Kii Three Measurements

[napilopez]

B&W Nautilus 805 from 20 yrs ago, stops dead in ~3 msec. possibly the best sounding speaker B&W ever made?

While I don't care much for waterfall plots, the Q Acoustics Concept 300 seems to be working some magic at the price point with its gelcore cabinet then:

From Stereophile, of course.

 

[Zuccinho]

Are you using them near field? Some users here have experimented and found wider dispersion speakers to be preferred for living room type setups.

I am using them in a living space but against the long wall so they are only about 2.5m from the listening position. But even when experimenting other setups they were little different. The only flaw I can imagine they have is with pure bass impact, lacking large woofers. However, all this is obviously purely subjective and, due to time lag, hugely unreliable even ignoring likely bias, hence why I'd love to see what Amir makes of them in terms of both measurements and listening.

 

[Absolute]

Look, I'm obviously going to try and justify my purchase now but - that said - I'm rather incredulous that the Klipschs could be anywhere even close to the Kiis.

Perhaps I should be clearer when I write to avoid serious confusion.
How about this;

After measuring the Klipsch RP-160M in near-field at 9 different angles, averaging them to create a graph for what we call "listening window" and then correcting the speaker's response to be more or less flat at that listening window - and crossing the speakers over at 120 hz with two large subwoofers with 2 x 10" woofers - the Klipsches came close to the sound of the Kiis.

After a while I noticed that some clarity was missing and that my seating positioning matter a whole lot more than it did with the Kiis. Moving off to the sides changed the tonality due to poor dispersion control and fixed the sound to the closest speaker.
No matter what I did with the subs, Audiolense, manual tweaking, placement or distance to walls, I just never could settle with the sound as I easily did with the Kiis (after fixing the rising response as standard), so while I started off surprisingly happy, in the end I wound up frustrated and sold the Klipsches.

 

[onion]

Is there a quick guide on setting these up optimally? As far as I can tell, one uses trial and error with the boundary eq setting. Is there anything else?

 

[phoenixdogfan]

I think it's quite clear that cardioide can't make much difference below 100 hz, whatever difference below that is because of placement differences due to different sized speakers, not the cardioide itself. Above that you start to see some effect, but in terms of audibility I'm not sure if the frequency response tells us much. Probably would be better to look at the power and distribution of the reflections in the room.
I have those also, but it's not particularly helpful unless I can find some that matches in SPL.

I wonder about that as well. Is this a difference in degree or a difference in kind. It would be helpful if Amir had the GGNTKT M1s, the Kii 3s and the D & D 8Cs, and gave them all measurements, as well as something like the Revel F328 be, and, maybe, a Kef Reference model like the Reference 1 to see how they all stack up.

 

[Purité Audio]

Is there a quick guide on setting these up optimally? As far as I can tell, one uses trial and error with the boundary eq setting. Is there anything else?

I measure, listen, discuss with client remeasure adjust,
Keith

 

[TheHighContemplator]

... Multitone distortion looks well-behaved and steadily drops from the bass region, as you would expect in what's basically a 3-way in classic terms with some linearity-enhancing trickery.

I do wish S&R were conducting their multitone testing at a fixed level(s) rather than fixed distortion threshold. Makes it quite hard to be comparing different speakers.

For a kind-of-sort-of comparison, I pulled up their review for the Genelec S360, a fairly different loudspeaker indeed. While the S360 will play slightly louder and definitely handles a lot more bass, its distortion is worst in the midrange - quite typical performance for a PA-style 2-way. I can literally imagine its sound at this point, screechy like an overdriven PA speaker. We're talking 108 dB / 104 dB(A) at this point though (easily 10 dB higher than you would run mot speakers @ 1 m), instead of the "measly" 99 dB of the Kii Threes. I imagine the woofer doesn't have the most constant inductance, and they probably didn't do the transition to current driving at >>fs that Bruno Putzeys implemented in the Kiis.

