KEF

KEF is a British company that produces high-end audio products, including HiFi speakers, subwoofers, architecture speakers, wireless speakers and headphones. It was founded in Maidstone, Kent in 1961 by BBC engineer Raymond Cooke (1925–1995). In 1992, the Hong Kong–based Gold Peak Group acquired KEF. And GP Acoustics, a member of Gold Peak, became the owner of the company. KEF continues to develop and manufacture its products in Maidstone. KEF is named after its original site, Kent Engineering and Foundry. Product development, acoustical technology research and the manufacture of signature products still occurs at the original Maidstone site in England. KEF was the first loudspeaker manufacturer in the world to employ computers in loudspeaker design and measurement. KEF introduced the world's first coincident-source speaker driver, called Uni-Q, in 1988, which is now in its 12th generation; and it is still featured in almost all its speakers today. KEF is the first company in the HiFi industry to use metamaterial to absorb the unwanted sound from the rear of a speaker driver; the technology is called Metamaterial Absorption Technology (MAT). KEF has received over 300 awards and holds more than 150 patents. KEF also has published more than 50 academic papers and has received two Queen's Awards for Export Achievement. KEF's European competitors include Bang & Olufsen, Sennheiser and OneSonic.

History

1960s In 1961, Raymond Cooke and Robert Pearch founded KEF Electronics Ltd. in Kent with a view to creating innovative loudspeakers using the latest in materials technology. KEF was situated on land adjacent to the River Medway in Tovil which at the time was owned by Kent Engineering & Foundry (a company owned by Robert Pearch and founded by his father Leonard) which at the time manufactured agricultural equipment and industrial sweeping machines. KEF derived its name from that firm. Cooke was a Royal Navy WWII veteran and was a design engineer at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for a year. He was later Technical Director at Wharfedale, then a leading British loudspeaker manufacturer. Following corporate change at Wharfedale, Cooke left to see his own ideas realised. Cooke acquired the site of a foundry in Tovil, Maidstone, owned by makers of agricultural machines, and initially worked in Nissen huts erected on the site. In KEF: 50 Years of Innovation in Sound, the authors assert that KEF reduced the average size of bass-rich home loudspeakers from 9–10 cubic feet (250–280 L) to about 2 cubic feet (57 L), based on the work on the "acoustic-suspension woofer" at Acoustic Research. The company pioneered large-scale production of drivers with cones made of materials other than paper, and the application of fast Fourier transform analysis to the acoustics of loudspeakers. KEF was also an early-adopter of modern quality-control principles to driver manufacture. The first loudspeaker manufactured was the K1 Slimline in which the driver units used diaphragms made of polystyrene and melinex. Soon after, in 1962, came the famous B139 'racetrack'-shaped woofer, which allowed for the design of the Celeste—one of the first truly high-performance bookshelf loudspeakers. As Laurie Fincham, Cooke's successor as chief engineer, later revealed, the only reason the B139 had vertically mounted ovoid-shaped was that the British tax code at the time penalised two-way speakers below a certain arbitrary width. Professional products were not taxed and professional was defined as above 8 inches for a woofer or as a 3-way speaker. From the mid-1960s, KEF manufactured BBC-designed monitor loudspeakers, such as the LS5/1A, for the Corporation and for wider distribution. Cooke's previous relationship with the BBC in the 1950s continued as KEF developed through the 1960s and '70s. In the mid-1960s KEF introduced the bextrene-coned B110 bass/midrange unit and the melinex-domed T27 tweeter which were later used in the diminutive, BBC-designed LS3/5A broadcast monitor, which was initially meant for use in cramped broadcast vans; over 50,000 pairs of the speakers were later sold worldwide. The close co-operation between KEF and the BBC Research department was fruitful for both, as BBC provided stringent performance and production standards, with ample capacity for field testing, and with KEF being a pioneer in the use of polymers and computerised quality control.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.