KEF Music Gallery London
Just before Christmas, I visited the wonderful world of KEF, the KEF music gallery, situated in the heart of London's West End. I have seen a few articles online about this location and other galleries located in Asia. Still, this one is the premier store in Europe and is an incredible place to visit. The Gallery’s main front windows hark back to some vintage KEF speakers and some of their first creations, with the Concerto speakers, and then inside you have the latest iteration of the Concerto speakers side by side. There are so many stunning systems on show and available to demo with state-of-the-art technology implemented into the Gallery for complete control of all the systems remotely via an iPad which includes the multiple sound systems and all of the lighting and video via massive projector screens and widescreen TVs which are located on both of the gallery levels.
The ground floor of the KEF Music Gallery is more like a cafe in its layout. There is even a barista ready to serve espresso and all types of coffee so you can relax and listen to music through many of the KEF speakers, which are all available to demo. Featuring the latest developments from this legendary speaker company, Metamaterial Absorption Technology is one of them. It is featured in all of its latest designs in the passive series of speakers and all the latest wireless LS60 and LS50 active version speakers.
It also has a podcast studio that is totally soundproofed with acoustic treatment. When walking into the room, the noise level drops considerably. This was quite impressive, as it is a state-of-the-art room with everything a podcast crew would need to get up and running. All of this equipment is ready to use, and the gallery will host any function required.
The ground floor is an impressive showing of everything that is KEF and they have hosted many events for record companies and artists who are releasing new music to launch their latest albums and, to be honest, is the perfect venue to promote new music.
Downstairs is where all the magic happens for me as this is where they have the main demo rooms for their impressive line of speakers with KEF Reference, Blade speakers, and the stunning Muons in the biggest demo room located at the back. Each of the demo rooms has full Dolby Atmos capability and is configured into a variety of speaker configurations to allow potential customers to hear how these state-of-the-art rooms perform with each of the speakers running. The rooms also have projector screens that descend from the ceilings for both music and movies which are stored in a variety of different formats, Blu-Ray, and 4K are also available for streaming from the impressive Kaleidescape servers which are all located in server room. Speaking with Geoff Loveday (Technical Sales Manager at KEF) he was kind enough to demonstrate all the systems to me and showed me around the Music Gallery, everything about the gallery was planned and developed to be the best acoustically that it can be with one of the rooms representing someone's living room where some acoustic treatments are implemented and then with the main room being the ultimate in what can be achieved acoustically in a dedicated room with complete room treatments to complement the top of the range Muons and Reference speakers, this room has a mind-blowing 14 active subs working in this room located at the front and rear of the demo room.
There is also a function room that can host meetings which has full conferencing capabilities with a massive LED screen at the front, it truly is an incredible place to visit or host events which can all be arranged via the KEF London Team.
I have listened to nearly all the KEF speakers previously and owned a fair few KEF speakers over the years and always loved their sound with the unique UniQ drivers' ability to present such beautiful music whether it be via their LS50s, Kef Blades, Reference, or the hugely impressive Muon speakers that I also heard at one of the HiFi Shows some years back.
I got to listen to quite a few Dolby Atmos mixed music and came away seriously impressed at what has been achieved with some of these older recordings, The Doors Riders on the Storm was brilliant in the smaller demo room but I got to hear David Bowies Ziggy Stardust album mixed in Atmos and it sounded superb but the best for me was Elton Johns album Yellow Brick Road which was truly stunning to hear in Atmos, such a great mix which immersed you fully into the music.
Listening to the KEF Muons was an absolute blast as I managed to listen to a fair few tracks from London Grammar to the superb Hedegaard track Inferno which sounded sublime and the Muons bass was intense and powerful powered by the Soulution amplifiers which had tremendous grip and seemed effortless in their power delivery.
As you can imagine there is some serious tech involved at the Music Gallery with Crestron, Trinnov, and Kaleidescape all being utilized to power these impressive rooms Geoff even took me behind the scenes and into the main server room which has miles of cabling, from Ethernet and Fibre connections to make all the magic happen for both the ground floor level and all the different speaker configs in each of the downstairs main demo rooms.
A massive thank you to Geoff Loveday of KEF and Team London at this amazing location which I thoroughly recommend a visit to, if you want to demo the main rooms downstairs then I suggest making an appointment so that the relevant time can be allocated to allow you the necessary time to take it all in and this can be done quite easily by going on line and booking an appointment with them.
You can also find my other videos of my visit on my social media channels.
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