P1Fanatic

Looking to buy my first 5.1 setup and am liking the Yamaha RXV765 receiver. My lounge isnt the biggest so fancy something a bit more subtle. Ive always enjoyed the sound of Kef speakers on my hifi so quite like the idea of their compact egg satellites and kube sub. The 1005.2's seem good money especially as got £150 voucher for Amazon. Not sure I can justify the extra £300 for the 2005.3's.

Has anyone on here using Kefs and how do you find them? Im off to Richer Sounds etc tomorrow or weds hopefully get a few demos but even then never the same as using in your home so doing some homework.

Cheers
Simon

Jamie

Not had them i use to have sony but the kef 5.1 you are talking about looks good for the price *cough £230 if you look*

P1Fanatic

And where would I be looking lol? Cheapest I've seen at least in black is £399?

Cheers
Simon

mart360

I used to be a big fan of tannoy's, untill her indoors wanted something smaller.

I settled for Kef IQ3's in the end,

great speakers, but need good placement to unleash all that bass,


i would guess that the eggs would be the same


Mart

g7prs

iTrader: (5)

Does the £399 price include the kube ?

EDIT: also found the package at the price above with the kube.

P1Fanatic

Yeah saw it on Amazon from Hughes Direct. £299 if u don't mind it in matt silver. All my stuff is gloss black so no go.

Simon

maps

iTrader: (3)

i went for the 2005.3's afew months ago, with a pioneer VSX919ah amp, and im very pleased with both, well worth the money imo

cheers mark

Dingdongler

Really depends on what you want, and how far you want to go. These really are 'budget' speakers, even the 2005.3. The sub though improved from the 2005.2 set I owned, is really not great. Distorts badly, people often confuse this distortion for bass, but that's because they've never heard clean, undistorted bass.

The eggs are particularly bad with music, I would go as far as to say useless (what do you expect at that size)

If you want a 'budget' lifestyle product then they are as good as any at the price. If av/home cinema is something you want to develop/pursue, then save up and get something better. This is an expensive hobby though, and something special (amp + speakers) will cost closer to £1k+. If that's not the sort of money you would ever justify spending on av (and understandably so) then the Kef eggs are as good as any others.

The others worth comparing at somewhere near the same price (not sure on current deals)

1) Quad lite package

2) Monitor Audio radius range (the smaller ones in the range ie R90)

MattW

I've got 3005 with a Denon 2808 Amp, really pleased with them.

P1Fanatic

Im not really looking to go that far as never dabbled before. I appreciate they will never be as good as a full blown speakers but as I dont have any surround sound and never have + my lounge is not massive then I think I should be ok. Ill keep my current Kef floorstanders connected to Sony amp for music so no issue there unless I run out of space on my av stand.

You say budget lol but thats £750 without speaker cable, optical interconnects etc.

Someone on AV forums pointed me in the direction of the Monitor Audio R90's but the size put me off. Need to recheck the dimensions. Thing is cant get them on Amazon so they will end up costing me £250 more than the Kefs

I think I know the answer to this but can the other Kef owners confirm the speakers come with no cabling?

Cheers
Simon

Dingdongler

Fair enough. But why are you paying £750 for the 2005.2? Can't you find them cheaper?

I can confirm they come with no cables. Don't go overboard with the cables, at that level you shouldn't be payiing more than £2/metre max

salsa-king

Simon,

I've just picked up on sunday and spent all yesterday setting up my first AV separate home cinema set up.... had a Denon all in one before.

I've gone for the this set up.. from SuperFi (did price match and I got £70 of vouchers for HMV too)
Onkyo 607 (£350) ONKYO TXSR607 HOME CINEMA RECEIVER - available from Superfi UK Visit http://www.superfi.co.uk/index.cfm/page/moreinfo.cfm/product_id/5174 for details has loads of HDMi connections on it + it's 7.2 upgradeable, which made me go for it... also recommened to me by Logiclee on scoobynet as well.
and the Q Acoustic 1010i 5.1 speakers.. (£350) Q ACOUSTICS 1010i 5.1 SPEAKER PACKAGE - available from Superfi UK Visit http://www.superfi.co.uk/index.cfm/page/moreinfo.cfm/product_id/3676 for details
I've got them in black, speakers are chunky but I quite like the look of them in my room now.
I went for the Q-Acoustic front stands Q ACOUSTICS 1000ST SPEAKER STANDS (PAIR) - available from Superfi UK Visit http://www.superfi.co.uk/index.cfm/page/moreinfo.cfm/product_id/2858 for details and for the rears the wall brackets.

