KEF and Linn, two of Britain’s most acclaimed and respected high-fidelity brands, have announced that they have completed a “major sonic improvement project”. “By working closely together, and utilising each other’s technologies, the two companies have jointly produced a loudspeaker sound quality for the true hi-fi purist” says the joint press release we received this morning.

Unlike many other passive speakers, KEF’s Uni-Q technology, where the HF unit is placed at the very acoustic centre of the MF unit, allows for phase linearity through the MF/HF region. However, until now, it hasn’t been possible to the full bandwidth phase linear point source, dealing with the bass as well as the MF/HF region.

Using Linn’s Exakt technology, KEF’s R&D engineers have developed an Exakt crossover for their Reference 5 model. This crossover uses the powerful processing engine in the Linn Exaktbox to eliminate the phase non-linearity of the passive crossover and the aggregate output of the drive units, ensuring all frequencies are time-aligned.

A pair of KEF’s Reference 5s was recently modified for active operation by bypassing the internal passive crossover, allowing the individual LF, MF and HF sections to be driven directly by separate power amplifiers fed with signals from the digital crossover in the Linn Exaktbox.  This was demonstrated at the recent Music High End Show in Munich and we heard it and were very impressed. Johan Coorg always plays the best tunes in the KEF room and this year was no exception with him playing Chic when we walked in and Deadmaus when we left.