7 of the best British hi-fi innovations and technologies

MAT, Continuum, current dumping, flux capacitors (okay, not the last one) - British hi-fi makers have provided some genius advances in sound

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Britain has always been a nation that prides itself on its engineering and science pedigree, which is why it’s no surprise that it has been the birthplace of some of the most interesting innovations in the hi-fi space.

If we were to list every amazing British invention we have experienced reviewing in hi-fi over the past near-50 years of What Hi-Fi?, this article would read more like an encyclopedia of hi-fi know-how. Instead, we are going to focus on the biggies that our team of experts personally list as their hallmarks for British hi-fi innovation.

KEF MAT

KEF’s Metamaterial Absorption Technology (MAT) first appeared in 2020 on the What Hi-Fi? Award-winning KEF LS50 Meta standmount speakers. The MAT technology is designed to help speakers cope with the unwanted sound that comes off the back of an aluminium tweeter dome so they don’t distort the unit’s forward output.

The MAT itself is basically a circular, plastic, maze-like structure that sits behind the tweeter. The specifics of the maze depend on the speaker, but effectively the design means the rearward sound from the tweeter (such as in the LS50 Meta) feeds into this maze element, that is roughly the size of a hockey puck. The element is layered and made up of 30 tubes, each of which has been tuned to absorb a different frequency (from around 600Hz upwards). According to KEF, this MAT technology helps absorb “99 per cent” of the unwanted distorting soundwaves that radiate from the cone’s rear into the cabinet.