Wireless Headphones - KEF Speakers
With recent improvements in wireless technologies, as well as the development of wireless multi-room hifi systems such as Sonos and Olive products – wireless headphones have become more affordable and also much better sounding. Let’s be honest, wires can be very frustrating. Wireless headphones allow you to enjoy your music unencumbered and free from tangled nagging cables everywhere – giving you total listening freedom.
Since wireless headphones do not take their power from their source like wired headphones do, they require charging when low on power – due to their internal rechargeable battery. This means they are typically a little larger due to needing to accommodate a battery. Some are designed specifically for music on the go, when commuting or out and about, which are typically smaller and more portable.
KEF is a British speaker manufacturer developing industry-leading products for over 50 years. KEF has received a host of awards and stellar reviews and currently offers a wide range of hi-fi speakers and AV speakers.
The flagship KEF Blade and smaller KEF Blade 2 speakers are renowned for their excellence and superb reproduction, and their advanced pioneering technologies and Uni-Q Driver Array designs have filtered down into lots of KEF’s consumer-end products, such as the KEF LS50 wireless speakers.
In 1961, KEF was founded by Raymond Cooke OBE an ex-BBC Electrical Engineer and headquartered the company near Maidstone, Kent. The company was set on the banks of the River Medway in the premises of a former metal working company, Kent Engineering & Foundry. Overtime by experimenting with new technologies and materials, Cooke aimed to produce superior acoustic quality with recordings reproduced to the exact nature of the original performance.
KEF became the first company to utilise the stability of Bextrene as a cone material, which has since been incorporated in many drivers for many leading audiophile speakers. Another major breakthrough a few years later, KEF became the first to design and test loudspeakers with computer modelling leading the industry in the digital analysis of speakers. Their revolutionary work resulted in KEF being able to match speaker pairs to within half a dB for flawless audio reproduction.
KEF eventually went on to produce their signature technology, the Uni-Q point source driver array in the next decade using NASA-developed magnets that were ten times more powerful than conventional ones. KEF stayed ahead of the game in the nineties with the advent of 5.1 home cinema recording by creating the first dedicated centre speaker in the UK, the Model 100 benefiting from Uni-Q.
Through the years, they have been developing impressive expertise in the use of advanced acoustical, magnetic and mechanical modelling techniques such as Finite Element Analysis resulting in an accuracy that was not previously achievable. Kept under wraps since the 1980s, KEF revealed their ACE technology in 2005 demonstrating the advantages of activated carbon inside a compact speaker enclosure and its effect on internal volume and bass extension.
Now five decades from the company’s inception, KEF's scientific innovation and hands-on experimentation cements their ultimate audiophile reputation and allows them to continue to lead in developing products ahead of the market. We stock the complete KEF range, from the multimedia range (that includes active speakers, headphones and earphones) to the Q series range, LS50 range, both the wired and wireless LS50, R series range, KEF Reference range and KEF Blade, along with custom install speakers and 5.1 speaker packages for a home theatre experience.
At present there are three main technologies utilised in wireless headphones: RF, infrared and Bluetooth. Each technology has its pros and cons – this guide aims to alleviate some of the confusion surrounding wireless headphones, and to make your decision when researching/purchasing a pair a whole lot easier. We only stock RF and Bluetooth headphones, as we believe Bluetooth to be superior to Infrared for short range wireless headphone usage. Infrared headphones use the same technology featured in television remotes, and as such, a clear line of sight is normally required between the headphones and the transmitter. As such, audio degradation will take place should line of sight be broken – resulting in poorer sound.
As the name states, wireless headphones that use RF communicate with their source via radio frequencies. Using a particular radio frequency band (e.g.2,400 - 2,483.5 MHz), wireless RF headphones are able to connect to their source wirelessly. Just like your tuner connecting to your favourite radio station, RF headphones are not effected by most physical obstructions, and as such do not need to be in clear line of sight of the transmitter. We recommend RF wireless headphones for use over longer distances than 10m, and in situations where more than one connection is required such as music sharing solutions.
Bluetooth operates using short length wireless protocols in the frequency band 2400–2480 MHz, and has become the technology of choice in virtually all mobile phones and portable devices. As such, the wireless transmitter is normally internal and already featured with devices, and so a separate transmitter will not need to be attached to achieve wireless connection as with RF wireless headphones. This contributes to the portability of wireless headphones – which is surely the point!
Due to the frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology used by Bluetooth, interference from other RF devices is minimised if not eliminated, allowing you to enjoy your wireless music without interference. Also, just like RF, Bluetooth wireless headphones operate using radio frequency, and as such do not need a clear line of sight to the transmission device – the headphones only need to be in range.
Bluetooth is relatively secure, and requires a pairing process between Bluetooth enabled devices – in this case, the source (e.g. phone, PDA, Bluetooth-enabled MP3 player) and the headphones. Because of this, a Bluetooth connection can only take place on a one to one basis. Unlike RF, this means that Bluetooth cannot be used to share a source with numerous devices. Bluetooth is the best choice for a (relatively) short-range connection, where portability and privacy are both an issue. The security of Bluetooth means you don’t need to worry about interference or people listening in to your audio.