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Who's heard the Kii Three speakers?

Which is the studio you picture?

Air Studios. Looks like it was shot during the recording of one of Mike Valentines 'Direct Cut to Vinyl' releases with the Syd Lawrence Orchestra. Chris Dean who can just be made out at the back, is the band leader and friend of my fathers. They played at his 80th a few years ago and were superb. They did the Valentine albums in one take, small pause between tracks, and never made one mistake according to MV. Great sounding LP's.

PS I remain deeply skeptical about electronic room correction as it is inevitably different depending on where you place the measurement mic, and "correcting" for one location moves that speaker away from its natural (hopefully flat) response anywhere else in the room.

We've been over this. You seem to be making assumptions about something you've never used nor will ever likely try given your pre-conceptions. Using digital EQ to boost bass will do exactly as you say. Removing energy from room modes however can work very well over both a narrow and wide area IME, and I use it to great effect, near field and whole room.

DRC can also be a great tool and with Dirac, for example, you can measure over as wide an area as you like. It allows for up to 9 measurements over three listening scenarios (Chair, Sofa, Auditorium). I use 'Sofa' and it works superbly the full width of the sofa, not only in achieving silky smooth bass, but also correcting impulse response. You don't realise you have a problem with impulse response until you turn the Dirac filter on. Once you've heard kick drums sound like kick drums, drum brushing sound like you're there and voices jump forward centre stage and come alive, there's no going back. One button on my remote, and I've turned the filter off. You can get it horribly wrong of course if your measurements are out or you try to overdrive your speakers; get it right and its a very big upgrade in a non treated domestic room IMHO.

If the Kii's can do all of this using active wave focusing and whatever other trickery they employ and they actually sound decent, then fantastic. Thats technological progress, which inevitably not everyone will embrace.
 
seen nothing like the Kii's, or for that matter any high end speaker with DSP! Most studios use custom designs built into each monitoring room as in the case here.

Come on.

Studios use at least three different classes of monitors:

1) performance monitors: big, LOUD, robust, wide, accurate, did I mention LOUD? These are used at high levels when musicians are tracking in the control room. To give a sense of, well, performance. They are a substitute for live, uncompressed instruments.

2) mix monitors: small, not necessarily accurate (NS10!), used in the nearfield to allow the mix engineer to do their work with a minimum of room influence (ignoring the massive bounce off the desk)

3) mastering monitors: medium-to-large, very accurate, not very loud. This is what the likes of Grimm and Kii aim at.

Unless you find yourself in a mastering room you have no reason to find Kiis.
 
Low latency mode is 1.03 ms, proof of the pudding is in the eating, we have many very highly regarded loudspeakers here which anyone can compare directly to the Kii THREE.
Kii THREE and ATC;s active 50's.


Keith
 
The ATCs are fine speakers,
Drivers: HF 25mm Mid 75mm LF 234mm Super Linear
Amplitude Linearity ±2dB: 70Hz – 17kHz
Frequency Response -6dB: 38Hz & 22kHz
Matched Response: ±0.5dB
Dispersion: ±80° Coherent Horizontal ±10° Coherent Vertical
Max continuous SPL @1m: 112dB SPL
Crossover Frequency: 380Hz & 3.5kHz
Input Connector: XLR
Input Sensitivity:1V
Input Impedance: >10k ohms balanced XLR
Amplifier Output: HF 50 Watts RMS MF 100 Watts RMS LF 200 Watts RMS
Overload Protection: LDR tweeter protection, plus active FET MGR (amplifiers)
Power Requirements: Voltage: 100, 115, 230 (factory set)
Frequency: 50/60Hz
Power: Nominal 90 Watts, Driven 350 Watts
Cabinet Dimensions(HxWxD): 717 x 304 x 480mm including amps (stands add 250mm to height)
Weight: 48.9kg

Keith
 
I asked Tom at Kii the effect of selecting low latency rather than 'normal'.
Quote,
Hey Keith,

Has the customer heard the difference himself already? It is really not that obvious.

Low Latency Mode only disables the phase correction of the whole spectrum to minimum phase.

Everything else what´s so special about the Kii Three stays completely intact.
The whole cardioid dispersion pattern remains untouched, the frequency response and time alignement remains perfectly corrected etc etc.

Basically no analog studio monitor on the market (PMC, ATC, Geithain, you name it...) has their phase response corrected at all!
Meaning that the phase coherence of the normal mode on the Kii is something that was simply not available before in this application anywhere else.

Because of the wavelengths involved, especially if we talk 20Hz to 20kHz, a phase correction is
a) only achievable by clever DSP programming and
b) never without latency


So to recap: the Kii Three offers a preciseness in "normal mode", that is not available from any of the current studio monitors.
The transient detail and very clear depth of field at all volumes is achieved by having a completely even frequency response, perfectly time aligned drivers and perfect phase coherence.

The phase response in "low latency mode" is comparable to any other monitor this size or bigger with analog crossovers,
yet the frequency response, step response and controlled radiation pattern are still vastly superior.'

