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Kii Three - my impressions and pro reviews


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48 minutes ago, Cazzesman said:

A song by London Grammar called Rooting for You has a few of those notes from singer Hannah Reid that are now under control to my old ears.

 

Since the playlist is such a large part of this thread.  Do your "old ears" ever listen to any remixes of London Grammar songs? 

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Hi Rando,

 

I wasn't aware there were remixes.   I'm abit late to the LG music.     Are you talking 'Remixes' or 'Remasters'.    Has there previously been mutterings about the production of Reid's vocals?   Or are you talking about Reid singing with assorted artist on extended 7" tracks?

 

Regards Cazzesman

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I put this on tonight.  For your interest in the low key album work I was thinking much less dance club.  Who knows, you might enjoy something on there.  Will try to track down the more subtle retouching that came to mind initially.

 

There has been mention of LG on AS. Not so much about production of her vocals or working on other artists albums.  Remember posting a live performance from a VOGUE sponsored event off YouTube that I found outstanding (despite low SQ).

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10 hours ago, Cazzesman said:

Poured my dry sand into the Kii Stands today.    Might be placebo effect but I'm thinking there is a more focused sound.    The best way to describe it is there is no ringing in the air.   I'm not sure I ever noticed ringing before but it just sounds somewhat quieter and on point.

 

Some female vocals that occasionally hit a note that 'bit' now seems more controlled.    A song by London Grammar called Rooting for You has a few of those notes from singer Hannah Reid that are now under control to my old ears.

 

Regardless, I highly doubt adding the sand has hurt the sound in any way.  

 

The 20 kg bag, once dried, easily filled the columns.  Probably had 2 or 3 kg leftover.    $7 Australian dollars well spent.   That will be about $1.50 in US Dollars. 🙁

 

Regards Cazzesman


Cool 20kg for both stands. Ordered :)

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On 7/28/2019 at 11:43 AM, Cazzesman said:

As the Actress said to the Vicar........................'it's amazing what a few centimeters can do."

 

I have been tweaking the set up of my Kii's.     Got the tap measure out and was checking equal distance from the wall to the rear, from side walls and adjusting the slight toe in.

 

I thought I had it all spot on and yet the vocals were tracking slightly left of centre when I know they should be dead middle.   Scratching my head, I took some more measurements, this time from the listening position.     I found the dead centre between the speakers and located the same spot at the listening position.      Once I was happy it was dead centre I got some decent non- stretch string and ran a line from the centre of the listening chair at floor level to the centre of the tweeter.

 

Low and behold it turns out the right speaker was actually 10 mil further away then the left.   Once I got them into an identical distance from the listening position the vocals popped back to the middle.   Go figure.   Those Kii's know when you are scamming them.

 

Being an older style house obviously the rear wall I had been using to measure, runs out slightly.

 

A trap for young players.

 

Now that I think I have found the appropriate location for the speakers I have reset the eq back to 0 and will be starting over again.    So far 0 eq is sounding pretty damn fine.     

 

I had a mate around today who is a professional muso.  Sings and plays guitar.    He came over to listen to the Kii's and left with his jaw on the ground.   Said it was some of the best home audio he had ever heard.   Nice to get that sort of feedback.    Mind you he is probably deaf due to his career choice but it was encouraging 🙂

 

Regards Cazzesman

 

Hah, we hear you, had something similar years back with our own equipment. Regarding tape measurements, it's surprising what these can do. And the best part is that this is for free.

Our PowerStation is here: click me!

 

Check out our Tidal MQA Set-up Guides below. 
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Last night I replaced the ethernet cable between Kii Three's with a 5.5m SOTM CAT7. Soundstage is now much more precise, wider, and higher. The whole sonic picture just grew bigger. Also the timbre and detail is at another level. 

 

Try to put the best cable you can over there...

Kii Three + BXT, dCS Network Bridge, Astell&Kern SP2000, Stromtank 2500, Roon Nucleus, Echole Power Cables, Mogami + Bocchino AES, SOTM Switch + CAT7 + CAT8

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20 hours ago, KunterK said:

Last night I replaced the ethernet cable between Kii Three's with a 5.5m SOTM CAT7. Soundstage is now much more precise, wider, and higher. The whole sonic picture just grew bigger. Also the timbre and detail is at another level. 

 

Try to put the best cable you can over there...

I assume you are using the Kii Control?  What about the Ethernet cable from the Control to the master Kii speaker. did you replace that one also?

