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Kii Three - my impressions and pro reviews


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11 minutes ago, bobfa said:

I have just about finished dialing them in today and I can say an unequivocal yes.

 

IMG_1610.thumb.jpeg.c3654df9ab21a4c29e2f499ac19397df.jpeg 

I have been slowly going from -6 down.  At -10 things just jumped out.  I am now at -11 on both speakers.  

 

Listening to these two albums to "verify"

 

Blade_Runner_2049_poster.png.4e71ef53abe6aef03aebb3c7b87477d7.pngSoundtrack of Blade Runner 2049 and

 

BT_-_Untitled.jpg.2d748a5f867126d5e2188caf513efb37.jpgBT's  Untitled Album

 

 

 

The inside corners of the speakers are 4.5 in from the rear wall and toe in puts the other side 7in.  They are 11in from the sidewalls.

IMG_1674.thumb.jpeg.ba0188fa293217e106456dadc9cf9b1c.jpeg

 

 

With some more listening there may be some more tweaks.  For now call me Mr. -11.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you have time, I’d be interested in your impression with and without the BXT engaged: Does the BXT just add more bass, or does the combination somehow sound better/different in other ways?

Main listening (small home office):

Main setup: Surge protector +>Isol-8 Mini sub Axis Power Strip/Isolation>QuietPC Low Noise Server>Roon (Audiolense DRC)>Stack Audio Link II>Kii Control>Kii Three (on their own electric circuit) >GIK Room Treatments.

Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup.
Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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15 minutes ago, firedog said:

When you have time, I’d be interested in your impression with and without the BXT engaged: Does the BXT just add more bass, or does the combination somehow sound better/different in other ways?

I have a friend coming over tomorrow we will do some more of that.  I want to be careful not to understate or overstate the case on the BXT.  I will say that you cannot un-hear them!  

 

It is emotionally hard to turn them off😓.  I want some of my other listeners to help me with my comments.

 

 

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I currently use a Ray Samuells battery phono preamp. It replaced my tube Sonic Frontiers. I run it through my old Jeff Rowland preamp to the Kii 3s.

 

Digital is an UltraRendu with an Uptone 1.2 as power. 

 

 

 

I tend to keep good equipment a long time. My Watt/Puppys are now my home theatre speakers.

 

The wallmount TT stand is a vinyl and stylus saver. I have an old Tudor home with pier and beam and there is some give to the floor. No needle skipping with the wallmount.

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8 minutes ago, tomjtx said:

I currently use a Ray Samuells battery phono preamp. It replaced my tube Sonic Frontiers. I run it through my old Jeff Rowland preamp to the Kii 3s.

 

Digital is an UltraRendu with an Uptone 1.2 as power. 

 

 

 

I tend to keep good equipment a long time. My Watt/Puppys are now my home theatre speakers.

 

The wallmount TT stand is a vinyl and stylus saver. I have an old Tudor home with pier and beam and there is some give to the floor. No needle skipping with the wallmount.

Thanks!   I love how simple we can make things.  I kept my Thiel 3.5 speakers and Bryston 3B for a very very long time.  Then I went digital crazy....  Oh well.

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The distance between the speakers, the amount of toe in  and the distance to the listing position together with the overall condition of the listening room will all have a impact how the final result from the Kii Three will be.( as all other speakers I have had in my listening room) 

I have 220 cm between the speakers with a toe in  towards my listening position at 275 cm from the speakers. The speakers are about 60 cm out from the back wall. The amount of toe in has varied, but  if I draw a line from the tweeters it will point aprox. 50 cm beside  each side of my ears. This sounds quite superb in my listening environment also compared to my former setups at twice the price...

 

The built in DSP and the EQ settings are very helpful tools and together with the cardioid dispersion is really what makes the Kii Three speakers sound so good when placed in different listening environment.  So it's just to test and experiment for the last final result according to your own sound preferences.

