KEF Ci100QR Speakers - Master Bedroom

For the master bedroom, we decided to use a smaller, more designer-friendly speaker.  This square room has a tray ceiling, and we felt that the smaller Ci100QR's would be adequate for coverage in the room, while providing a clean aesthetic to match the decor.  KEF Designed these speakers to smoothly integrate and architecturally match existing downlighting sharing the same size bezel.

The Ci100QR's also differ from the 130's & 160's in that they come equipped with a 15cm deep detachable rear-can, which provides a sealed enclosure of 0.7 liters volume for optimum low frequency reproduction.  Spring-loaded fixing clips allow installation in ceilings and walls varying in thickness.    These speakers proved to be the easiest in-ceiling speakers we have ever installed.  You hold the three clips up as you insert the enclosure into the ceiling, and as it pushes flush, the clips lock it snugly into place.  It's literally a snap to install!

As for the speaker itself, the Ci100QR consists of a 4" polypropylene woofer with a .75" tweeter mounted at the acoustic center of the driver.  KEF recommends amplifier power between 10 - 20 watts.  With the can enclosure, the frequency range is 110 - 27kHz; without it is rated at 80 - 27kHz.  These are 4-ohm speakers.

Listening Tests

There is certainly a trade-off when going for aesthetics over size in a speaker such as the Ci100QR.  But for our master bedroom, this proved to be the perfect speaker.  The two pairs allowed us to have a speaker near each corner of the tray ceiling, and made for plenty of coverage in the room.  Most listening occurs at night when winding down, so our playlist usually consists of mellower music such as The Civil Wars.  Their new release, Barton Hollow is almost all vocal and acoustic guitar, with piano and light percussion on some songs.  Joy Williams' vocal on songs such as "20 Years" and "Poison & Wine" filled the room and as long as we didn't crank it up too loud, sounded nice.  All of the speakers in KEF's Ci line displayed excellent high end that really shone when listening to singer-songwriter material.