Loudspeakers

While our review was underway, Kii Audio announced its supplementary BXT bass module, so we asked CTO Bruno Putzeys to provide some detail. ‘In the Kii THREE, the two pairs of woofers, front and rear, are operated as a cardioid between 50-250Hz, and below 50Hz they’re fully in phase. The BXT also has two sets of woofers, four on the front and four near the rear, tripling the output below 250Hz.

‘So the BXT significantly off-loads the woofers of the THREE over their entire operating band. Headroom improves by 10dB and distortion drops by the same amount or better. The added cone area also safely allows bass extension to be dialled half an octave deeper.

‘The main item that makes the BXT compelling is that the system is now, in addition to a cardioid, also a line source. The benefits in eliminating the “floor dip” and ameliorating the “ceiling dip” are well known, and come on top of the Kii THREE’s ability to deal with the wall behind the speakers. To our knowledge, a “cardioid line source” hasn’t been done before, and it’s remarkably effective in rooms of all sizes, including very small ones.

‘All signal processing remains in the DSP of the THREE. As soon as it detects that a BXT is connected, it loads a new set of filters and sends two channels of pre-processed audio down the Kiilink connection to the BXT. The BXT contains its own D/A converters and NCore Class D amplifiers but no further DSP.’