Keith

ATC set their speakers up including phase at the factory
 
Let's see the measurements Keith. The claim is flat from 19Hz to 20kHz +/- 0.5 dB. Just show us. At say 100dB. Mind the wee 6" cone does't poke your eye out.

IME there is very little content on CDs below about 35Hz, so this just doesn't happen in practice. Film soundtracks do have some serious low freqeuncy stuff going on!
 
Lowest string on a double bass is around 40Hz, bottom note on a concert grand is around 28Hz. These would be a good start. 28Hz to 20kHz +/- 0.5dB at 100dB plots in room please.

The Kii guy Keith quoted is talking crap by the way. Linn for one are using DSP to make speakers with correct phase all the way, and offer this correction for many non-Linn speakers. Checkout Linn Exakt. And their SPACE correction offers some correction for room modes.
 
What characterises the Kiis is that they use side and rear bass units plus DSP to create a cardiod bass response - i.e. they do electronically what the Getheins do mechanically.

Intetesting. The big Geithains are a speaker I'd love to spend some time with, I have a feeling I'd love them. I really liked my old RL904 aside from my room didn't like their bass port tuning at all and I'm just not prepared to stick a load of complex digital stuff in the signal path! ;-)
 
Here is a technical description of Linn's Exakt technology for correcting phase and magnitude distortion in their and other loudspeakers. You should point this out to Kii so that they stop making false claims that they alone use DSP to correct phase anomalies in loudspeakers. I have no Linn equipment, and am not a particular fan of theirs. Their SPACE stuff, aiui, deliberately only corrects for the calculated modes in a room based on room dimensions, it does not by design use acoustic measurement. Linn are not fans of using measuring microphones to "correct" a room, nor is Bruno Putzey I believe. (see Page 9 here).

This is yet another paradox; Keith, the great advocate of DSP based room "correction" is making a big noise about a pair of speakers designed by a guy who thinks room correction is not much use!

Got those measurements to hand Keith? Can we see them?
 
Here is a technical description of Linn's Exakt technology for correcting phase and magnitude distortion in their and other loudspeakers. You should point this out to Kii so that they stop making false claims that they alone use DSP to correct phase anomalies in loudspeakers. I have no Linn equipment, and am not a particular fan of theirs. Their SPACE stuff, aiui, deliberately only corrects for the calculated modes in a room based on room dimensions, it does not by design use acoustic measurement. Linn are not fans of using measuring microphones to "correct" a room, nor is Bruno Putzey I believe. (see Page 9 here).

This is yet another paradox; Keith, the great advocate of DSP based room "correction" is making a big noise about a pair of speakers designed by a guy who thinks room correction is not much use!

Got those measurements to hand Keith? Can we see them?
In a room with severe standing wave resonance ,judicious use of electronic room correction can really help,indeed it is the only effective method of treating issues with low bass.
Which measurements would you like I can ask Chris at Kii?
You use ATCs don't you which model do you have?
Re measurement ,I asked Thomas at Kii about Audio's measurements .
Hi Keith,



Please tell your customers that these figures are not real.

The measurements/test was done with a prototype, the firmware didn´t have the limiters and the full phase correction in the bass at that time.

They didn´t check their stimulus signal, which was most likely way too loud and caused the drivers to hit their excursion maximum.
Apparently they didn't notice this from the driver distortion...
A full 360 degree measurement suite is in progress however.
Keith
 
The large 901 coax Geithains area good ,I had the opportunity to spend some time with them a few years back, they were easy to listen to , the top end perhaps not as extended as the other monitors we heard that day.

The RL904s had what I'd describe as a neutral/BBC/classical balance which suits me down to the ground. I really dislike over-bright, forward or hyped presentation, which a fair few monitors are in order to highlight issues. In fact I find a lot of modern hi-fi way too bright and thin sounding. The MEGs struck me as a proper old-school speaker, though the RL904 tried to do the impossible bass-wise with it's little 6.5" driver, amazing extension for a comparatively small unit, but some port shenanigans were occurring to achieve it for sure.
 
How do you mix or produce on speakers with 1/10 sec latency?

Latency doesn't matter when mastering. Where does your 1/10 s come from? What buffer length do you think is needed for proper DSP?
 
Latency doesn't matter when mastering. Where does your 1/10 s come from? What buffer length do you think is needed for proper DSP?

1/10s latency (well actually "approx 90ms" but so what) comes from page 19 of the technical manual which you can download here. Latency matters extremely when you are recording - it is hard to add a track when what you are listening to happened 90ms ago. Kii recognise this and offer a low latency mode which sacrifices some of the DSP stuff. If you think that latency doesn't matter to pro users check out the thread on gearslutz I linked to earlier for comments from many pro users for which this is a deal breaker. For domestic playback latency is of little importance unless you want to use them for AV.

The same page makes the claim of a 20Hz to 25kHz +/- 0.5dB frequency response, with a long term spl of 105dB. I am asking Keith, who claims he has measured these speakers in his room, and that they are the best speakers he has measured, to show us his measurements. 20Hz at 105dB? That'll be right.
 


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