I'm confused by this methodology, as well. Between the Kii Three, Neumann KH420, Focal Trio11 Be, and Genelec S360A measured by Sound & Recording, which of these would you say is best in the graphs below? Two have an 85db limit, while the other two have a 100db limit. I think the Neumann KH420 was measured at 4m, while the others at 1m, but perhaps I'm just not reading or comprehending something.

As far as I understand, the green line is the target curve, the red is the measured response at either 3% or 10% distortion (I'm not sure), the blue line is one type of distortion, and the bottom blue spectrum is another. Where am I wrong and how can I better understand what I'm seeing.

Any help on understanding this would be greatly appreciated.

I'm just a man who loves listening to music (85% Beethoven/Bach, 10% other composers, 4% Pink Floyd & Metal, 1% other) and wants to use one of these models in my next room, which will be used with a subwoofer under each monitor, sitting between 2.5m-4m away. In general, 100dbC peak at the listening position is the maximum level I play music.

 

[TheHighContemplator]

I figured I might as well post some of the other measurements from Sound & Recording on the four monitors I discussed above.

Order:
1. Kii Three
2. Neumann KH420
3. Focal Trio11 Be
4. Genelec S360A

FREQUENCY RESPONSE

MAX SPL

DECAY

HORIZONTAL

VERTICAL

MULTI-POSITION RESPONSE

 

[Scgorg]

I'm confused by this methodology, as well. Between the Kii Three, Neumann KH420, Focal Trio11 Be, and Genelec S360A measured by Sound & Recording, which of these would you say is best in the graphs below? Two have an 85db limit, while the other two have a 100db limit. I think the Neumann KH420 was measured at 4m, while the others at 1m, but perhaps I'm just not reading or comprehending something.

As far as I understand, the green line is the target curve, the red is the measured response at either 3% or 10% distortion (I'm not sure), the blue line is one type of distortion, and the bottom blue spectrum is another. Where am I wrong and how can I better understand what I'm seeing.

Any help on understanding this would be greatly appreciated.

I'm just a man who loves listening to music (85% Beethoven/Bach, 10% other composers, 4% Pink Floyd & Metal, 1% other) and wants to use one of these models in my next room, which will be used with a subwoofer under each monitor, sitting between 2.5m-4m away. In general, 100dbC peak at the listening position is the maximum level I play music.

View attachment 87868View attachment 87869View attachment 87866View attachment 87867

I was also very confused by this graph at one point in time, but I managed to figure it out.
The green line is the input signal, the red line is the speaker output, where the disparity between the green and red is because of speaker frequency response and crest factor of the signal. The blue line is total distortion, both harmonic and intermodulated.

It's important to note the different volumes and distances these measurements are done at. One could easily wrongly conclude that the JBL M2 distortion performance was sub-par, unless one sees that it was measured at 8 meters distance. Usually the monitors are tested at the kind of distance that they are meant to be used. So the KH420 is measured at 4m (mid field), the M2 at 8m (far field) while most monitors are measured at either 1 or 2 meters (near field).

 

[Absolute]

Yeah, it's silly that they won't bother taking one additional measurement with a set level/distance so you can compare like for like. In my opinion that could be 3 m distance which is probably more common than either 2 or 4 m distance in normal homes, at least here in the sensible part of the world

 

[thewas]

MULTI-POSITION RESPONSE

Nice to the have them directly all together which shows that the Kii due to its bass cardioid behaviour needs by far less room correction (green curves) than the rest.

 

[thewas]

The review text (in German language) is now also added to the link https://www.soundandrecording.de/equipment/kii-three-midfield-monitor-im-test/
It writes that they preferred the Kii to 2 other similar sized monitors from renowned brands, unfortunately not which.

