Kelly

Kii Threes outdated? by what standard? Kii represents such a paradigm shift in design and technology, there still isn’t much that competes with it. The basic components of driver design, etc has been relatively mature for decades. Improvements in traditional speaker design have been incremental at best. I’m with firedog, I would be surprised if there was much of an audible difference between early Threes and more recent ones. As far as them sounding thin on strings etc, I never have thought so. One thing to know is that they are made to be flat across the freq band. Most of us actually like the Harman curve better than a truly honest speaker. With just a few tweaks to the EQ on the Kii control, you can get very close to that curve and a gentler, slightly warmer sound.

Awesome recommendation. I haven’t thought about Chico in a looong time. I saw Chico and Von with Diane Reeves at the Blue Note in New York in the late 90s. That was a way fun concert. The Freeman’s were great, but Diane Reeves was the star. Our table was right at the stage. I was just a teenager, but fortunately I fully understood where I was.

Hooray for this article! Back to our roots! I do agree that audio manufacturers largely made homebrew solutions obsolete, but I do love this kind of stuff. Back to 2011!

Denon bought Nura. I have the NuraTrue and are very good. Denon sells the PerL Pro which I think is the NuraTrue Pro or whatever the second generation of the NuraTrue was. It one of the few novel approaches to improving sound from inexpensive headphones I have seen. I highly recommend them.

Content is King. I have always used Tidal (originally used wimp before it was bought) and never made the switch to qobuz. I stopped worrying too much about the details. The. Again, my speakers resamw everything to one rate and bit depth anyway…

Nura had introduced the NuraTrue 2 and it was going to do lossless Bluetooth, but then Denon bought them and they evaporated before I could try them. I think Denon is starting to introduce the former Nura line under their own brand. If you want a decent wireless earbuds then look there.

I ended up with a Sony instead of the frame. My wife still doesn’t let me forget how much more she would have rather had the Frame. Looks totally great!

I cannot comment on your technical concerns, but I have an M4 and it works a a treat. It sound quality for recording and playback is shocking for the price.

I guess Sony has tons of money, but they make some pretty sweet headphones of their own. Don’t see why they’d want to own Audeze.

It also just depends on the sound you want. Any decent active is going to give you a truly different sound than what you are used to (especially Harbeth with any tube components.) I have no experience with the LS50, but really good actives (Kii, Genelec, D&D…) will have an accuracy and clarity that is often confusing and off-putting at first. If the recording is bad, then you will hear it in its full wretchedness. But when it’s right, it will sound right in a new way.

Crazy good deal on a full Three/BXT system… https://reverb.com/item/68991404-kii-audio-three-bxt-premium-monitor-system-used

Just saw this thread. If they do go under that would be a huge emotional blow for me personally. I grew up staring at ARC equipment literally as long as I can remember (I’m 43.) I can’t say I’m surprised, they just haven’t continued to push anything forward, how many people can really afford to buy gigantic tube amps, and how far can you really push tube-based designs and come out with a new $$$ Ref model? At my local hi-fi shop in Raleigh, NC my favorite combinations were always ARC preamps in front of Ayre power amps. I guess it tells you a lot about ARC’s problems, I should be one of their customers given my nostalgia for their brand, but none of their products made sense for me.

I did notice that review said the Kii contained Purifi modules. Did they change the internal electronics? The Kii website says “Full Custom Class D.”

https://6moons.com/audioreview_articles/kii-bxt/ A new review of the Kii BXT from a 6 moons affiliate. Nothing particularly new here, but a good read if you’re interested.

Thanks for the heads up about the Audio Technica, I am considering getting back into headphones and this one is very appealing. It’s hard to believe that $2k has become reasonable sounding but I suppose time marches on…