2 channel : full Innuos suite / Black Cat USB cables / Kii Three BXT

Desktop : Innuos PulseMINI / Roon ROCK / SaBaj A20d amp-DAC / DCA E3 headphones

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18 hours ago, fpalm69 said:

I assume you are using the Kii Control?  What about the Ethernet cable from the Control to the master Kii speaker. did you replace that one also?

I started writing my answer as follows:

 

"Nope. I am using Control just for control purposes, volume control etc. I am using AES as input. So changing the control ethernet cable should not make a difference in my case".

 

Then, I went ahead and changed the long ethernet cable (which came with the Kii's) with others, including a CAT7 SOTM. There definitely is a noticeable difference between cables. Sotm more silent, the original cable more lively. I found best balance in the following Vandesail cable I bought couple of weeks back to try between the speakers.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015PPQXY6/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_A8DqDb86FMVRE

these performed quite good in between the speakers too.

 

Easy to try and see... 

 

I guess the difference should be more profound if one is using the Control unit as input.

Kii Three + BXT, dCS Network Bridge, Astell&Kern SP2000, Stromtank 2500, Roon Nucleus, Echole Power Cables, Mogami + Bocchino AES, SOTM Switch + CAT7 + CAT8

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6 minutes ago, KunterK said:

I started writing my answer as follows:

 

"Nope. I am using Control just for control purposes, volume control etc. I am using AES as input. So changing the control ethernet cable should not make a difference in my case".

 

Then, I went ahead and changed the long ethernet cable (which came with the Kii's) with others, including a CAT7 SOTM. There definitely is a noticeable difference between cables. Sotm more silent, the original cable more lively. I found best balance in the following Vandesail cable I bought couple of weeks back to try between the speakers.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015PPQXY6/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_A8DqDb86FMVRE

these performed quite good in between the speakers too.

 

Easy to try and see... 

 

I guess the difference should be more profound if one is using the Control unit as input.

I am using Supra Ethernet from the Kii Control to the master and another one to the slave speaker.  Noticed a slight improvement over the stock cable.  I use Supra throughout my system.  Power cables I made myself.

2 channel : full Innuos suite / Black Cat USB cables / Kii Three BXT

Desktop : Innuos PulseMINI / Roon ROCK / SaBaj A20d amp-DAC / DCA E3 headphones

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On 7/31/2019 at 9:24 AM, Emlin said:

 

In this case, no routers are present, but even if there were, I suspect that all perceived differences would disappear with a proper blind ABX test.

 

The big problem here is that most ABX tests are so far from "proper" that it isn't funny - the really dumb one is Foobar's, which is relied upon so often - flawed in its implementation so badly that even a desktop's motherboard sound chip makes it obvious that it has issues.

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25 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The big problem here is that most ABX tests are so far from "proper" that it isn't funny - the really dumb one is Foobar's, which is relied upon so often - flawed in its implementation so badly that even a desktop's motherboard sound chip makes it obvious that it has issues.

 

Please explain - I'm intrigued!

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3 minutes ago, Emlin said:

 

Please explain - I'm intrigued!

 

Just a couple of the factors: the key one is that it doesn't use the files it's supposedly playing, no, it resamples to suit itself, and places working copies of that somewhere on the hard drive, possibly fragmented to hell; and, the interface keeps chattering during the replay with progress information ... if one wants to test whether CPU activity is a factor, no chance of eliminating that!

 

I used an extremely basic Nero player at the time, and immediately noticed that the foobar ABX replay was quite degraded compared to that simple software package  - and started to investigate.

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1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Just a couple of the factors: the key one is that it doesn't use the files it's supposedly playing, no, it resamples to suit itself, and places working copies of that somewhere on the hard drive, possibly fragmented to hell; and, the interface keeps chattering during the replay with progress information ... if one wants to test whether CPU activity is a factor, no chance of eliminating that!

 

I used an extremely basic Nero player at the time, and immediately noticed that the foobar ABX replay was quite degraded compared to that simple software package  - and started to investigate.

 

To get around all that, I use a tin foil hat. :)

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31 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

.................unless they are.

 

Let's leave audiophile PCs out of equation for a second. What I meant was that some regular PCs are better than others, but there's always something to do with them both software and hardware wise to make them better for audio. 

Our PowerStation is here: click me!

 

Check out our Tidal MQA Set-up Guides below. 
Android (Renderer) Mobile
Desktop (Decoder) via USB
Desktop (Decoder) via SPDIF

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