Auralic Aries G2 - Kii Control -  Kii Three active speakers -  OPPO BDP 95 - Clearaudio Concept turtable / AT-33 PTG II pu /Clearaudio Maestro Wood pu - Rega Fono MC riaa / Musical Surrondings riaa

Head-fi:

Beyerdynamic DT 1770 Pro - Shure SE846w/Silver Dragon - Chord Mojo

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Some useful information from Wim Weijers;

 

- The speakers are tuned so that the intended toe-in is 15 degrees off-axis. That means you should just about see the inside (or outside) wall on each speaker from the listening position.

Setting toe-in so that you see the outside walls will give a bigger sweetspot, so that's usually how they set up the speakers at shows.

What's best depends on room because you change the time and distance between first reflections.

 

- The shelf filters are not tilt-filters. What they do is raise/lower everything above/under your chosen frequency with chosen amount. So in essence when you increase high-shelf at 3000hz with 2dB, you get a small uphill slope at 3000hz and then flat to 20khz.

 

- They are working on an alternative to the Control which are more suited to the audiophiles, the Control are really most suited for studio use.

 

My experience with the BXT system was mind-blowing. Holy cow how dynamic, tight and shockingly loud those small boxes could play. Still think Kii should give us a tilt function instead of shelf-filters :)

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10 hours ago, Craig1512 said:

Since my last post here, I have spent the past couple of weeks tweeting speaker position, boundary & EQ settings. I agree with @firedog it would be useful if Kii provided more detailed information and instructions on setup for new users. I did try moving the speakers out into the room more to about 60cm, but found SQ was better with them back in the original position of about 20cm from the front wall. Every thing I have read about cardioid dispersion suggests that 20cm from the front wall is ideally the best position. I dont have a dedicated listening position, my setup is in the main open plan family, dinning, kitchen room, its where my family like to gather, chat and listen to music, I usually sit at the dinning table which is around 4.5m from the speakers as I am now, listening to music. For moderate volume listening, for the time being, I have settled with the speakers 20cm from front wall and 2.3m apart, boundary set to 0, low shelf corner 104394, low shelf amount 4.8, high shelf corner 3002.6 and high shelf amount 1.1. I would like to do some further tweaking to see if I can get some improvement and would be helpful if others here could give their speaker positioning, boundary and EQ settings as a guide. Appreciate the great advice and information here, assists with getting the best out these speakers. Thought I would add to the photo gallery here. @bobfa the time lapse vids and photos were great, love the repurposed RCA Victola console, its a beautiful piece of furniture and a cool idea to use a “hifi rack”. I would be interested in reading about your discussion with Chris R at AXPONA, did he happen to mention any future plans, updates in the pipeline at Kii Audio?

2396DEF8-1F28-4BD7-966F-23239A70DB3E.jpeg

From looking at your picture I would want to play with boundary in a different way.  I would "try" this.  Set the contour to flat.  Then play with the boundary.  I would do a binary tree 0-8-4 sort of thing. When I was testing in my room the difference was striking when I got to the setting sweet spot.  The room looks like it might be a little brighter sonically.  

 

I am still looking at tracks that help me setup.  I found one that is helpful.  The theme to Bladerunner 2049.

 

By the way your setup is really nice looking!

 

OH and no forward looking info from Kii at Axpona..

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5 hours ago, TheStupidOne said:

Some useful information from Wim Weijers;

 

- The speakers are tuned so that the intended toe-in is 15 degrees off-axis. That means you should just about see the inside (or outside) wall on each speaker from the listening position.

Setting toe-in so that you see the outside walls will give a bigger sweetspot, so that's usually how they set up the speakers at shows.

What's best depends on room because you change the time and distance between first reflections.

 

- The shelf filters are not tilt-filters. What they do is raise/lower everything above/under your chosen frequency with chosen amount. So in essence when you increase high-shelf at 3000hz with 2dB, you get a small uphill slope at 3000hz and then flat to 20khz.

 

- They are working on an alternative to the Control which are more suited to the audiophiles, the Control are really most suited for studio use.

