Tuesday, 27 November 2018

LXMinis and Kii THREEs - A Day Out


I've been corresponding with The Rational Audiophile for a while now - I've referenced him in one blog or another a number of times. In fact, it was his mentioning the Kiis in a post that got the mindworm started in the first place, dammit...

Anyway, I spent a very interesting and enjoyable weekend with TRA both in his lair and in a local hostelry the evening before - the multiple pints had surely worn off before we got started the following morning! I had packed up the Kiis and LXMinis, and shipped them over to his listening room, so we could compare them with his Kephs (modified Kef Concord IIIs), which are 3-way DSP-managed linear phase jobbies, using the same Sony amp as my LXMinis.

As you can see in the picture above, we weren't particular fussy about positioning the 3 sets of speakers, which might have been a mistake. Starting with the Kiis, we just moved things around a bit to get them into a reasonable spot. The LXMinis were added after lunch, and obviously didn't improve the setup situation, although they were allowed their "stand off" from the front wall.

We didn't take notes, and weren't especially scientific about the tracks we played, other than many selections from TRA's playlists of tracks illustrating Imaging, Bass and other topics. However, we did manage to get the Keph/Kii volumes really close, using my RadioShack level meter, and generally enabled switching A/B in a fraction of a second, so that at least was good practice.

Some thoughts and observations, as I recall them now some two weeks later, in no particular order of significance - apologies for the "irrational audiophile" terms for sonic quality. These are my thoughts, of course, TRA can provide his own!

  • They sound really different (no sh*t!). The Kephs seemed to have an "edginess", which couldn't be removed with any kind of EQing, although it could be lessened. The Kiis always sounded incredibly smooth, and easy to listen to - not that the Kephs were hard to listen to, just compared to the Kiis! I had started the Kiis with the "Harmon-Kardon curve" set up, using the Kii hi shelving 3000Hz/-4dB, but we also listened with this flattened - they just got a bit brighter, and still sounded natural once one adjusted
  • For me, it took some time to get used to the sound of both speakers in that room, but I always preferred the Kiis, possibly because I was more used to those already. 
  • The Kiis sounded much better from further back in the room - they effectively created a huge window in the front wall/window, behind them, into the soundstage. In the test location, the Kephs didn't do this, for me anyway, listening from the same location. This is possibly due to the Kiis' much better control of sound dispersion in the room - you hear a higher proportion of direct vs. indirect sound
  • Interestingly, the recorded "room sound" i.e. reverberation and its decay, differed considerably, in a strange way, between speakers. On some recordings, the Kiis had more obvious room sound, on other the Kephs, but, to my ears, the Kiis reproduction of reverberation always sounded more natural, more "detailed" and smoother
  • The Kiis' bass reproduction is very very striking! Quite literally.
  • The LXMinis were very interesting - great bass, in their test position, with a spacious soundfield. However, by the time we introduced them, our ears and brains were getting pretty fried - this listening is hard work - so we didn't really do them justice with A/B/C comparisons, in fact, given the tricky setting up for side-by-side track comparisons, and the fact that Kephs/LXMinis use the same remote control, it was hard/impossible to switch A/B/C conveniently!! The LXMini presentation is so different, it was hard to adjust without more prolonged listening, but they were impressive in their own way.
Conclusions? Oh alright...
  1. Kiis are amazing - we just put them in the room, and that was it. But I would say that, wouldn't I. Maybe some location/boundary eq tweaking could have made a difference, but who knows?
  2. Kephs are pretty cool too - er, how much did they cost??
  3. Don't take on too much at a time! Do comparisons between pairs only, three way is a) hard b) difficult to recall the first when listening to the third option
  4. Be more careful about setup, to optimise each speaker set's performance. For example, we have since speculated about the effect of furniture close to the Kiis having an effect on imaging, which TRA did not find so convincing as his Kephs sometimes. I would say that I found that with LXMinis vs. Kiis, but that's worn off as my personal perception filters have adjusted to Kii presentation.
Technical Notes

Er, none especially, other than everything performed well, nothing broke, which was an achievement in itself. We listened to a vast array of music, including
  • An early Telarc digital recording (1977) which is one of my favourites, also available on Tidal/Spotify
  • Lots of pop/techno/electronica
  • Many large orchestra tracks, both classical and film scores
  • Chamber music, including Beaux Arts Brahms Piano Trio, solo piano, vocalist + piano
TRA has a pretty eclectic taste which was interesting in itself - the Spotify weekly email seems to have worked well here!

Music was largely sourced from Spotify Premium (300+k bps) and Tidal HiRes (CD quality). It is possible that, owing to logistics, Kephs + Spotify / Kiis + Tidal, the Kephs could have been disadvantaged by the lower rez signal. We'd have to try all this again to find out, but after my experiences with BBC R3, you'd have to work hard to have this be a bigger factor than the speaker differences.