ps.. room still looks like it's been ransacked with stuff spead out everywhere.

very impressed with what I'm hearing from it so far.... still have a lot to fiddle with yet,



worth you having a look me thinks at the Onkyo

Dingdongler

Some years back I had the predecessor to the Onkyo 607 ie the 605. For the money it was a very capable amp, I bought it for approx £500, and sold it a year later for approx £300. So if you can get a brand new one for £350, that's very good price.

I did hear the Q acoustics when I bought the Kef's, and they seemed similar, so go for which one you get the best deal on.

P1Fanatic

I spent some time on the AV Forums reading up on receivers and at the sub £500 range the Yamaha 765 seems to be highly recommended just ahead of the Onkyo 607. The Onkyo has more HDMI in ports (and one on the front iirc which sounds handy) but Yamaha has a good rep on sound quality and video processing.

Anyway it may all take a back burner as I now need a new Oven after mine fell apart before Xmas and now Hotpoint have decided they cant fix it

Simon

MattW

I have a busted (HDMI out I think) Onkyo 605 in my spare room, the Denon replaced it as after 3 phone calls and 3 emails Onkyo Service failed to respond. the annoying thing is the after care office is only down the road as well.

G00ner

Sorry to say this, but Denon are no better, the biggest waste of £2.5k when I brought my AVC A1, I'd never buy Denon again.

Jamz3k

What problems did you have with the A1 Gooner?

G00ner

It had an intermittent fault from day one (DTS/DD didn't work, only stereo), went back for repair 3 times, came back with no fault found every time.

Sevenoaks blamed my equipment, even though I had tried different dvd players and a mixture of coax/digital leads.
Sevenoaks then said that I had it set up wrong, all unused inputs should be disabled
they said, even though by default all inputs are enabled and it did work for a day or two on the default settings when new.

So eventually it was sent back to Denon, who were equally useless and after 3 attempts to fix it I eventually went ****1ng mad in the Sevenoaks shop (a 90 minute round trip) on a busy Saturday morning and started calling the staff a cunch of bunts and throwing my 25 stone 6ft 7" frame about and launched the amp across their counter at the manager and walked out with their demo A1 amp under my arm.

The demo amp worked perfectly for the next 7 or 8 years and continues to work perfectly to this day at a mates house.

Both companies added to my blacklist.

Jamz3k

that is pretty pish! The only electrical manufacturer that i can say i've never had a single fault from any product i've ever bought from them is Pioneer, everything is made to a cost and it really shows these days.

Best company i have came across for fixing a problem (a problem that they didn't have to do anything about as well) would have to be Myryad, i bought a secondhand MCD500 CD which developed a fault after a few months of ownership. I rang up their repair department, got speaking to one of the engineers and he told me to post it to them and they'd have a look. A few weeks later I recieved back my CD player which was gutted and everything replaced with brand new parts transport/DAC/Power Supply all for the price of postage. So really i have a secondhand shell and a brand new CD player! Hows that for service?

G00ner

That's quality service and no doubt you'll buy that brand again.

Panasonic were good, I had a 36" crt that went tit's up about a month after the warranty expired. Even though they had written to me asking if I wanted to extend the warranty (I declined the offer) they still examined the tv, wrote it off due to a part that was out of stock and gave me a written apology and my local shop a credit for the original purchase price to buy another of their products, I'm a big Panasonic fan now.

Jamz3k

Exactly, as with products retailers are the same. I think service is not something that retailers have forgotten about but rather consumers. Consumers want everything cheap and for companies to sell cheaply they have to pay poor wages, have undertrained staff and no have the leeway if something goes wrong. In the long run everyone loses and goes to Currys.

Dingdongler

Yup, I'm not sure Onkyo are worse than any others. My 605 worked without problem for a year. I now have a 875 (used as processor only) and thats been working faultlessly for about 2 years. I've got sky hd, projector, and other stuff linked to it (hdmi and other connections) and never had any problems with them, working perfectly.

