Kii THREE versus KII THREE/BXT

[Purité Audio]

You alright Svarty this seems extreme even for you?
Keith

 

[svart-hvitt]

You alright Svarty this seems extreme even for you?
Keith

Keith, you prove my point. You are a part of the «clever» Kii marketing.

 

[Thomas savage]

Ah, more subversive nationalism lending influence on one's motivations.

 

[Thomas savage]

SOME BACKGROUND ON MEASUREMENTS, MARKETING AND THE GULLIBLE OBJECTIVE CROWD

“It's all about the idea of having the best Hah.”

The quote above is from a review of the measurement wise excellent Okto Research 8 channel DAC. I think everyone understands what’s behind that quote: It’s all about having the best!

Audiophiles have different needs. Some like the looks, some look inside. For those who look inside, measurements are important. I will focus here on the “objective”, “rational” crowd.

I think the quote above can be used to cast light over some of my previous posts. To understand some of the issues in audio, you obviously need an understanding of audio - but you also need to understand marketing and its workings. People who are strong in audio may take technological insights for granted and may evaluate a company and its lead people on technological merits alone, forgetting that marketing is at play too and may take the leading role in a company’s mode of operation. While my audio science background is non-existing, I understand marketing - especially towards an “objective” crowd.

People will have noticed that I have been irritated by the marketing of firms like Kii and Grimm. In the initial marketing of Kii, it was said to be a “small big speaker”. To document their claim, a frequency response (FR) and FR error were stated as 20 Hz-20kHz, +/-0.5 dB.

To understand what was at play here, I will draw upon two sources:

1) A Multiple Regression Model for Predicting Loudspeaker Preference Using Objective Measurements: Part I - Listening Test Results, Olive (2004)
A Multiple Regression Model for Predicting Loudspeaker Preference Using Objective Measurements: Part II - Development of the Model, Olive (2004)

2) The Subjective Loudness of Typical Program Material, Soulodre et al. (2003)

From the first source, Olive (2004), often quoted in Toole’s book, the reader learns that bass accounts for ca. 31 percent of perceived sound quality. Any marketeer understands that bass is imperative to sales, and profits if bass doesn’t drive costs.

The second source, Soulodre et al. (2003) confirms the common wisdom that sound level differences below ca. 0.5 dB are inaudible in music material (see figure below). So any artefacts from the flat smooth curve that are less than 0.5 dB are inaudible, i.e. a speaker curve that has a FR curve error below 0.5 dB must be deemed as neutral as it gets.

View attachment 23864

If a sales organization can play on both bass (cheap in terms of space and cost) and world record neutrality in a one-liner like 20Hz-20kHz (+/-0.5 dB), it will draw a large crowd of interested «objective», «rational» people. “It’s all about the idea of having the best”, right?

I think people of technical insight sometimes have difficulty understanding this line of reasoning (or they pretend they don’t understand except when they start their own venture), because technical people understand that there’s more to it than just a one-liner containing the FR and FR error. But for a marketing oriented mind pursuing sales and profits it makes a huge difference if you can formulate the rational, objective audiophile’s dream in one single line.

Kii’s initial marketing was based on “small big speaker” and a one-liner like 20Hz-20kHz (+/-0.25dB), thus fulfilling the “objective”, “rational” audiophile’s dream. Without any notice, 20Hz was changed to 30Hz. That’s a huge change, isn’t it? Remember, Kii Three is a 32 litres box. It normally takes in excess of 30 litres to produce adequate bass quality alone down to 20 Hz, right? Then came the BXT module, which tripled the size of Kii Three and more than doubled the price. Despite the sudden “loss” of bass capacity from the original Kii Three marketing brochure, and the tripling of size and more than doubling of price, people still defend “the small big speaker” and the Kii people.

