Another Kii THREE thread.

[Space is the Place]

Well that's a bummer that you've been dropped you as a stockist, because you've obviously done a great deal to get people interested in the monitor. I guess my "concrete boots" remark that was deleted after the forum crash from the Dac thread was accidentally close to the mark!

FWIW Keith i value your contribution here, your always trying new stuff some of it interesting, i see you as an enthusiast first and a dealer second, i've been around here a while and you have always been incredibly polite and helpful even in the face hostility.

I was thinking the other day that the problem with many of these new speakers especially one that has proprietary parts, is that down the road when something eventually fails or gets broken, will there be the support to get it fixed?

Experience has told me you might be left with something difficult too repair or un-repairable. If you look at what has happened with the Opal monitors, you can't get them repaired, yet Opal is owned by RODE mics, a pretty big company. Same goes for Dynaudio, eventually they gave me a new pair of monitors because of all the hassle i had, but what if your monitors fail after 5 years and your unable to get a simple part to repair it?
This is where ATC still has an advantage i feel.

 

[IceG]

They also didn’t like me measuring the Kii THREE or comparing it to the Dutch&Dutch 8C!

So either they felt that the measurements would show they are not performing as claimed, or that the measurements would not be as good as a competitor?

Or, perish the though, they think that measurements do not tell the whole story and that subjective auditioning is an important part of speaker design, quality and selection?

 

[jamington2004]

I had the occasion to speak to Keith recently - having half read a few negative comments over the years

Lovely guy - went out of his way to help me with a product I bought from someone else who had bought from him, he treated me like a valued customer and we had a lovely long chat about other things too

Not once did he try and sell me anything, make me feel like I was taking up his precious time with no chance of a sale, bad mouth my phantoms compared the kii threes - in fact he was quite conplimentary.....

I meant to put some feedback on here afterwards but couldn't find out where then forgot

Some of the comments on here are verging on the bullying and just seem totallly unjust from my experience

Long live the Keith I say!!!

 

[muzzer]

Things might be different if he stuck to the trade section and didn't spam threads here with his sales pitch/latest wonder products etc etc.

 

[jamington2004]

If he's not forcing anyone to buy it then I don't see why not

No different to us gushing subjectively about our own system - which is often far from impartial info

People who don't trust a dealers opinion is no more than marketing can choose to ignore - those with a bit more trust can choose to take on board

Live and let love and all that

(I must be getting old!)

 

[Still]

The problem with that is Kieth regularly doesn't 'live and let live'.
On pfm he has attempted to slag the competition with daft aspersions a number of times.

 

[hifinutt]

I had the occasion to speak to Keith recently - having half read a few negative comments over the years

Lovely guy - went out of his way to help me with a product I bought from someone else who had bought from him, he treated me like a valued customer and we had a lovely long chat about other things too

Not once did he try and sell me anything, make me feel like I was taking up his precious time with no chance of a sale, bad mouth my phantoms compared the kii threes - in fact he was quite conplimentary.....

I meant to put some feedback on here afterwards but couldn't find out where then forgot

Some of the comments on here are verging on the bullying and just seem totallly unjust from my experience

Long live the Keith I say!!!

amen to that and well put .

 

[IanW]

+1.

 

[Ayya Khema]

The problem with that is Kieth regularly doesn't 'live and let live'.
On pfm he has attempted to slag the competition with daft aspersions a number of times.

exactly

without mentioning the non sense he claims like "as long as amp is accurate they should sound the same". I have a feeling that his "opinion" on everything is based not on his honest "Experience" but how to sell his products.

shall we talk about his laughable non conclusive measurements?

No not at all they are both great loudspeakers I will keep a pair of Kiis here just so customers can compare with the Dutch&Dutch 8C’s.
Keith

ok, thought wrong. sorry

 

[muzzer]

Yeah until someone buys them.

 

[Purité Audio]

Just starting to write a proper comparison between the 8Cs and Kii THREEs
https://www.puriteaudio.co.uk/forum/loudspeakers/kii-three-and-dutch-dutch-8c-s-compared

Keith

 

[Emlin]

I totally agree - having heard the Beolab 90's comprehensively, today I finally got to have a listen to the Kiis at the Melbourne International HiFi show.

Like the Beolab 90's, the technology in the Kiis' really is a game changer without question in my view.

Cheers

How do you think the Kiis compare to the Beolab 90s?

 

[Jonboi]

How do you think the Kiis compare to the Beolab 90s?

Well it's probably a slightly unfair comparison given the Kii's are A$16,000 and the Beolab 90's A$110,000..... but...

Beolab 90's remind me the most of a speaker with the sort of resolution and dynamics of something like the JBL Everests or Klipsch La-Scalas, crossed with the neutrality, refinement, smoothness, imaging and very low distortion of something like a B&W 800D.

