[jkbrwn]

I stimulated the economy by buying some KEF LS50 Meta's. I demoed a whole bunch of stuff from the $1000 to around the $2500 mark and these are just... holy moly. I tried not to listen to the hype. I tried to have my own thoughts and opinions but man oh MAN! are they great. Believe the hype. I should note, I have no experience with the original LS50. I bought these blind. Being English, I wanted to buy British made speakers but the value for money factor is just not there. Harbeth, ProAc, Spendor etc are just too expensive IMO. Neat Acoustics make some nice stuff that's reasonably priced, but the value still isn't as good as something made in Asia. KEF have owned their own factory in China since 1993, though, so I had no concerns about quality at all.

I came very close to buying some ex demo made in Canada Totem Sky Tower's which I thought were fantastic, but I am glad I didn't, as they were much more expensive than the KEF's and I don't think I prefer them.

I honestly think you're getting a lot of value for money with these KEF's. They're insanely well made, hold their resale value if you want to sell them and they're doing some great things for albums I have listened to a hundred times (through pretty decent speakers or good headphones).

I wanted speakers that would disappear, that is, if I close my eyes I can't tell where the speakers are located and they're nailing it. With some older recordings from The Beatles, it's kind of obvious just because of how they were recorded (stereo was in it's infancy etc), but with more modern recordings there's just a wall of sound and the sound stage is incredibly wide with spectacular detail retrieval.

Carole King's Tapestry sounds incredible. I feel like I'm in the recording studio. I've only had a couple of hours with them so far, so I'm not going to gush too much. But yeah. So far I have zero regrets.

I got the blue ones. They look superb IMO.