The other part of the dream, Kii Three’s amazingly low FR error - a world record, mind you - always looked fishy to competent people. First, just the aborption of higher frequencies from 20 to 25 kHz makes it impossible to achieve such a low FR error if you don’t manipulate, i.e. colour, the initial output to score higher (lower FR error) on anechoic FR measurements. But this is a highly pedantic exercise, to take into account absorption in normal air in a near or mid-field situation.

A more interesting part of this story is the fact that Kii never documented their bass capacity or their neutral frequency response as stated in brochures. And external parties have NEVER been able to reproduce Kiis claims. Here are some measurement oriented comments from reviewers:

«Its forward frequency response, measured at 1 m on the tweeter axis [Graph 1, below], provides some evidence of this. lt is, to within tight limits, flat, the response errors being +/-2.1 dB for both speakers, 300H2-20kHz (...) This isn't quite the +/-0.5dB that Kii Audio claims but it's remarkable nonetheless».
Source: https://www.kiiaudio.com/media/GENERAL/docs/reviews/kii3hfn818lowrez.pdf

«As may be expected from a DSP-enabled loudspeaker, the Kii Three’s frequency response curve is relatively flat, running from about 30 Hz to slightly above 20 kHz with minor deviations (see Figure 1). Most visible are a slight bump around 1,500 Hz and a depression at 12.5 kHz. According to Putzeys, these are due to component variations, which are not taken care of by the DSP correction. This might be the case to some extent, but there also seems to be some energy storage issues at play, since the same irregularities show up in the cumulative decay plots (see Figure 2)».
Source: https://www.kiiaudio.com/media/GENERAL/docs/reviews/audioxpress012017low.pdf

The first source reproduces FR error which is 4 times the stated one in Kii brochures.

The second source, from which I copied the FR in a chart to compare it to another speaker, tells the reader about a «relatively flat» FR curve, not a world record.

In other words: When external parties tried to reproduce Kii’s claims, the FR error quadrupled. I guess the marketeers behind Kii always thought +/-0.5dB would sell more speakers than +/-2dB. What do you think?

My background may make me somewhat biased. I think I intuitively look more on the marketing side of things than the pure technical issues than some other members. I try and understand the technical issues too, but I have much more experience exposing and understanding marketing and its derivative, pure bullshit.

I don’t think it’s an accident that these marketing issues arise in Kii. Bruno Putzeys, the mastermind behind Kii Three (he is undoubtedly competent and clever), is associated with Grimm Audio, the audophile company that sells clocks and overpriced streamers. This is what Grimm states on their web site in MU1, a €10k streamer;

«We had the desire to develop the most accurate audio source of our imagination. In our experience the human hearing system shows an incredible sensitivity to anomalies. Even unimaginably small abberations appear to be audible. In principle digital audio does offer perfect reproduction. Its sonic quality however is limited by the implementation accuracy of the physical and mathematical laws that affect the conversion from one format to another. Grimm Audio strives to bring you confidence that all technical details are taken care of to the greatest extend. As a result the reproduction system steps out of the way of the music (...) Needless to say that the MU1 features our trademark ultra low jitter clock. This is a music player worthy of the name Grimm Audio».
Source: http://www.grimmaudio.com/hifi-products/music-players/mu1/

Putzey’s Mola Mola venture, that produces €10k DACs with unmeasurably high specifications («THD, IMD: not measurable (estimated -150 dB)»), says:

«You probably know the frustration of discovering your DAC has suddenly gone out of date because some new super chip has hit the market. We decided to stay out of that cycle and design, from the ground up, a discrete DAC whose unbeatable staying power results simply from being more than 10 years ahead of the performance curve. There's room enough for improvement: today’s best DAC chip claims no better than 22 bits’ worth of dynamic range and only 20 bits’ worth of linearity. High resolution music deserves better than that. Mola-Mola’s DAC is designed from the ground up using circuits and digital algorithms that were entirely developed in house».

So it seems like marketing is in the blood of the people behind Kii. And it’s this marketing bias that deserves a closer look by ASR members, isn’t it?