I know some people who bought the flagship Arcam processor, the 888, rrp £4k, and have had loads of compatability issues with it. Dropped picture, pops and bangs coming through the speakers.

Onkyo, provide very good bang for buck. My 875 is used with some very high end speakers, and does a wonderful job with films (less good with music)

salsa-king

what's a good track to listen to to hear a clean sound with no distortion, to see how good a speaker set up is?


ta
Phil

Dingdongler

Phil, that's a difficult one, as you need to know what to be listening for, and that means you need to have heard a well setup/sorted system.

What I would recommed is that you take your time when you set up the audyssey. Also if you can, try the subwoofer in a number of different spots in the room. This can make a HUGE difference to the performance of the sub, and the sub has huge impact on film performance. Don't just look for maximal 'thud', if the bass is over the top or 'overhanging' it will actually obscure sounds that you are meant to be hearing from the other speakers.

Tbh, for the money you've spent, I think you've got a good as system as you can, so enjoy it!

Ps don't forget to set the speakers to 80hz crossover in the Onkyo speaker set up menu.

salsa-king

is that every speaker, fronts, centre and reas at 80hz?

was reading the instruction manual last night about 'double bass' on the speakers, what does this mean? as I found it on the set up but turning it 'on' altered the front speakers to full front... it was at 40hz.

any ideas?


Is there anything that needs doing as I have a separate active YAMAHA Sub as well as the active sub that came with the Q's?

Dingdongler

You don't want doublle bass. You want to set ALL the speakers to 8o hz crossover. That way you speakers only have to concentrate on producing the higher frequencies whilst the sub does the rest. This means they will distort less, as they have less work to do.

Don't forget to set 'LFE' in the same menu to 120hz

Trying to use two subs in one system is VERY complicated, even when both subs are identical, so I would go with the Q acoustics one. Sell the Yamaha, or put into storage.

Have you got a blu ray player?

P1Fanatic

How you finding those Q Acoustic speakers now Phil? They look quite subtle in black with black grills. And checking the dimensions they arent that big either. Only thing is Id like to buy speakers from Amazon as have a £150 voucher to use. Could get the amp from Amazon I suppose but £25 more expensive than Richer Sounds.

Oh and did you get the stands in black to match the speakers?

Simon

salsa-king

LFE, whats that and where is it?
I take it I still do a MIC/addyssis set up to measure speaker distance and sound?
Then go into speaker set up and change all the settings to 80hz for the 5 speakers?

Two subs, the 607 has TWO sub 'out' connections, guy in the shop said it will be no problem and it still works very very well (ear bleeeeding)



Simon,
loving the deep quality sound, really pleased with them so far, even the wife said she could tell the better quality of sound over the the Denons speakers.
Front stands.. they only came in silver, TBH it adds contrast to the over all black look, so not too much of a problem and at £49 for the matching stand for the peakers I'm quite chuffed.

I'll post you some pix up later, just want to finish the pluggin in of the Wii to the 607 now.

seen the 607 in silver at SevenOaks in Nottm today at £339, if that helps.

salsa-king

simon,
here u go, you can see where i've had to remove the old brackets and i've re filled the 'hole' (blinkin plaster board almost 2" away from the brick work) just need to touch the filler up... sometime soon
rear left.


rear right.


front right speaker + sub..




and with the Ikea LEDs fitted to rear of tv

P1Fanatic

Cheers for the pics Phil. They look pretty good and like I say they arent that big except the centre speaker on width. Ive got no space on my tv stand so that would have to go on top in front of my tv.

Went into Richer Sounds this morning and it was rammed. Had a look at the Kefs and man they are even smaller than I expected. Does make you wonder what level of sound they can produce. No chance to demo them as shop so busy and no proper demo room either so defeats the object imho.

I did pick up the Sony S360 blu rayer player as since I use the PS3 upstairs now (hooked up to widescreen pc monitor) I wanted a standalone player for the lounge. Got it home and a crack in the plastic shell so will have to take back for a replacement Did get 5 years warranty for £10 which is refundable in full if you dont use it. Cant argue with that.

Simon