Kii have a new site!

[Purité Audio]

Kii Audio have a new site,
http://www.kiiaudio.com/

Keith

 

[amirm]

Interesting to see them going after lifestyle audio products and professional market. Probably the two valid markets for them as opposed to audiophile.

 

[watchnerd]

Interesting to see them going after lifestyle audio products and professional market. Probably the two valid markets for them as opposed to audiophile.

Yeah, audiophiles generally hate vertically integrated solutions and powered speakers. They think they can find tune things via separates better than the original designers can using purpose-built designs.

 

[Purité Audio]

If we can get a pair into someone’s system then they ‘generally’ buy a pair , the advantages of the Kiis and Dutch&Dutch 8Cs are immediately obvious.
There have been a couple of customers for whom the Kiis simply havent been expensive enough .
I blame the mgazines!
Keith

 

[oivavoi]

Interesting reading. Props for their pedagogical skills, even though some of it is marketing fluff ("no other AD/DA conversions are transparent"... yeah right). I do wonder a bit about all that DSP massaging of the signal and the drivers that they describe though. I'm very certain that DSP can be completely audibly transparent (I would never run non-DSP speakers these days). But there may also be artifacts introduced.

There are some people, including me, who seem to perceive the Kiis as not being completely "right", while not denying their impressive accomplishments also. And reports so far seem to indicate that people who have compared them often prefer the D&Ds over the Kiis.

Difficult to know for sure, as it's all sighted listening, and I'm not aware of any corroborating measurements (other than the cabinet resonances pointed to by John Atkinson). But I can't help but wonder whether there's something in their DSP implementation (or the active cancellation by the side drivers) which creates subtle artifacts of some kind.

EDIT: let me emphasize again that these are all sighted, subjective impressions though

 

[svart-hvitt]

Interesting reading. Props for their pedagogical skills, even though some of it is marketing fluff ("no other AD/DA conversions are transparent"... yeah right). I do wonder a bit about all that DSP massaging of the signal and the drivers that they describe though. I'm very certain that DSP can be completely audibly transparent (I would never run non-DSP speakers these days). But there may also be artifacts introduced.

There are some people, including me, who seem to perceive the Kiis as not being completely "right", while not denying their impressive accomplishments also. And reports so far seem to indicate that people who have compared them often prefer the D&Ds over the Kiis.

Difficult to know for sure, as it's all sighted listening, and I'm not aware of any corroborating measurements. But I can't help but wonder whether there's something in their DSP implementation (or the active cancellation by the side drivers) which creates subtle artifacts of some kind.

What I find interesting about the Kiis are all those who insist the speakers «disappear». To me, they’re easy to localize and the sweet spot is not huge (in one setup the owner had problems setting them up in the room without making the one speaker «weighing» too much in the stereo image). I believe much of the Kii hype has to do with psychoacoustics and behavioural biases.

The Kiis are quite good given the fact that this is the company’s first attempt (so I am not bashing here). It will be nice to see what comes out of München shortly; more Kii products are expected. The hifi business really needs companies like Kii who are able to rethink and come up with new ideas.

 

[Purité Audio]

They aren’t bad, the THREEs and 8Cs are ’head and shoulders better than anything else available ‘.
That from three mastering engineers, who chose either Dutch&Dutch or Kii.

Keith

 

[FrantzM]

If we can get a pair into someone’s system then they ‘generally’ buy a pair , the advantages of the Kiis and Dutch&Dutch 8Cs are immediately obvious.
There have been a couple of customers for whom the Kiis simply havent been expensive enough .
I blame the mgazines!
Keith

In a world where changing the power cord of Turntable makes a "night and day" difference ... what would you expect? More expensive = More "better"

 

[watchnerd]

My two big questions for Kii:

1. How do I connect a Roon server?
2, How do I connect a turntable and configure the phono stage?

This is coming from a Devialet user, which has great facilities for #1 and #2, but means using passive speakers (or semi-passive with SAM).

 

[Purité Audio]

The easiest way is to purchase the ‘Kii control’ your server would connect via async usb< your phono stage would connect directly to left and right speaker, and everythnigconfiguredby the ‘control’.
It is incredibly straightforward.
Keith

 

[watchnerd]

The easiest way is to purchase the ‘Kii control’ your server would connect via async usb< your phono stage would connect directly to left and right speaker, and everythnigconfiguredby the ‘control’.
It is incredibly straightforward.
Keith

My Roon server is in a completely different room from the living room system, currently connected via WiFi, no physical linkages.

How does that work in Kii world?

 

[Purité Audio]

If you want to a pair of speakers to act as Roon endpoints you might consider Dutch&Dutch, their 8Cs are almost Roon Ready.
Kii THREE in white,


Keith

 

[fredoamigo]

elongation for the kii ! munich 2018

 

[FunctionalDoc]

I see that hese aren't for sale in the US.

 

[Purité Audio]

They aren’t for sale anywhere yet, released at the Munich Hi-End show.
Keith

 

[oivavoi]

These things look really cool. And really expensive!

 

[SIY]

I'm still waiting to hear a good demo of any of the Kii speakers. I've heard them at three shows and all were absolutely dreadful demos.

 

[svart-hvitt]

I'm still waiting to hear a good demo of any of the Kii speakers. I've heard them at three shows and all were absolutely dreadful demos.

What was the show room like?

 

[SIY]

Normal hotel rooms., so the size of a small living room. The demos all sounded horrifically bass-heavy and loud enough to cause ear-bleed. The source material was heavily processed studio crap. These ought to be good speakers, but no way to tell from this sort of exposure. Jan Didden and Paul Wilke assured me that they sounded very good when they set them up, chose the source material, and did extensive listening, and I have a lot of trust in their ears.

 

[oivavoi]

But in all such listening, there is the possibility of expectation bias. I assume that there actually is such a thing as "objectivist expectation bias" - the expectation that something will sound good because it seems to measure very well. The subjectivist equivalent may be something along the lines of "this will sound good because it's expensive and built using quantum principles by a sage in a non-magnetic wooden cabin".

Such an objectivist expectation bias is not unreasonable, of course. It may nevertheless be, however, that such expectations can make some listeners turn a deaf ear to artifacts or deficiencies that don't show up on a particular measurement sheet.