Music is marketed to you , if you rejected all the music that in some way or other has been targeted to a certain audience you'd be left listening to ... Yourself in the shower.

If Kii don't intelligently market their products they are dumb as rocks. Believing there to be some virtue in the non marketing of goods is naive and ridiculous not to mention ignorant.

 

[svart-hvitt]

Music is marketed to you , if you rejected all the music that in some way or other has been targeted to a certain audience you'd be left listening to ... Yourself in the shower.

If Kii don't intelligently market their products they are dumb as rocks. Believing there to be some virtue in the non marketing of goods is naive and ridiculous not to mention ignorant.

Marketing isn’t an evil per se even if it’s reduced to pure BS in many cases.

Being market oriented is a good thing.

What I don’t understand is why you defend marketing à la Grimm and Mola Mola - two Putzeys ventures - while @amirm ‘s measurements document the inaudible qualities of such overpriced products.

When it comes to Kii’s exaggerating specifications, I don’t understand why you defend such practice. ASR is a place to honor conservative and good specifications at a reasonable price, isn’t it?

Your avatar is a horse. Now I think you sound like one of Orwell’s sheep

 

[andreasmaaan]

In other words: When external parties tried to reproduce Kii’s claims, the FR error quadrupled. I guess the marketeers behind Kii always thought +/-0.5dB would sell more speakers than +/-2dB. What do you think?

I think those degrees of measured variation are within ranges of experimental error and/or attributable to variations in the measurement conditions.

«...According to Putzeys, these are due to component variations, which are not taken care of by the DSP correction. This might be the case to some extent, but there also seems to be some energy storage issues at play, since the same irregularities show up in the cumulative decay plots (see Figure 2)»

Now this is more interesting. Assuming the attribution is correct, Putzeys seems to be admitting that the unit-to-unit variation is greater than the specified range of error.

That would be grounds to change the spec in my view.

 

[svart-hvitt]

I think those degrees of measured variation are within ranges of experimental error and/or attributable to variations in the measurement conditions.



Now this is more interesting. Assuming the attribution is correct, Putzeys seems to be admitting that the unit-to-unit variation is greater than the specified error range.

That would be grounds to change the spec in my view.

Exactly.

Maybe the specs are an average - not median, mind you - of the expected performance of all Kii Threes produced...

 

[March Audio]

SOME BACKGROUND ON MEASUREMENTS, MARKETING AND THE GULLIBLE OBJECTIVE CROWD

“It's all about the idea of having the best Hah.”

The quote above is from a review of the measurement wise excellent Okto Research 8 channel DAC. I think everyone understands what’s behind that quote: It’s all about having the best!

Audiophiles have different needs. Some like the looks, some look inside. For those who look inside, measurements are important. I will focus here on the “objective”, “rational” crowd.

I think the quote above can be used to cast light over some of my previous posts. To understand some of the issues in audio, you obviously need an understanding of audio - but you also need to understand marketing and its workings. People who are strong in audio may take technological insights for granted and may evaluate a company and its lead people on technological merits alone, forgetting that marketing is at play too and may take the leading role in a company’s mode of operation. While my audio science background is non-existing, I understand marketing - especially towards an “objective” crowd.

People will have noticed that I have been irritated by the marketing of firms like Kii and Grimm. In the initial marketing of Kii, it was said to be a “small big speaker”. To document their claim, a frequency response (FR) and FR error were stated as 20 Hz-20kHz, +/-0.5 dB.

To understand what was at play here, I will draw upon two sources:

1) A Multiple Regression Model for Predicting Loudspeaker Preference Using Objective Measurements: Part I - Listening Test Results, Olive (2004)
A Multiple Regression Model for Predicting Loudspeaker Preference Using Objective Measurements: Part II - Development of the Model, Olive (2004)

2) The Subjective Loudness of Typical Program Material, Soulodre et al. (2003)

From the first source, Olive (2004), often quoted in Toole’s book, the reader learns that bass accounts for ca. 31 percent of perceived sound quality. Any marketeer understands that bass is imperative to sales, and profits if bass doesn’t drive costs.

