Loudspeakers

Were it not for the enclosure design, it might be tempting to think of the Kaya S12, the smallest speaker from South Africa’s Vivid Audio, as just another standmount. But as those eye-catching looks suggest, there’s something special going on here, and the price – £6000 a pair in a choice of striking finishes, with more available to order – certainly sets expectations high. Standing 40cm tall, and weighing just 6kg each, the S12 comes in Piano Black, Lexus Pearl White and Oyster Matte as standard, while the samples submitted for review showed what could be achieved with the company’s choice of RAL colours (available at a £500 premium), with one pair in the green you see here, and another in a deep purple. With so much choice, you really could do the ‘match it to my car’ thing if you wanted.

Animated style

Talking of options, the speakers can be supplied with the company’s lightweight but rigid matching stands, which are elegant but also a rather wince-inducing £1800 a pair, or alternatively wall-brackets, which will set you back £1300 a pair. Whichever you choose, there’s a definite sense of ‘hi-fi as a work of art’ going on here, even if there’s also an air of Tim Burton’s animations – think The Nightmare Before Christmas or the stop-motion sections of his latest film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – about the entire effect.

In fact, the design here is the result of a co-operation between Vivid Audio’s Technical Director Laurence Dickie, perhaps best-known to HFN readers for his part in the creation of the breathtaking Bowers & Wilkins Nautilus speakers, and industrial designers Matt Longbottom and Christoph Hermann. Dickie mandated the positioning of the drivers and the waveguide used to ‘focus’ the Kaya S12’s tweeter, while the others created the form of the speaker as a whole. It’s the same with those slightly spidery stands, the result of some creative tension; rather than straight legs, Dickie wanted them to be curved. He won.

The speaker’s rather organic looks have required some care with packaging. Open the boxes and you’ll find the cabinets bolted to wooden packing pieces, while a similar arrangement protects the stands top and bottom, all this saving lots of the kind of padding more usually employed. Once the packaging is understood, the speakers and stands are quick to set up and bolt together, with the relatively light weight of the S12s and the splay of the stand legs making for a stable set-up.

Tube loaded

The drivers, which are very much Dickie designs, are assembled in South Africa using components sourced from various suppliers. The shape of the D26 tweeter’s anodised aluminium alloy dome is fashioned into a catenary profile – the curve of the support cables on a suspension bridge, for example – while behind this 26mm dome is what’s termed by Vivid as a Tapered Tube Loading device. This will be familiar to anyone aware of the Nautilus construction still used by B&W’s speakers [see PM’s boxout].

Found across the Vivid Audio range, the D26 sits in a carbon surround to control its dispersion and is driven by the same kind of radial magnet motor also used in the S12’s 100mm bass/mid unit. This C100L driver has an aluminium alloy cone fronted by a large dome rather than a conventional dustcap, while the design of the high-gauss radial magnet structure uses rare-earth neodymium-iron-boron magnets arranged in a cylinder around the voice-coil. This aims to minimise local induction, and thus, it is claimed, enhance the pistonic motion of the driver.

Incidentally, this C100L driver is used in larger Vivid Audio designs as a pure midrange unit, in which configuration it’s backed by a scaled-up version of that Tapered Tube Loading. In the Kaya S12, however, the rear of the driver is open to the cabinet volume, although with more of that Tapered Tube technology in the cabinet construction, this time in reverse to tune and boost the bass. In this smaller speaker the driver runs all the way down from its crossover with the tweeter at 3kHz to the speaker’s claimed 45Hz (–6dB) bass. What’s more, the Kaya S12 is designed as a relatively easy load, with 87dB sensitivity and 8ohm nominal impedance with a 5.3ohm minimum [see PM’s Lab Report] .

Above: Pictured on its matching stand, the Vivid Audio Kaya S12 is offered in Piano Black, Lexus Pearl White and Oyster Matte, or any RAL colour on request

All the world’s a stage
With that in mind, I went for amplification of relatively low – or at least not massive – power, in the form of my ‘vintage’ Naim NAC 52/NAP 250 combo. I also spent time with the Kaya S12s and Cambridge Audio’s new CXA81 MkII integrated amp, rated at 80W/8ohm and perhaps something of an audiophile bargain at £999, to get the little Kaya S12s working. Set up as Vivid suggests – around 40cm from the wall behind them, a bit more from any side walls, and angled in towards the listening position – the immediate impression the speakers give is of a sound with superb clarity, and with a scale belying their compact dimensions. Detail and soundstaging is also breathtaking, so that Alison Moyet’s glorious revisiting of ‘All Cried Out’, from her Key album [Cooking Vinyl/Modest! COOKCD921], sprung into the room, free from the speakers.

