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At Ohm-Audio BV, we know many ways to make a Hifi / High End system sound optimal. If the basis of all components is of good quality, and the power supply is in order, it still often requires considerable effort to make the system sound good in the respective living room. A number of aspects, particularly in loudspeaker technology, require considerable knowledge to handle properly. This has everything to do with the specific properties of all loudspeakers in the world. Some properties you can handle very well, and if you then drive and position the loudspeaker optimally, the musical result is often great. But often it is not possible to position the loudspeakers optimally. And that has everything to do with the radiation pattern.
Every loudspeaker radiates its sound in 2 different ways. Above about 200Hz, a loudspeaker radiates directionally. Directed forward, and to the sides, depending on the loudspeaker principle. That in itself is what you want to have in your room. The sound should go forward, toward the listening positions, into the room, and if possible, the sound should sound good everywhere in the room. The problem lies in the bass. Below 200Hz, the loudspeakers radiate omnidirectionally. Bass tones go everywhere, bouncing off walls, back walls, floors and ceilings. What you hear in your room is a sum, and subtraction of all these sound waves. It often happens that you experience enormous bass energy at one position in the room, and a meter further away the bass energy is completely gone. Gone. Cancelled out by canceling waves that crisscross through your room.
With a lot of knowledge, and the right electronics and placement of the loudspeakers, some of these problems can be solved, but not all. Moreover, the loudspeakers would have to be positioned somewhere you don't want them at all. Tricky then. Kii Audio has found a solution to radiate the bass energy up to 40Hz directionally, forward that is. Toward where it needs to go. The solution actually comes from the professional corner, where at large events people also want to radiate bass energy forward, to prevent the entire neighborhood for kilometers around from listening along, to, in particular, only the bass.
Radiation Pattern Kii Three
The Kii Three is more than an ordinary loudspeaker. It is a fully digital loudspeaker, with built-in amplifiers and a powerful DSP that makes the unusual radiation pattern in the bass possible. The Kii Three has 6 pieces of 240 Watt Ncore amplifiers built in and 6 High Resolution DA Converters. Each driver in the Kii Three thus has its own DA Converter and power amplifier. You can connect the Kii Three Analog to your preamplifier, but it's actually even better to connect the Kii Three digitally with the Kii Controller. Take a high-quality digital source, such as an Antipodes or Aurender Streamer, and connect it via USB to the Kii Controller. You now connect both Kii Three via a network cable, and you can enjoy the high-quality musical qualities of this special loudspeaker.
The Special bass radiation of the Kii Three is unique, but there are more properties in the Kii Three that make this loudspeaker very special. In loudspeaker technology, besides the radiation pattern, a number of parameters of a High End loudspeaker are of great importance:
Phase Behavior Timing And to a lesser extent distortion and linearity.
Phase behavior and Timing have everything to do with each other. With phase behavior, it is meant whether the high and low tones and everything in between arrive at the listener at exactly the same time. If this is the case, then the timing is in order, and our brains have little difficulty recognizing the sound. If the phase is wrong, and room reflections cause poor phase behavior, then it suddenly sounds much less clear. Modern passive High End loudspeakers from, for example, Avalon, Magico and Wilson have the phase behavior pretty well sorted out, and these can also sound very convincing and clear. This does cost something though, and you need a nice set to drive these guys, but then you have something. The Kii Audio Three is a fully DSP-driven Digital Active system, where the phase errors are digitally removed, the crossover filters that divide the sound to the loudspeaker units are also electronic, and the result is a phase-pure loudspeaker that sounds incredibly well-timed and very grand. And that in a very modest package. The Kii Three weighs only 20kg and the dimensions are compact, only 40 x 40 x 20 cm. There is also a loudspeaker stand, but the Kii Three is clearly a compact loudspeaker.
Then in 2020 there was the BXT Subwoofer. An active expansion module for the Kii Three. At first you might think that a Kii Three alone no longer needs to deliver bass. After all, a Kii Three is already capable of reproducing down to 25Hz nicely. But to be honest, it does take the Kii Three some effort to do that. You can see the woofers moving quite a bit to reproduce these ultra-deep (organ) tones. The BXT subwoofer solves all these problems. The bass reproduction has much better quality because the distortion is a factor 10 lower than that of the Kii Three alone. In terms of sound, you would expect the sound of the Kii Three but with more and deeper bass reproduction. But that's not the case. The BXT System (BXT+Kii Three) sounds different. More like a completely different system. The reproduction is just a lot bigger, more mature. Everything goes easier and the BXT System really relaxes a lot more.
Ohm-Audio BV is a dealer of Kii Audio and we always have a set of Kii Three and BXT System ready for listening.
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Ohm-Audio BV 2023-04