The second source, Soulodre et al. (2003) confirms the common wisdom that sound level differences below ca. 0.5 dB are inaudible in music material (see figure below). So any artefacts from the flat smooth curve that are less than 0.5 dB are inaudible, i.e. a speaker curve that has a FR curve error below 0.5 dB must be deemed as neutral as it gets.

View attachment 23864

If a sales organization can play on both bass (cheap in terms of space and cost) and world record neutrality in a one-liner like 20Hz-20kHz (+/-0.5 dB), it will draw a large crowd of interested «objective», «rational» people. “It’s all about the idea of having the best”, right?

I think people of technical insight sometimes have difficulty understanding this line of reasoning (or they pretend they don’t understand except when they start their own venture), because technical people understand that there’s more to it than just a one-liner containing the FR and FR error. But for a marketing oriented mind pursuing sales and profits it makes a huge difference if you can formulate the rational, objective audiophile’s dream in one single line.

Kii’s initial marketing was based on “small big speaker” and a one-liner like 20Hz-20kHz (+/-0.25dB), thus fulfilling the “objective”, “rational” audiophile’s dream. Without any notice, 20Hz was changed to 30Hz. That’s a huge change, isn’t it? Remember, Kii Three is a 32 litres box. It normally takes in excess of 30 litres to produce adequate bass quality alone down to 20 Hz, right? Then came the BXT module, which tripled the size of Kii Three and more than doubled the price. Despite the sudden “loss” of bass capacity from the original Kii Three marketing brochure, and the tripling of size and more than doubling of price, people still defend “the small big speaker” and the Kii people.

The other part of the dream, Kii Three’s amazingly low FR error - a world record, mind you - always looked fishy to competent people. First, just the aborption of higher frequencies from 20 to 25 kHz makes it impossible to achieve such a low FR error if you don’t manipulate, i.e. colour, the initial output to score higher (lower FR error) on anechoic FR measurements. But this is a highly pedantic exercise, to take into account absorption in normal air in a near or mid-field situation.

A more interesting part of this story is the fact that Kii never documented their bass capacity or their neutral frequency response as stated in brochures. And external parties have NEVER been able to reproduce Kiis claims. Here are some measurement oriented comments from reviewers:

«Its forward frequency response, measured at 1 m on the tweeter axis [Graph 1, below], provides some evidence of this. lt is, to within tight limits, flat, the response errors being +/-2.1 dB for both speakers, 300H2-20kHz (...) This isn't quite the +/-0.5dB that Kii Audio claims but it's remarkable nonetheless».
Source: https://www.kiiaudio.com/media/GENERAL/docs/reviews/kii3hfn818lowrez.pdf

«As may be expected from a DSP-enabled loudspeaker, the Kii Three’s frequency response curve is relatively flat, running from about 30 Hz to slightly above 20 kHz with minor deviations (see Figure 1). Most visible are a slight bump around 1,500 Hz and a depression at 12.5 kHz. According to Putzeys, these are due to component variations, which are not taken care of by the DSP correction. This might be the case to some extent, but there also seems to be some energy storage issues at play, since the same irregularities show up in the cumulative decay plots (see Figure 2)».
Source: https://www.kiiaudio.com/media/GENERAL/docs/reviews/audioxpress012017low.pdf

The first source reproduces FR error which is 4 times the stated one in Kii brochures.

The second source, from which I copied the FR in a chart to compare it to another speaker, tells the reader about a «relatively flat» FR curve, not a world record.

In other words: When external parties tried to reproduce Kii’s claims, the FR error quadrupled. I guess the marketeers behind Kii always thought +/-0.5dB would sell more speakers than +/-2dB. What do you think?

My background may make me somewhat biased. I think I intuitively look more on the marketing side of things than the pure technical issues than some other members. I try and understand the technical issues too, but I have much more experience exposing and understanding marketing and its derivative, pure bullshit.