 

[Pearljam5000]

What's the point of comparing if they're not telling to which monitors.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

Kii Three waterfall plot, same test conditions

The R700 from kef looks very good too, stop at 2-5 3 msec

 

[sysfc6]

I figured I might as well post some of the other measurements from Sound & Recording on the four monitors I discussed above.

Order:
1. Kii Three
2. Neumann KH420
3. Focal Trio11 Be
4. Genelec S360A

FREQUENCY RESPONSE
View attachment 87927View attachment 87921View attachment 87915View attachment 87909

MAX SPL
View attachment 87926View attachment 87920View attachment 87914View attachment 87905

DECAY
View attachment 87925View attachment 87919View attachment 87913View attachment 87908

HORIZONTAL
View attachment 87924View attachment 87918View attachment 87912View attachment 87907

VERTICAL
View attachment 87923View attachment 87917View attachment 87911View attachment 87906

MULTI-POSITION RESPONSE
View attachment 87922View attachment 87916View attachment 87910View attachment 87904

So, which speaker does this data tell us is good?

 

[ferrellms]

B&W Nautilus 805 from 20 yrs ago, stops dead in ~3 msec. possibly the best sounding speaker B&W ever made?

The cardioid nature of the kii's make their sound in a room much better than BW.

 

[ferrellms]

I think it's quite clear that cardioide can't make much difference below 100 hz, whatever difference below that is because of placement differences due to different sized speakers, not the cardioide itself. Above that you start to see some effect, but in terms of audibility I'm not sure if the frequency response tells us much. Probably would be better to look at the power and distribution of the reflections in the room.
I have those also, but it's not particularly helpful unless I can find some that matches in SPL.

The cardioid nature makes an enormous difference below 100 hz as the Kiis have by far the most realistic bass I have heard from a home speaker.

 

[ferrellms]

Is there no one in the US who can send some in to Amir? I have a pair of Kiis which I seem to me to be perfection but I'm in the UK. I would also be interested to see how they measure vs the Dutch 8Cs which I (and no doubt many others who looking for this sort of thing) considered but were ultimately not going to be up to snuff visually in my lounge.

I wonder if Amir would even review speakers that have breakthrough technology (cardioid) that his Floyd Toole/Harman crowd have ignored. In fact, directed beam technology may have an affect on preference ratings calibration with the spinorama data. Cardioid speakers were not used in the panel listening tests that were used to create these ratings and correlate them to the data. Given the large sonic improvement that this technology provides (a real breakthrough) the preference ratings may not be valid any longer - maybe there is some content in the spinorama data that will correlate with cardioid listener preference (directionality in bass maybe).

 

[dfuller]

So, which speaker does this data tell us is good?

They're all good. The Focal is probably the worst of them, though still decent. (That said... I hate 'em! I think they sound messy and blurry.)

I wonder if Amir would even review speakers that have breakthrough technology (cardioid) that his Floyd Toole/Harman crowd have ignored forever.

I think he's working on getting a pair of D&D 8Cs? And those follow the Toole principles quite well anyway.

 

[ferrellms]

They're all good. The Focal is probably the worst of them, though still decent. (That said... I hate 'em! I think they sound messy and blurry.)



I think he's working on getting a pair of D&D 8Cs? And those follow the Toole principles quite well anyway.

I hope you are right about the DDs - where does Toole talk about cardioid speakers? I can't remember that... I thought the Beolabs were the first and I believe they were not introduced at the time his book came out. In any case, the preference ratings correlation with spinorama data were not done with any cardioid speakers, and should probably be redone... Wildly unlikely, I know, given the effort and expense involved.

And what about perfect phase linearity? Did any of the speakers in the preference rating tests have this? (I personally cannot hear a difference with this turned on or off in my Kiis, and am curious about the claim that this results in an audible improvement.) The point is that as excellent as the work was for the preference ratings, speakers have moved on, and in the case of cardioid directionality, dramatically so. I say this as one who believes that spinorama is state-of-the-art and that the speaker preference ratings are the best single way to purchase a set of speakers.