These superb standmounters set the standard at this price
View online review whf.cm/R3
Part of KEF's premium R series, the R3 offer a large chunk of the mighty, top-of-the-range Reference 1’s engineering content and sonic performance at a fraction of those speakers' £5000 cost.
KEF’s distinctive Uni-Q driver array has the tweeter positioned right in the throat of the midrange driver; such a configuration is claimed to improve dispersion and integration. It uses a 25mm aluminium-dome tweeter with a 12.5cm aluminium midrange unit and features a host of detail refinements to the motor assembly, suspension and drive-unit structure to reduce distortion and improve performance over earlier versions.
Clean appearance
The R3 are a three-way design, with a dedicated bass driver. Such a configuration means that each driver – tweeter, midrange and bass – can be optimised to work in its specific frequency band and tuned with less compromise than a two-way alternative. The trade-off tends to be the greater cost and complexity of trying to combine three drive units to work as a cohesive whole.
The R3’s bass driver uses a 16.5cm hybrid aluminium/paper cone that aims to combine rigidity with good damping characteristics. It’s a vented design to help with dynamics at high volume levels. The bass is tuned by a rear-firing port that uses the same sort of flexible construction as KEF’s highly successful LS50, which the company claims reduces resonances and distortions. Sensitivity is rated at an average 87dB and nominal impedance is claimed to be 8 ohms, though a minimum value of 3.2 ohms suggest that an amplifier with a bit of grunt would be good.
We like the speaker’s clean appearance. But even here the decisions have been made on performance grounds. The shaped trim around the Uni-Q driver doesn’t just make the front panel look balanced by echoing t