 

My experience with the BXT system was mind-blowing. Holy cow how dynamic, tight and shockingly loud those small boxes could play. Still think Kii should give us a tilt function instead of shelf-filters :)

I’m a bit surprised by your “0” setting: I personally wouldn’t think your speakers are “free standing” in that position. I’d try getting rid of the bass boost with the contour setting and trying a higher boundary number first. 


Interesting info about the audiophile oriented control. That’s been rumored for about 2 years,  hopefully it will come out in the not distant future. The rumor is it will be something more like a digital preamp-maybe with a display that’s visible from a few feet away? 

Main listening (small home office):

Main setup: Surge protector +>Isol-8 Mini sub Axis Power Strip/Isolation>QuietPC Low Noise Server>Roon (Audiolense DRC)>Stack Audio Link II>Kii Control>Kii Three (on their own electric circuit) >GIK Room Treatments.

Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup.
Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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8 minutes ago, firedog said:

I’m a bit surprised by your “0” setting: I personally wouldn’t think your speakers are “free standing” in that position. I’d try getting rid of the bass boost with the contour setting and trying a higher boundary number first. 


Interesting info about the audiophile oriented control. That’s been rumored for about 2 years,  hopefully it will come out in the not distant future. The rumor is it will be something more like a digital preamp-maybe with a display that’s visible from a few feet away? 

 

As well as promises of new enhanced capability firmware and a firmware installation tool. 

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Pulling some of these speakers off the front wall a few feet at minimum will do wonders for your soundstage and imaging. 

 

Much more so than any OS tweak, or by starting each song by command line in MS-DOS from RAM, or whatever else is flavor of the month here on Audiophile Style.

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1 hour ago, baconbrain said:

So finally had the chance to listen to the Bxt Extensions at the High End In Munich over the weekend.

 

They had them setup in such a way that you could turn the extensions on or off during playback which provided a good opportunity to hear titles with or without them. 

 

My impression was very positive and they certainly warrant a dedicated session in a more suitable environment to further explore their full potential.

 

Attached is a pic of rig used to toggle between with / without the Bxt.

 

 

DA96B9F1-9B11-4526-A21D-C18EC1961D35.jpeg

 

Was a good show! I enjoyed Kii this time more than one year ago.

Our PowerStation is here: click me!

 

Check out our Tidal MQA Set-up Guides below. 
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From the photo it looks like they were pulled well away from sidewall and backwall? 

Aurender W20 Music Server, Kii Three Active Speakers, Kii Digital Controller

Audioquest Diamond USB, Audioquest Niagara 7000 conditioner, Audioquest NRG-1000 HC mains leads

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16 minutes ago, Mazza said:

From the photo it looks like they were pulled well away from sidewall and backwall? 

Approx. 2 meters (6 feet) from the back and side walls. The Innuos Statement Server was located behind the white curtain with the printed interior scene. 

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19 hours ago, baconbrain said:

So finally had the chance to listen to the Bxt Extensions at the High End In Munich over the weekend.

 

They had them setup in such a way that you could turn the extensions on or off during playback which provided a good opportunity to hear titles with or without them. 

 

My impression was very positive and they certainly warrant a dedicated session in a more suitable environment to further explore their full potential.

 

Attached is a pic of rig used to toggle between with / without the Bxt.

 

 

DA96B9F1-9B11-4526-A21D-C18EC1961D35.jpeg

 

I spent some time in this room, but the sound just didn't do it for me. I believe my lack of enthusiasm for the sound is mostly because of music selection and ambient noise level in the room. These are very competent speakers that I still need to demo properly. 

Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems AudiophileStyleStickerWhite2.0.png AudiophileStyleStickerWhite7.1.4.png

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3 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

I spent some time in this room, but the sound just didn't do it for me. I believe my lack of enthusiasm for the sound is mostly because of music selection and ambient noise level in the room. These are very competent speakers that I still need to demo properly. 

Totally agree about the ambient noise. Probably the biggest disadvantage with High End Event. (or any other audio happening of that size..) Give them a try in a suitable environment and I would be surprised if they disappoint.

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