The Kii's come across as the very best standmount loudspeaker that I think I've ever heard - very smooth, very little sense of colouration or distortion, excellent imaging, dynamics that would approach the Beolab 90's in terms of dynamic contrasts, and resolution is also very high - but no better to my ears than my Beolab 9's, which in turn are nowhere near the level of the Beolab 90's, so without being able to put them side by side, I do not think that the resolution of the Kii's is up with Beolab 90 levels.

Probably the biggest difference is scale, bass weight and extension and the ability to play at live levels at all frequencies.

The Beolab 90's can make a very convincing aural case that you could be listening to live pipe organ; by contrast with the Kii's its an excellent reproduction, but with instruments such as pipe organ, they lack the sheer scale and ability to play low and loud to convince one is hearing anything other than an excellent reproduction.

Considering the price of the Kii's I'd say that they are a relative bargain, as they easily beat out many other standmount speakers in passive systems that I also heard and at greater expense.

Cheers

 

[Tony L]

What amp were the La Scalas driven by? Curious to know as you obviously liked them and they are quite hard to partner IME as real high efficiency like this brings its own problems (they find the noise, low-level distortion etc etc in anything up-stream!).

 

[Jonboi]

What amp were the La Scalas driven by?ous to know as you obviously liked them and they are quite hard to partner IME as real high efficiency like this brings its own problems (they find the noise, low-level distortion etc etc in anything up-stream!).

Hi Tony - the La-Scalas were being driven by a high end Marantz amp and source was also a similar quality Marantz CD player.

Unfortunately I can't tell you the model as I'm not really up on Marantz gear; however they were big, gold and expensive.

So Solid state, but I would imagine their distortion figures would be below audibility - certainly I heard no perceptible distortion on a variety of music - some of played at or near live levels.

And yes, I liked the La-Scalas a lot - these were the Anniversary models in Walnut - nothing other than active speakers that I heard, and the JBL Everests were able to match them for dynamic contrasts, scale, and sense of resolution.

Cheers

 

[GT]

So Solid state, but I would imagine their distortion figures would be below audibility - certainly I heard no perceptible distortion on a variety of music - some of played at or near live levels.

A loudspeaker would be distorting massively before you would ever hear any distortion from the amplifier driving it...

Note: assuming the amp and speaker were correctly matched.

nothing other than active speakers that I heard, and the JBL Everests were able to match them for dynamic contrasts, scale, and sense of resolution.

No active hifi speaker will ever be as dynamic as a horn speaker, or provide better dynamic contrasts, or scale, or resolution.

 

[Julf]

No active hifi speaker will ever be as dynamic as a horn speaker, or provide better dynamic contrasts, or scale, or resolution.

What are your definitions of "dynamic contrast", "scale" and "resolution"?

 

[Tony L]

What are your definitions of "dynamic contrast", "scale" and "resolution"?

This being the key point between mechanical measurement and human perception IMO. There just isn’t any correlation between a line on a frequency response plot and the ease and effortlessness of a very large driver or horn energising a room with hardly any driver movement. I’ve seen many small speakers that on paper look to dig deeper in the bass or be flatter over the whole frequency band, but sound tiny and compressed compared to a big cabinet 15” Tannoy or multi-way front-loaded horn that is largely out of the game by 40Hz. As with all science the real skill is knowing exactly what to measure and simple ‘quantity’ on a plot is woefully insufficient to my mind. The really good big stuff certainly has a ease, scale, freedom and dynamic headroom that is miles ahead of small driver stuff, though you’d never know it just from reading frequency response plots in Stereophile, REW or wherever.

PS To put it another way you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between Napalm Death and a string quartet on a response plot!

 

[Julf]

This being the key point between mechanical measurement and human perception IMO. There just isn’t any correlation between a line on a frequency response plot and the ease and effortlessness of a very large driver or horn energising a room with hardly any driver movement. I’ve seen many small speakers that on paper look to dig deeper in the bass or be flatter over the whole frequency band, but sound tiny and compressed compared to a big cabinet 15” Tannoy or multi-way front-loaded horn that is largely out of the game by 40Hz. As with all science the real skill is knowing exactly what to measure and simple ‘quantity’ on a plot is woefully insufficient to my mind. The really good big stuff certainly has a ease, scale, freedom and dynamic headroom that is miles ahead of small driver stuff, though you’d never know it just from reading frequency response plots in Stereophile, REW or wherever.

Sure. But if you can describe and understand something, you can also measure it (and vice versa). If something sounds tiny and compressed, it is due to nonlinearity of some sort, so either measuring distortion or resultant air pressure variation as a function of input power should show it.

 

[Whaleblue]

I’m guessing that it’s the in-room measurements one might need, and hence those that are not typically published?