Article: Kii THREE Loudspeaker Review

[firedog]

5 hours ago, input username here said:

Thanks for the great review.  I wonder how much closer the BXT system would get you to your big subs' bass performance...it'll be interesting too to hear what you think of these vs. the D&Ds, they are clear competitors in a category of, really, only two speakers at the moment (not having seen the D&D in person, I was really shocked to see how BIG they are--and I thought the Kii's were pretty large monitor speakers!). 

 

Also, love that blue color!  The only regret I have with buying my own my Kii's is that I went with the rather dull, stock gray color.  Every time I see a pair in an adventurous colorway, I get (very) jealous. 

 

I got the stock gray, too. I actually think it looks nice and it matches my decor. I thought about ordering a cobalt blue color, but also thought that if I ever want to sell them the standard color will be much easier to sell. 
The D&D so far have gotten pretty much the same reaction as the Kiis. Some people think they sound a bit warmer and have a bit more bass "punch" and therefore prefer them. It will be interesting to see Mitchco's measurements and subjective reaction. 

[firedog]

5 hours ago, MikeJazz said:

But I also heard a speaker with some issues on presenting tone. Tone was not rich, voices did not sound natural, but a bit harsh. On the end it was a bit disappointing hear that the speaker was lacking on the tone department. Tone is very important to get me involved in the music. 

Not my experience. But everyone hears differently. It's clear the Kiis aren't for everyone. I'm sure you are not the only one that won't like them. I've heard some very expensive, well regarded speakers that I didn't like at all. 

[firedog]

3 hours ago, Gnnett said:

Well I for one will never buy these speakers. I always apply the Rolls Royce principle. If I have to ask the price, I obviously cannot afford it. Beggars belief a manufacturer has the arrogance to not pay potential purchasers the common courtesy of giving a price.  Shame really, interesting review.

Huh? What are you talking about?

[firedog]

1 hour ago, sapporo said:

I have been test playing Kii 3 for some weeks now and they are very good speakers indeed.  The bass is adequate but not top notch though. Better results can be achieved with distributed subs (Geddes) or dipole (Linkwitz) bass. Linkwitz claims superiority of dipole over cardioid patterns in rooms. The vocals are very good but somewhat forward. When compared to good planars/dipoles they sound like a mono source sitting fixed between the two speakers. Also the musical space is restricted between the two boxes, you do not get the feeling of a live performance in your room.* The Kiis seem to be very good monitors for near/mid field listening in the sweet spot. Not so for a bigger audience sitting unrestricted. They otften underimpress in public presentations. Kii Control improved things ergonomics-wise but it needs the ethernet cable. When you place the Control away from your seat you have no feedback on the listening volume setting. I tested DEQX with some good speakers and compared with Kii in front of several golden ears and the jury is out. DEQX advantage is much lower latency (max 20 ms vs Kii 90ms) which means the time coherence magic is preserved for movies and live/tracking applications. 

* Chesky Records Ultimate Demo disc has a drums solo that shows Kii’s limitations comparing to some really good time coherent setups which don’t even use DSP.

 

 

I think you have sort of a odd way of evaluating the Kii. 

No one thinks the Kii are going to compete bass wise with some specialized bass setup, and they aren’t trying to.  They have plenty of bass for most rooms and most people: Obviously not if you have a large room and want full physical impactful bass as with large powered woofers.

 

They also clearly aren’t perfect or the best system you can get. Obviously they can be improved upon.
 

The Kiis are supposed to be a system that achieves a high level of performance in all parameters in a small, convenient, contained system that works in most situations- for a reasonable price and avoiding lots of boxes and wires. Basically you can hook them up in 5 minutes and get great performance without doing anything with them - right out of the box. (Some simple adjustments will improve performance even more).
 

When you compared the Kii to a DEQX setup with some good speakers, how much did the DEQX, amp, and speakers cost? I’m betting more than the Kiis, with a more complicated setup (which many users won’t want to do), less convenient form factor, and yet only a comparable level of performance. 

[firedog]

11 minutes ago, sapporo said:

 

Haven't heard about any studios  going crazy about them either, and it's been some years...

 

Wow you are really fishing and nitpicking reasons to put them down. Your comments are sort of off the mark and don’t match reality.  And you didn’t actually tell us how much your DEQX based systems cost - more than $15k?

 

The BXT isn’t really relevant here as it turns it into a totally different system that should be judged differently. The review didn’t include the BXT. 

 

As far as studios - don’t know if that is relevant. Kii and dealers both say lots of the sales are to professionals using them for mixing. Many of those work at home, and not from a “studio”. 

[firedog]

6 hours ago, sapporo said:

 

That’s not what I meant. One of the most useful interface features of any amp is to see, not only hear, the current  volume level . Apple remote won’t tell you that.

 

5 hours ago, Emlin said:

Then set the Kii Control at an angle so that you can see the display from your seat. Jeez.

Agree with Sapporo on this one. I can't read the Kii Display from my seat, even if it is at an angle. A system like the Kii should at least have the option for a remote volume control as mentioned, perhaps something like the Devialet one. 

[firedog]

27 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Question for Kii 3 owners...

 

I see in the manual, the warranty is 5 years. That includes the amplifier section?

 

If so, that's a nice warranty indeed.

 

It includes everything. Kii told me they will even arrange shipping to the factory if you don't have a "local" distributor who does repairs.

