KEF Reference 5 Meta Loudspeaker £17,500 Review

https://www.hifinews.com/content/kef-reference-5-meta-loudspeaker

With more intimate recordings, the ability of the towering Reference 5 Meta to sound small and precise, yet with plenty of weight, is again in evidence. Erin Bode’s cover of ‘In My Life’, from her YourSong Volume 1 album [Bandcamp download], was given a rock-solid stereo image, every breath clearly delineated, as was her version of ‘Happy Together’, where the presentation was like a high-definition version of something wonderfully old-fashioned, with every word crystal-clear. Rachael Price’s voice on ‘Join Me In A Dream’, from the Rachael and Vilray I Love A Love Song set [Nonesuch 075597909746], was equally lucid, bringing great vivacity to a piece with a deceptively simple – but gorgeous – arrangement. And with Thibault Cauvin’s acoustic guitar arrangement of the Bach ‘Toccata and Fugue’, from his Bach album [Sony Classical 19658784622], the Reference Meta’s superb resolution did a magnificent job of placing the solo instrument in an atmospheric, reverberant space, with laser-like focus and every touch of finger on string clear to hear.