Jana Dagdagan

KEF's Jack Oclee-Brown on Making Affordable Speakers

Jana Dagdagan  |  Feb 9, 2018

Back in the early summer of 2017, Jack Oclee-Brown, KEF's Head of Acoustics, visited John Atkinson to set up the KEF Reference 5 loudspeakers in his listening room. JA's review of the Ref 5 was published in October 2017, and during Jack's visit JA talked to him about the design of that speaker. But they also discussed KEF's affordable "Q" line of speakers and the challenges a manufacturer faces in bringing an inexpensive loudspeaker to market, the subject of this interview.

The context for the discussion was Herb Reichert's review of the KEF Q350 bookshelf speaker ($649.99/pair), which is published in our March 2018 issue. At the time, however, we were under the impression that Herb was going to receive a pair of less-expensive Q150s for review, which is why Jack and John refer to that model rather than the '350. In addition, the occasional jingling sounds are due to John's cat Violet scratching her collar. As Violet is the Atkinson household's alpha animal, it proved impossible to persuade her to leave the room during the shoot!

COMMENTS
iListen's picture
Submitted by iListen on February 10, 2018 - 11:00am

I always imagined something more professional looking when picturing high end listening rooms. lol, it's chaotic like my own home.
Also, Cats do what they want. Leave Violet be. You are in Her house. Her collar didn't bother me during the video.

Anton's picture
Submitted by Anton on February 10, 2018 - 1:13pm

My system is so profoundly high end that I could tell where in the room that cat was.

This should be used as an imaging demo track!

My interconnects are so fine that I could tell you what it looked like but want to preserve Violet's privacy.

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