats the sound of any sound bar apart from in the bass I don't think these speakers will go as low as a sound bar and you might want to add a subwoofer but you can get subwoofers that will do a pretty decent job for maybe starting at 500 bucks maybe 400 bucks I mean the kefk c62 would be a good fit here it's all white but it's it's it's pretty damned expensive in the context of this system but the other reason I've made this video is really to sort of tee something up or to set a performance Baseline for fifteen hundred dollars in preparation for our next video but if you like this one please give us a like down below if you like my attitude towards high-end audio and the Aesthetics of it and how it looks and the Simplicity and the future fight angle that I've been I guess pushing for the last few years if you dig that then please consider subscribing to this Channel and as always thank you ever so much for watching futify I made a 13 and a half centimeter no that's not right it is 13. sort of dynamic might suit a certain kind of listener who doesn't want to

Channel: Darko Audio

Views: 209,270

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Id: wyKUmiH-4nU

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 20 2022