The VLR CT are lovely speakers, and as others have noted, image very well. I have not compared them to the KEF LS50 passives, but I have compared them to the KEF LS50 active wireless speakers. For comparison, I was using a Bluetooth wireless stream from Simple Radio (WWNO HD3) in both speakers and was powering the Vandersteens with a NuPrime IDA-8 hybrid amp with the Bluetooth dongle. I felt the differences were not great, and I would not say the Vandersteen speakers were vastly better (although the differences were there, and I thought the Vandersteens definitely presented a clearer and more discrete soundstage image.) I have read that there was a significant difference in sound quality between the LS50W and the passive LS50s, the actives being much better.