Moyet’s deep, soulful voice was delivered with almost startling intimacy before the rather retro electronic backing, though the deep bass and clattering drums were also especially well rendered. And that effortless sense of scale from speakers so small was also apparent with the recent LSO/Pappano recording of Mendelssohn’s Elijah [LSO Live LSO0898], where the weight of the orchestra convinced next to the fine detail of the choral and ensemble singing. As the drama unfolded, the sense of ‘watching’ the performance was maintained by the enveloping sound, which combined warmth and ambience with a credible concert soundstage. This performance was arguably unremarkable for a set of £6000 speakers, but outstanding considering the Kaya S12s’ size.

Face the music

Neither do these speakers need state-of-the-art recordings to shine. Playing a 1970 John Peel session, by those he describes as ‘the excessively rowdy Faces’ [Faces At The BBC: Complete BBC Concert & Session Recordings (1970-1973); Rhino R2 726026], they delivered just the right kind of chaotic swagger mixed with driving musicianship. It all came up pretty crisply after more than half a century – even if there are some fairly ragged versions of ‘Stay With Me’ in there.

Even better, the Kaya S12s stayed just as clean and characterful when played at the kind of levels likely to convince that the Faces were actually the greatest Rock ’n’ Roll band ever. Live gigs back in my teenage years suggested this to be the case, and this well-stocked BBC package did nothing to change that view, but rather reinforced it as Vivid Audio’s diminutive speakers blasted the music out like champs.

Switching to the gentle, measured jazz of the Daniel Garcia Trio’s Wonderland set on ACT [ACT 996-2], the Kaya S12s settled into the groove of ‘Resistance Song’ with complete ease. Garcia’s piano sounded suitably weighted and imaged excellently, while Reinier Elizarde’s bass underpinned the playing in a sinuous manner as Michael Olivera’s drumkit pattered, punched and splashed. And when the three upped the pace on ‘Witness The Smile’, the speakers dared me to wind things up a bit, just to get even closer to the music. Don’t worry, these Kaya S12s can hack it, and with no change in balance as they get louder.

Above: A series of tapered tubes absorb the mid/treble rear output of the drivers (and reinforce the cabinet shell from within) leaving the small rear port for bass reflex loading

Focus group

Just as detailed, but from a totally different era and genre, is Alison Balsom’s Baroque Concertos recital [Warner Classics 2173227329], the trumpet maestra accompanied by Pinnock’s Players under Trevor Pinnock in a programme of works for string and woodwind soloists arranged for her instruments. Okay, so it might not please the purists, but the sheer beauty of the playing more than justifies the process. Not only does Balsom shine here, she also works wonderfully with the ‘band’ in a wide-open but tightly focused sonic picture, beautifully balanced and yet with wonderful dynamics for the Vivid Audio speakers to get their teeth into. The dance rhythms of ‘Territory Of Poets’, from the 2009 SACD release of Eleanor McEvoy’s 1999 Snapshots [Moscodisc MOSACD305], provided another seamless shift of gears. Powered along by the drums of Ian Thomas and the inestimable Pino Palladino’s bass, McEvoy’s voice sounded effortlessly ravishing and characterful via the little Kaya S12s, while their spacious presentation and rich detail suited the album’s super-crisp production by Rupert Hine.

Vivid dreams

Finally, at the end of long listening sessions, I found myself winding down with Brad Mehldau’s recent Après Fauré album [Nonesuch Records; 96kHz/24-bit download], featuring arrangements of works by the French composer. Here, the jazz pianist gives delicate, detailed readings that the Vivid Audio speakers translated into one of those ‘piano in the room’ experiences so, er, vivid was their sound. This wonderful, dreamy music proved these unusual and remarkable speakers can do everything from the massive to the minute with equal excellence.

Hi-Fi News Verdict

Put that hefty price aside for a moment – if you’re cost-conscious you’ll be buying something more ‘conventional’ than these speakers – and it soon becomes clear that the Kaya S12s are remarkably capable in hi-fi terms, delivering a sound of uncommon scale and resolution. Yes, you may be paying for the initial impact of the style, and the innovative technology, but you’re really going to enjoy the ride!

Sound Quality: 88%