KEF Speakers
KEF was founded by Raymond Cooke in 1961. He was a BBC trained engineer that went on to work at Wharfedale for five years, before branching out on his own. The company’s name stands for Kent Engineering and Foundry and it has been based in Tovil, Maidstone from the very beginning. 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 implement the use of computers in loudspeaker design and measurement. KEF introduced the world's first coincident source speaker driver called Uni-Q in 1988 which has evolved to 12th generation since then, and it is still featured in almost all its speakers today. KEF is the first company to use metamaterial to absorb the unwanted sound from the rear of speaker driver in HiFi industry, the technology is called Metamaterial Absorption Technology (MAT).
KEF has received over 300 awards and holds more than 150 patents. KEF also published more than 50 academic papers and has received two Queen's Awards for Export Achievemen
KEF’s first speaker was the K1 monitor. It revealed Raymond Cooke’s ability for cutting edge drive unit technology and his BBC-based engineering background. While never a KEF product, the legendary BBC LS3/5A monitors famously used the company’s drive units. KEF also built a number of products along similar lines to the BBC monitor in the form of the Chorale and original Coda.....
