KEF Q700 Floorstanding Loudspeaker - European Walnut (Single)

I purchased two KEF Q700s based on a wide variety of online reviews and forum discussions. Every reviewer has raved about their clarity and definition, particularly in the mid-range, and their overall flat response. Most agree these speakers are among the best in their class or better. I listen to a lot of symphonic music, so I needed a speaker with the power to bring the orchestra into my room, a flat response to cover the full sonic range from such music and the definition to separate the sonic textures and keep them from merging into a muddled mess. Man, do the Q700s deliver! I’ve been pushing them LOUD. The soundstage is wide and deep. Strings are lush, brass is sharp, but not harsh, woodwinds whistle smoothly, and solo voices stand out strong and clear.I’ve bi-amped the stereo pair with my Denon AVR-1712, rated at 90-watts per channel. My listening room is about 380 square feet. And the speaker distance forms a 7-foot equilateral triangle with the listening position. I’m also using a 12-inch, 400-watt Klipsch sub. Depending on room acoustics and speaker placement, the Q700s are capable of delivering amazingly strong clean bass. I was listening to Smaug’s thundering voice in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug with the subwoofer off and couldn’t believe the deep bass power these speakers can put out.I wish I could have compared the Q900s to the Q700s in my listening space, which is a medium-large sized room. My only nagging thought is whether that powerful orchestral presence I’m looking for would have benefited more from the larger speaker. Research suggests the smaller cone of the Q700 delivers better definition and detail. I also like the fact that the matching center and bookshelf speakers, which I’ll be adding soon, all have the same sized drivers as the Q700.The KEF Q700s may not be garnering any oohs and awes for their visual appeal, depending on taste. Boxy, angular designs are coming back in vogue all over the place, but might not appeal to everyone. I purchased the rosewood finish, which nicely complements my furniture. The veneer is nothing more than a flat wood print. There is no tactile wood grain texture. The cabinets are not ugly, they’re just not as stylish as others. My wife did comment favorably on their appearance though, so there is that! I like the spiked feet. They are very easy to adjust if your floor is slightly unlevel as mine is. I’m actually glad KEF seems to have placed performance over style. In fact, the squared-off edges actually give a 30% increase in volume according to KEF. These speakers could have easily cost $1-$200 extra just for more stylish features that would have made no difference in sound quality.The KEF Q700s are very revealing speakers. Aside from the fuller, more powerful sound, I’m also hearing lots of subtle new things in my music collection like chair creaks, musician breathing, even the rare sloppy edit. These speakers reveal a clear contrast between regular CDs and high-resolution formats like SACD, 96/24 DVD-Audio and 192kHz Blu-Ray. Most CDs sound fine, but poorly mastered CDs and highly compressed mp3s are clearly bad if you’ve developed an ear for hi-rez formats. Listening to a sampler 192kHz Blu-Ray from the label 2L I felt like the speakers and front of my room dissolved straight into the actual recording space of the original music, so great is the three-dimensionality of the sound! I normally listen to a lot of multi-channel hi-rez discs, but I’ve been very impressed over the last 2 weeks at the spacious imaging these speakers reproduce in stereo. Within the next week I should be receiving the matching Q600 center and Q300 bookshelf surrounds to complete my 5.1 home-theater. The Q700 stereo pair creates such an open and wide soundstage that I can’t wait to experience the immersion the whole Q-series is sure to create.

I have always amazed by Kef to produce such clarity in frequencies across such wide range of lows,mid and highs. Good music has to be heard in such good systems. I am very happy with these speakers. With this but I finally have my own original kef q700 series 5:1 system and enjoying my only hobby which is getting mesmerized in good music.

Great speakers! Detail is clear, sound is true.

Love these speakers. We listen to a wide range of music - from classical to rock and these speakers are amazing.

Little bit disappointed with the power of these, I have 2 Canton GLE 496 that deliveries much more balanced power. This KEFs have the bass too strong sometimes and this affects the balance. Construction and visual are OK.

I was expecting these will be bigger in size... Perhaps I would spend a little bit more and buy Q900 instead.Sound becames definitely good when you increase volume knob from silence to, let's say, 9AM. I wish more bass but still very decent. And indeed new records (with equalization, compression, post-processing & other stuff) sounds with A LOT of bass. Example: Keiko Matsui "Moyo". Older records (early Elton John) lacks bass. Mids are very clean, as many people say.One speaker came with a small defect (an air bubble under paper finish on top panel) which cannot be removed by pressing. But since that is almost invisible I don't really complain.Connected to Marantz SA8004 and Marantz PM8004 using some sort of Monster Cable.

These are a very good entry into hifi and home-theater in my opinion.Benefits:- no rear ports, and seem quite ok to put fairly near back wall- wide dispersion, no sense of a narrow "sweetspot", everyone in the sofa hears audio is it is meant to be heard- very clear mids/highs, I think the uni-q driver is an excellent piece of technology- price/performance: i paid ~800 usd for my set, which is not bad.- able to go to higher volumes than most soft-dome tweeters, can play up to 112 db spl, which may be beneficial during action sequences in movies- suitable for both home-theater and music- to my ears great separation and sound-stage, for instance listening to modern music with lots of tracks mixed and overlayed (Lana Del Rey for example), you will be able to pick out and hear each track separately, it will not just sound as a muddled mess.Close your eyes and it sounds like there is a grand piano in your living room at times.Caveats:- Be aware: on other forums there has been much discussion that the knobs on the back are a weak link, seems that when single-amped these speakers can produce poor bass because of poor internal connection between LF and HF posts. Solution is to bi-wire, bi-amp or just external "jumpers" or just some extra speaker cord to connect LF and HF(search for instructions online, google is your friend). There is a bad review of these on What Hifi?, which is perhaps caused by this easily fixable issue.- These are very revealing speakers, if your source is bad, if your speaker wire is long and thin, if you are powering these with a cheap AV-receiver etc. the result will be bad.- These speakers need break-in, let these play for at least 24-48 hours before you start forming your opinion, they do sound "tinny" in the beginning.- power: I am driving these with a cheap but capable stereo-amplifier, the Yamaha A-S500, which can deliver ~85 watts (conservatively, measured to over 100 watts in third party tests), for 20-20000 hz with only 0.019% distortion THD (some cheap amps measure amplification at 1% or even 10% THD, avoid these kind of amps.). I am sure there are better amps for these speakers, but probably not for 300 usd. I would love to hear what these speakers are capable of when paired with an ever better amp, but I would not have liked to have any lesser amp than the A-S500 driving these. I do not get the comment by another reviewer about these speakers not being "powerful", these are very capable of destroying your hearing completely, but to play these loud you need a proper amp.- the issue of "lack of bass": notice that bass and LF requires alot of power, but many amplifiers, including my own start to "roll off" and give less power at lower frequencies. So when a reviewer complains of "lack of bass" it could be that they are using a receiver or amp with not enough power. Listening position and speaker placement is also very important at bass frequencies, of this most reviewers seem blissfully unaware( how many reviewers are sitting in a "null" for instance?).If you want to "rattle the house" you will need a separate subwoofer, good ones such as SVS SB-2000 have 500 watts amplification just for LF, so you see how much power is needed for bass.