I don’t think it’s an accident that these marketing issues arise in Kii. Bruno Putzeys, the mastermind behind Kii Three (he is undoubtedly competent and clever), is associated with Grimm Audio, the audophile company that sells clocks and overpriced streamers. This is what Grimm states on their web site in MU1, a €10k streamer;

«We had the desire to develop the most accurate audio source of our imagination. In our experience the human hearing system shows an incredible sensitivity to anomalies. Even unimaginably small abberations appear to be audible. In principle digital audio does offer perfect reproduction. Its sonic quality however is limited by the implementation accuracy of the physical and mathematical laws that affect the conversion from one format to another. Grimm Audio strives to bring you confidence that all technical details are taken care of to the greatest extend. As a result the reproduction system steps out of the way of the music (...) Needless to say that the MU1 features our trademark ultra low jitter clock. This is a music player worthy of the name Grimm Audio».
Source: http://www.grimmaudio.com/hifi-products/music-players/mu1/

Putzey’s Mola Mola venture, that produces €10k DACs with unmeasurably high specifications («THD, IMD: not measurable (estimated -150 dB)»), says:

«You probably know the frustration of discovering your DAC has suddenly gone out of date because some new super chip has hit the market. We decided to stay out of that cycle and design, from the ground up, a discrete DAC whose unbeatable staying power results simply from being more than 10 years ahead of the performance curve. There's room enough for improvement: today’s best DAC chip claims no better than 22 bits’ worth of dynamic range and only 20 bits’ worth of linearity. High resolution music deserves better than that. Mola-Mola’s DAC is designed from the ground up using circuits and digital algorithms that were entirely developed in house».

So it seems like marketing is in the blood of the people behind Kii. And it’s this marketing bias that deserves a closer look by ASR members, isn’t it?

Marketing is inherent to ALL business. I use some "flowery" wording on my website. That doesn't necessarily equate to a deceptive agenda, although as we know some complete BS is spouted in the area of hifi.

We have discussed above some issues and flaws with the rocks you are throwing at Kii. When you examine the issue here it really doesn't manifest in the way you portray.

This is why people are dismissing your comments. There seems to more than just a bit of your own "marketing" of this viewpoint/position.

 

[svart-hvitt]

Marketing is inherent to ALL business. I use some "flowery" wording on my website. That doesn't necessarily equate to a deceptive agenda, although as we know some complete BS is spouted in the area of hifi.

We have discussed above some issues and flaws with the rocks you are throwing at Kii. When you examine the issue here it really doesn't manifest in the way you portray.

This is why people are dismissing your comments

Flaws?

Do you contest that a FR error of +/-0.5 dB would be a «world record» and on the border of being pointless in practice (due to for example absorption in air of HF)?
Do you contest that external parties have documented a FR error which is at least 4 times as high as Kii’s claims?
Do you contest that Kii changed the bass capacity from 20 to 30 Hz?

On a more practical note: Have you heard the Kii Three, with and without the BXT module? In my ears, the Kii Three and the Kii Three BXT are two different speakers. And I think that practical experience cast light on this discussion. People bought the Kii Three, believing they got the capacity and sound of Kii Three BXT.

 

[March Audio]

Marketing isn’t an evil per se even if it’s reduced to pure BS in many cases.

Being market oriented is a good thing.

What I don’t understand is why you defend marketing à la Grimm and Mola Mola - two Putzeys ventures - while @amirm ‘s measurements document the inaudible qualities of such overpriced products.

When it comes to Kii’s exaggerating specifications, I don’t understand why you defend such practice. ASR is a place to honor conservative and good specifications at a reasonable price, isn’t it?

Your avatar is a horse. Now I think you sound like one of Orwell’s sheep

People care if ridiculous claims or plain lies are marketed.

They don't care if a frequency response measured in a different way or to a different standard comes out with slightly different results.

