In the 1980s, KEF made inroads into the lucrative US audio market through the founding of KEF Electronics of America, and maintained its reputation for excellence through a series of technical enhancements to the highly-respected Reference Series. These included: Coupled-Cavity bass loading that considerably boosted bass performance; force-cancelling and driver decoupling to eliminate cabinet colouration from the mechanical vibrations of the drive unit chassis, conjugate load matching to ease the electrical load presented to the amplifier, the KEF Universal Bass Equaliser (KUBE) that allowed extended bass from compact enclosures. Incorporating all these features was the Reference 104/2 released in 1984 of which substantial numbers were sold around the world.

In 1985 a range of car audio products was released including a subwoofer using the coupled cavity system developed in the 104/2, and 1987 saw the introduction of the Custom Series of in-wall products, harking back to the K1 and K2 baffles of the 1960s and heralding a new era of application-focussed ingenuity in this expanding market.

KEF’s technical strength was further enhanced when Dr. Richard Small joined as Head of Research in 1986.  Famous for his groundbreaking technical papers on loudspeaker system modelling, he was soon involved in key studies such as the Eureka project – a collaboration with Bang and Olufsen and the Technical University of Denmark – investigating the influence of the listening room on perceived loudspeaker performance.

The revolutionary Uni-Q system, was introduced in 1988. Incorporating a new neodymium/iron/boron magnetic material, developed by NASA, with ten times the power of standard speaker magnets, this major innovation allowed KEF’s engineers to make a tweeter small enough to be mounted at the acoustic heart of the bass unit coil, providing for the first time a single point source of sound. In layman’s terms, this considerably enlarged the optimum listening area in any room - searching for that elusive acoustic sweet spot’ was now a thing of the past.