Audiophilepure

https://www.stereophile.com/content/kii-audio-seven-active-loudspeaker-system

I was surprised by how similarly the two speakers reproduced a solo voice or instrument. The ambience and soundstage cues are another matter. Consider the old chestnut Eliot Fisk Plays Bach and Scarlatti (SACD rip, Red Rose Music RRM 06). This is an intimate recording with negligible space around the instrument. With this album, there’s very little difference in the presentation of the Kiis and the KEFs. It is almost like listening to test tones, which also sounded much the same.But any recording with good spatial ambience revealed that the KEFs and Kiis are no more twins than Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. On “Tarrega’s Capricho árabe,” performed by Stefano Grondona on La Guitarra de Torres (CD rip, Divox CDX-29701), we hear everything from the touch of fingers on the strings, the strings themselves, and the resonant tones from the body of the instrument, all within a richly warm ambience. The SEVENs directed more attention to the early items on that list—the close-in, local things—while the KEFs made a stronger case for the ambience.It comes down to how they interact with the room. With the SEVENs nearly against the front wall, listening from a seat fairly close to the speakers, the cardioid radiation minimizes the excitation of room modes and delivers a finely detailed soundstage defined by the width of the speaker pair. The KEFs sound best a few feet from the walls and from a listening position farther from the speakers than they are from each other. Under those conditions, the soundstage conjured is consistently wider than the speaker span. While their imaging is marginally less incisive than the SEVENs’, they are somewhat better at separating the music from the speakers. Tough choice.