That's about understanding the technicalities.

 

[andreasmaaan]

Do you contest that a FR error of +/-0.5 dB would be a «world record» and on the border of being pointless in practice (due to for example absorption in air of HF)?

I agree it's probably better than necessary (this depends on the Q of the fluctuations, really), but for the reasons stated above don't think it's in the slightest bit remarkable or worthy of being called a "world record", given the ease with which such figures can be reached with DSP and agreed measurement conditions.

What would be disappointing would be if individual speakers didn't in practice achieve the claimed spec due to component variations. Other manufacturers (e.g. Revel) tune each unit individually to ensure compliance with the published specs. If this is not the case with Kii, I would argue that the spec should be changed.

Do you contest that external parties have documented a FR error which is at least 4 times as high as Kii’s claims?

This part I contest. We don't know enough about these external parties' measurement setups to know the margins of error, and we don't know to what extent their measurements conditions differed from those of the manufacturer.

Do you contest that Kii changed the bass capacity from 30 to 20 Hz?

Sorry if I missed it earlier in the thread, but was the spec actually changed? If so, was there a change in firmware that actually did raise the F3 from 20 to 30Hz? Or did nothing change in practice, but the spec was revised due to being wrong in the first place?

 

[svart-hvitt]

People care if ridiculous claims or plain lies are marketed.

They don't care if a frequency response measured in a different way or to a different standard comes out with slightly different results.

That's about understanding the technicalities.

You didn’t answer my questions but nevermind.

Kii’s marketing reminds me a bit about Devialet’s Phantoms that go down to 14Hz, according to specs.

I am not sure every Devialet customer understands the little print. And I am quite certain many audiophile Kii customers never understood the little print of Kii either.

I don’t see why Kii and Putzeys should get special treatment on ASR as opposed to smaller fish like Empirical. In some ways, it’s more interesting if you can tell that the emperor is naked than if a farmer wears no clothes, right?

 

[svart-hvitt]

I agree it's probably better than necessary, but for the reasons stated above don't think it's in the slightest bit remarkable or worthy of being called a "world record", given the ease with which such figures can be reached with DSP and agreed measurement conditions.

What would be disappointing would be if individual speakers didn't in practice achieve the claimed spec due to component variations. Other manufacturers (e.g. Revel) tune each unit individually to ensure compliance with the published specs. If this is not the case with Kii, I would argue that the spec should be changed.



This part I contest. We don't know enough about these external parties' measurement setups to know the margins of error, and we don't know to what extent their measurements conditions differed from those of the manufacturer.



Sorry if I missed it earlier in the thread, but was the spec actually changed? If so, was there a change in firmware that actually did raise the F3 from 20 to 30Hz? Or did nothing change in practice, but the spec was revised due to being wrong in the first place?

On the bass capacity issue and sudden change of specs, see clip below from an old manual found on the internet.

The old manual says 20 Hz. Now it’s 30 Hz.

Om December 7th 2015, a Gearslutz user wrote:

«WOW!! I don't think there is a speaker this small that is flat down to 20Hz, with near perfect time alignment, and with tolerance for wall placement. These seem like THE perfect speaker. I have to try them».
Source: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpost.php?p=11528425&postcount=30

 

[HammerSandwich]

The second source, Soulodre et al. (2003) confirms the common wisdom that sound level differences below ca. 0.5 dB are inaudible in music material (see figure below). So any artefacts from the flat smooth curve that are less than 0.5 dB are inaudible, i.e. a speaker curve that has a FR curve error below 0.5 dB must be deemed as neutral as it gets.

I have not read the paper, but this feels like a misinterpretation.

Subjective loudness is not about tonal balance. Even if (most?) people cannot recognize a 0.5dB change in absolute level, they still can hear a difference when everything below 700Hz is -0.25dB & everything higher is +0.25dB. (Go back to @Floyd Toole, who reports low-Q/wide-bandwidth resonances require little SPL change to be audible.)

