Every pair is individualy measured and matched. You get the measurements in the box. See picture for my Ref 3's
The problem KEF has - their Uniq design is what differentiates them form other brands - and also they use it across the lineup from 1k speakers to 20k Blades. LF driver they do is not particularly impressive. Hence it’s a big issue how to differentiate your lineup. End result is all speakers sound very similar, especially if you add a subwoofer to address LF differences. LS50 metas with sub and you’ll get pretty much blade + sub performance.
On blind listening some people struggled to tell which is which between LS50 and blades .
Don’t know how other manufacturers differentiate but KEF has got a problem. If I would consider spending 6-7x more for speakers I want to be swiped off my feet visually and sonically. Otherwise it’s dubious expenditure.
Even though you get some extra computer measurements and speaker/ crossover matching - that is less relevant these days with people using Dirac for instance.
Rs or LS50 metas distortion is already tiny so question is whether we can actually tell the difference. Some might some probably won’t. Maybe all that is what probably results in this small difference between how R and reference sound. Less distortion on already small distortion.
It will be interesting to see if new updated reference will make a bigger difference compared to R line. If they did more improvements apart from getting new Uniq and metamaterial. Ideally I would like to see something new from KEF, not just riding on same design.
See for instance Focals as someone suggested.
Their lineups differ significantly between each other.
You have excellent Arias - with great performance and good price to value. You have high end utopias or kanta or sopras each in its own price range and interesting sculpture like appearance.
Reference for that price simply looks boring.