[firedog]

3 hours ago, sixman said:

I really enjoyed reading this review, look forward to seeing more from Mitcho!

 

How would the Kii compare to the Devialet Phantoms that were reviewed previously? They have similar concepts.

They aren't really similar concepts.

[firedog]

2 hours ago, Archimago said:

A geeky question ? which I haven't seen the answer to elsewhere... I've read/seen advertised that the DSP processing is being performed in 40-bit floating point, but have not seen if it's listed at what samplerate the conversion is done with analogue input or what rates the internal converter handles digital input from the AES/EBU. Assuming we have a true hi-res 24/96 album fed into the device, what happens to frequencies above 22.05 or 24kHz? Does the DSP operate up there?

Acc'd to this at Sound on Sound,  it's all done at 192k.

 

But in other places Bruno P. has said the Kii DACs work similarly to those in the Mola Mola, which is described here (where he also speculates about a future  item like the Kii for the audophile market) and here.

 

I also asked Kii if there was a "native" sampling rate of the Kii DACs that would be beneficial to feed the Kii (in other words, to upsample all input to that rate before it got to the Kii) and they said no. They said it has a proprietary ASRC that deals differently with each incoming sample rate, and the best thing to do is just let each format/sample rate come into the unit unchanged. 

 

I'm not sure how any of that lines up with the D/A, A/D, DSP supposedly being done at 192k and 40 bit floating point. 

 

 

[firedog]

1 hour ago, sapporo said:

According to HiFi News review the internal sampling frequency is 93.75 kHz.

True. Wrote Kii and asked them.

[firedog]

20 hours ago, sapporo said:

According to HiFi News review the internal sampling frequency is 93.75 kHz.

Okay, wrote to Kii and got this answer:

 

The DSP runs on a high internal samplerate, which is purposely different from any of the typical samplerates used for LPCM audio (multiples of 44,1kHz or 48kHz).

The deciding factor is not the samplerate used (I wouldn´t even know the exact number to be honest with you), but the SRC algorithm at work.

The SRC was written by Bruno specifically for the Kii THREE and surpasses anything readily available on the market by a huge margin.

The jitter reduction at the output of the DSP is quite spectacular

Hope this was helpful.

[firedog]

7 minutes ago, baconbrain said:

Maybe it is just me,  but this is now getting a bit difficult to understand... Why utilize an SRC algorithm which uses a LPCM audio "non standard" sample rate as a baseline?

 

Does this truly mean that the Kii will not benefit from being fed a specific (or preferred)  sample rate?  

Obviously because Kii think their proprietary SRC is the best sounding way to do it. You can't ever accuse Bruno P. of relying on the truisms of audiophilia.  
 

My personal experience is that Kii are correct - it sounds best when fed unaltered input. You can hear, for instance, a difference if you feed it DSD or PCM upsampled to DSD - that sounds like DSD. But I personally think it sounds best when just fed an unaltered stream. At least I haven't heard any benefit when experimenting with upsampling the feed to the Kii (both with Roon and HQP).
If you want the sound of DSD instead of PCM, you could upsample everything to DSD and feed it only DSD. 

[firedog]

59 minutes ago, Alexander Kubiak said:

Including the Control and the stands, which are made specially for the speakers though difficult to assemble, with tax $18,000.00

I’ve seen them discounted before, especially if you buy the whole package. 

The stands wouldn’t be hard to install if they came with instructions. Mine, at least, didn’t. The stands aren’t complicated to assemble, but it isn’t obvious just how everything fits together.

[firedog]

12 hours ago, soupcon said:

the kii three's are remarkable out of the box, but i wasn't prepared for the improvement that 175 lbs of lead shot made after putting it in the stands. in any case, these are game changers. 

I filled mine with sand, which is what I had available. Does’t weigh 175, but it is plenty heavy. Those things don’t move or vibrate at all. 

[firedog]

3 hours ago, Gasman said:

A general comment/query about DSP if I may?

 

I do use DSP to do DRC and implement the x-overs for my active speakers and I feed the DSP unit an analogue signal from my DAC

 

So my thought is this - given that any DSP unit, whatever role it performs, necessarily requires and AD-DA process internally, does that (not) mean that one is listening to the DAC in the DSP, rather than the, potentially quite costly, upstream analogue source?

 

Can any DSP be truly transparent in respect of any analogue input?

 

?

Yes, you get AD/DA conversion. But the conversion of the Kii is really world class. Your analog source will sound like your analog source. As far as I'm concerned, it's transparent to source.
Ask some of the people feeding an expensive turntable to the Kiis and who are quite satisfied. 

[firedog]

I'll don't have the cash to buy the BXT's, but I'd certainly be interested to hear what you think they add to just the Kii's. Hopefully I'll get to hear them sometime. 

[firedog]

1 hour ago, input username here said:

 

Looking forward to your impressions when you are ready to give them. 

 

Honestly, the price of the BXT relative to the THREEs, is a little bit of a tough pill to swallow--given that it just extends the dynamic range of an already full range design.  But I suppose if you look at the numbers of drivers, amps, size of the cabinet, etc., it makes some sense... it is what it is, I guess.  

It's like everything in high end audio - steep diminishing returns curve vs. rising price: you have to pay a lot to get that last added bit of performance. That's not a criticism, that's just the way things work. I'm happy with my Threes and couldn't afford the BXT anyway. Sometimes you just have to do the best you can and not worry about those who can afford more than you can. 
I hope people that can afford them enjoy them.