And even the absolute-level bit is questionable. Listeners might not be able to say, "A-ha! That got louder!" with a half-dB boost, but it can ruin a blind AB test.

 

[svart-hvitt]

I have not read the paper, but this feels like a misinterpretation.

Subjective loudness is not about tonal balance. Even if (most?) people cannot recognize a 0.5dB change in absolute level, they still can hear a difference when everything below 700Hz is -0.25dB & everything higher is +0.25dB. (Go back to @Floyd Toole, who reports low-Q/wide-bandwidth resonances require little SPL change to be audible.)

And even the absolute-level bit is questionable. Listeners might not be able to say, "A-ha! That got louder!" with a half-dB boost, but it can ruin a blind AB test.

You’re right. The paper is about level, not tonal balance of sound. I figured the level must be more easily detectable than a glitch in the tonal balance, i.e. frequency response, say due to a crossover issue. So SPL error is more easily detectable than FR error?

Because there is no such thing as a perfectly neutral speaker FR wise, and because of possible room contribution to tonal balance, I wonder how one could go ahead and test FR error audibility, though (you could maybe add a tonal FR glitch to a speaker whose FR is not perfectly linear?).

 

[Cosmik]

I can't get excited about the bass spec inconsistency. This speaker will have dynamic bass management that allows ridiculous SPLs for short periods but will back off the deep bass if there's a danger of things getting too hot. It may be that it doesn't have to do anything for 99.9% of domestic listening. If that was the case, should the brochure specify the behaviour as it is for the 0.1% of the time, or the 99.9%? Or perhaps specify something in between?

A conventional passive speaker wouldn't have the dynamic limiter and so the creators of the brochure wouldn't have that dilemma - but they might want to include some information on how to send the speakers back for repair.

For me, a much more important issue is whether the limiting is audible at the volumes I will listen at; or whether it gives a sensation of instability or compression; 'pulling punches' even if I don't hear it directly. And this, of course, is something that cannot be expressed in a couple of numbers in a brochure.

Modern devices are more defined by their software than their hardware e.g. a speaker with DSP and current drive or motion feedback may achieve higher performance using a cheap driver than a dumb speaker achieves with a super-exotic driver.

Such adaptive systems may behave deceptively with the simple tests that audiophiles use. It would be an injustice if a manufacturer had to use the worst case specification of an adaptive system even though it would behave much better than that most of the time. And equally it would be misleading for a manufacturer to fail to mention that the system may limit or compress in some circumstances. Everything is a lot less black and white once systems become hardware-software hybrids.

 

[svart-hvitt]

I can't get excited about the bass spec inconsistency. This speaker will have dynamic bass management that allows ridiculous SPLs for short periods but will back off the deep bass if there's a danger of things getting too hot. It may be that it doesn't have to do anything for 99.9% of domestic listening. If that was the case, should the brochure specify the behaviour as it is for the 0.1% of the time, or the 99.9%? Or perhaps specify something in between?

A conventional passive speaker wouldn't have the dynamic limiter and so the creators of the brochure wouldn't have that dilemma - but they might want to include some information on how to send the speakers back for repair.

For me, a much more important issue is whether the limiting is audible at the volumes I will listen at; or whether it gives a sensation of instability or compression; 'pulling punches' even if I don't hear it directly. And this, of course, is something that cannot be expressed in a couple of numbers in a brochure.

Modern devices are more defined by their software than their hardware e.g. a speaker with DSP and current drive or motion feedback may achieve higher performance using a cheap driver than a dumb speaker achieves with a super-exotic driver.

Such adaptive systems may behave deceptively with the simple tests that audiophiles use. It would be an injustice if a manufacturer had to use the worst case specification of an adaptive system even though it would behave much better than that most of the time. And equally it would be misleading for a manufacturer to fail to mention that the system may limit or compress in some circumstances. Everything is a lot less black and white once systems become hardware-software hybrids.

