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KEF shows Muon speakers at Bristol Sound & Vision 2008 (19/2/2008)

KEF's world-famous Muon Loudspeakers will be on exclusive display and demonstration during this year's special 21st Birthday Sound & Vision Show at Bristol from Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th February.

The sensational speakers will feature in rooms Oslo 1 & 2 at the Show and Dr Andrew Watson, KEF's Head of Project Acoustics, will be available on Friday and Saturday to answer technical queries and give more in-depth analysis of the Muon's incredible capabilities.

Muon is a remarkable two-metre high loudspeaker created by KEF and the innovative industrial designer, Ross Lovegrove. There can be few design-led manufacturing projects in the world where the central aim was to create an 'ultimate'. However, this was precisely the goal at KEF when the company commissioned the visionary Lovegrove, to develop with them the Muon - perhaps the most extraordinary audio speaker ever conceived.

The Muon is fabricated from super-formed aluminium, which uses a similar moulding process to vacuum forming. The concept uses malleable sheets of heated aluminium to achieve otherwise impossible shapes. The eventual form of the loudspeaker was the result of a careful convergence between Ross Lovegrove's design aesthetics and the physics of sound. The process by which they were conceived meant that, in effect, Ross Lovegrove was sculpting the sound by 'skinning' the technology with purposeful form - the final shape was created through an evolutionary process that ensured it could only be the form that it is.

A UK based company that has strong links with the aeronautics and automotive industries milled the first prototype from enormous billets of solid aluminium. Using state-of-the-art computer-aided manufacturing software, the machines precisely cut away the excess material from the six-foot long block of solid metal to reveal the final form - in total the milling took about a week.

Muon's four-way speaker system mounted into the front of the structure with its powerful bass drivers is one of the elements that make it so superior. However, it is also the upper mid-range and treble where some of the Muon's key technology lies in the form of the Uni-Q(r) drive unit array, remarkable in its construction and delivering a seamless sonic picture throughout the listening environment. KEF has also used its Acoustic Compliance Enhancement technology, which enables them to effectively double the available volume through adsorption of air molecules by activated carbon - dubbed 'magic dust' by the audio industry. The two additional bass drivers mounted in the back of the Muon help to produce a remarkably clean and open sound by dealing with room effects. Finally, the 6mm thick, heavily damped aluminium shell provides a totally rigid structure that minimises any sound-distorting vibrations.

KEF Muon Available: Now. Only 100 pairs are being manufactured.
Suggested Retail Price: £70,000.00. Price quoted includes VAT.

www.kef.com