MODERN DSP SPEAKER

 

[HammerSandwich]

So SPL error is more easily detectable than FR error?

I believe it's the reverse.

I wonder how one could go ahead and test FR error audibility, though (you could maybe add a tonal FR glitch to a speaker whose FR is not perfectly linear?).

Surely. Until we have perfect speakers/headphones, the tests reveal what relative changes are detectable.

 

[svart-hvitt]

I believe it's the reverse.

Of course. I got it backwards when writing

 

[firedog]

Kii’s initial marketing was based on “small big speaker” and a one-liner like 20Hz-20kHz (+/-0.25dB), thus fulfilling the “objective”, “rational” audiophile’s dream. Without any notice, 20Hz was changed to 30Hz. That’s a huge change, isn’t it? Remember, Kii Three is a 32 litres box. It normally takes in excess of 30 litres to produce adequate bass quality alone down to 20 Hz, right? Then came the BXT module, which tripled the size of Kii Three and more than doubled the price. Despite the sudden “loss” of bass capacity from the original Kii Three marketing brochure, and the tripling of size and more than doubling of price, people still defend “the small big speaker” and the Kii people.

The other part of the dream, Kii Three’s amazingly low FR error - a world record, mind you - always looked fishy to competent people. First, just the aborption of higher frequencies from 20 to 25 kHz makes it impossible to achieve such a low FR error if you don’t manipulate, i.e. colour, the initial output to score higher (lower FR error) on anechoic FR measurements. But this is a highly pedantic exercise, to take into account absorption in normal air in a near or mid-field situation.

A more interesting part of this story is the fact that Kii never documented their bass capacity or their neutral frequency response as stated in brochures. And external parties have NEVER been able to reproduce Kiis claims. Here are some measurement oriented comments from reviewers:

«Its forward frequency response, measured at 1 m on the tweeter axis [Graph 1, below], provides some evidence of this. lt is, to within tight limits, flat, the response errors being +/-2.1 dB for both speakers, 300H2-20kHz (...) This isn't quite the +/-0.5dB that Kii Audio claims but it's remarkable nonetheless».
Source: https://www.kiiaudio.com/media/GENERAL/docs/reviews/kii3hfn818lowrez.pdf

«As may be expected from a DSP-enabled loudspeaker, the Kii Three’s frequency response curve is relatively flat, running from about 30 Hz to slightly above 20 kHz with minor deviations (see Figure 1). Most visible are a slight bump around 1,500 Hz and a depression at 12.5 kHz. According to Putzeys, these are due to component variations, which are not taken care of by the DSP correction. This might be the case to some extent, but there also seems to be some energy storage issues at play, since the same irregularities show up in the cumulative decay plots (see Figure 2)».
Source: https://www.kiiaudio.com/media/GENERAL/docs/reviews/audioxpress012017low.pdf

You forgot to mention:

The "component variations" issue was taken care of long ago and is no longer an issue. It was only an issue in some of the very early models.

You only quoted part of the distortion measurements from that article, and the article itself mentions how for the vast majority of the spectrum the results are better. Hence "remarkable".

Other measurements in other reviews gave better results and much closer to those claimed by Kii. Maybe your quoted article is the outlier?

Listen to them: at any kind of even close to normal volume the last thing you would say is that they sound distorted or colored. In my room they give quite useful bass output even below 20 hz. Yes, not as loud as at 30hz, but quite audible.

The BXT module clearly isn't for most users. Clearly for those with very large listening spaces or those who have to have that last bit of bass or realistic sound pressure levels for certain types of recordings. So I don't think the BXT says anything negative about the Kii. The original standmount was built to a specific purpose and certain decisions were made about what couldn't be done in order to get there. Bruno once described it as (my paraphrase) not wanting the pursuit of the perfect to prevent the actual production of the speaker. The Kii people said years ago they intended to produce both bigger and smaller models.

This seems to me simply them fulfilling that idea. What's the big deal?