Hutter-ly amazing!

There is a measurable hump in the mid-band response that has singers sounding as if they'd cupped their hands into a cylinder/horn in front of their mouths. Makes them sound "quacky" or "nasal". What kills me is that every single person I talk to knows exactly what I am on about except you. It's a great little speaker, but I think you are either accustommed to or deliberately ignoring one of it's obvious flaws.

BTW--Kan 2s have less of a problem in whatever it is I/we/minusTony are hearing than the Kan 1s. Maybe when Petrik gets back from vacation he'll be better able to describe the problem than I.

Vuk.

I would never criticise anyones taste in decor, including yours because you never criticise mine.

Regards

Mick....who adores Sahra Brightman

whose wife knits tea cosies etc etc.

I've deleted my comment about Kans. I don't know what came over me, must have been all that Xmas stuff!

I sold my Kans because I moved to a house with a larger room and they didn't sound right. It was Sara's I sold because they sounded as though the vocals were recorded in a bathroom.

Sorry about that.

Brian

[This message was edited by Brian on WEDNESDAY 27 December 2000 at 09:48.]

JW suggested that if you don't want to damage your floor you should mount the stand on MDF which is blu-taked to the floor with four pea sized balls of of blu-tak. The MDF should not make direct contact with the floor.

I didn't try my set up the same way you have yours; I just put coins underneath. It was too bright otherwise. Mana worked a whole lot better when I did it per JW's instructions with the MDF underneath.

I have two sound stages on order minus the metal frame (laminated board only) and this is what was suggested to me as being the best sounding and the most aesthetic. They will replace the MDF with pea sized blu-tak.

Your set up look's pretty good otherwise. Can't say I understand why no-one likes the Mana look. I think it's a natural fit with Mana and your photo clearly shows that.

Arthur Bye

The material I have used for the small squares is exactly what the floor is made of (7.5mm high density laminate). I have "fixed" them to the floor in such a way that they're essentially glued to it and thereby part of the the total floor itself (which is also merely a collection of glued panels). Coins are a different matter altogether and I would not use such an approach.

The results I am getting suggest it is working very well indeed and I have no desire to tinker with it further. My room is unforgiving and believe me that any "brightness" or bad setup would have made itself very obvious.

BTW--I did experiment with the Reference Table a few months ago to arrive at this solution.

Vuk.

P.S. You can see more pretty setup pictures on the Mana forum.

[This message was edited by Vuk Vuksanovic on TUESDAY 26 December 2000 at 21:43.]

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What kills me is that every single person I talk to knows exactly what I am on about except you. It's a great little speaker, but I think you are either accustommed to or deliberately ignoring one of it's obvious flaws.

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I have heard Kans sound as you describe, just as I have heard SBLs screech and DBLs boom. Anyone with seven fifteenths of a brain should realise that it is down to dodgy setup and not assume that just because they are incapable of getting any of the above to work that the product itself is fundamentally flawed. Remember it took me 13 years to hear a pair of SBLs set up to my taste (after hearing probably 25 pairs), though even at my most SBL hating times, I simply said that I had not yet head them work well. I was certainly never arrogant enough to state categorically they were flawed. I am currently at the same stage with NBLs, every time I have heard them (6 different so far) I have absolutely hated them, though I would bet they can be made to work.

I respect Joe Petriks opinion greatly, we seem to agree on the vast majority of things and share all the same musical priorities, and are even running relatively similar systems, though I am sure that Joe would be the first to admit his system has changed a lot, and he has probably learnt a bit about system setup since he last owned Kans. We all have.

I am not attempting to tout the Kan as a do everything wonder speaker, it is certainly not, though it is not anywhere near as inherently coloured as you have experienced with your particular setup in your room. I have personally used three different pairs of the things in many different locations for over 10 years, and I am still learning. Every time I think I have the bastard things sussed, I change something upstream, and the goalposts move once more. All I can confidently tell you about the negative aspects of their character is that they are comparatively mid forward, and are none too weighty in the bass compared to a large floorstander.

I look forward to another Mana like epiphany when you finally do hear a pair working properly! If you want a second opinion simply ask Jawed (who once likened them to small DBLs) or Rico (who liked them so much he bought my “spare” pair). It just irks me to hear someone slag something off through simply not hearing a good installation, it may even put someone off landing an affordable classic.

Tony.

PS Are you going to hear Petites before going for the Elites? Bigger ain’t always best.

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I have "fixed" them to the floor in such a way that they're essentially glued to it and thereby part of the the total floor itself

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Vuk: I tried screwing my MDF directly to my pine floor with the thought that this would essentially make it just an extension of the floor itself. This would be similar to what you did. My floors were rustic pine boards so the holes that I made could be easily disguised later on.

This didn't work. Maybe it was because of the different densities between the pine floor and the MDF. The blu-tak set up did work however. Must have somthing to do with the laminate in you case or the similarity of the products used.

Hey... it seems like ALL of your albums have pictures on them. So if Sarah Brightman comes out with a new album with her boobs a glowing does that mean you're going to convert to the dark side?

Arthur Bye

What I have done is apply 5 very thin spots of a substance like BluTak to the bottom of my squares--it takes quite a bit of force to rip them off, but nothing like proper glue. Maybe I've stumbled upon a magic solution.

As for the records, I thought all albums had erotic pitures on them. Must be the "moral majority" restricting you Americans to the ugly black stuff.

BTW--I notice in your profile that you've got 2 52-based systems and a set of "spare" components that make up something better than what Sgt. Petrik runs as a primary system. Any chance I could become your business partner?

Vuk.

[This message was edited by Vuk Vuksanovic on WEDNESDAY 27 December 2000 at 21:41.]

I have tried all of your expert setup tips and I still perceive the quack/honk. So does everyone else! It's not as I've been careless either--remember, I'm the one with 7 levels, 3 exclusivley for audio, 2 of these the machinist variety. Maybe you've got some magic room or mysterious fault masking scenario. What can I say? If it takes 13 years to figure out how to make one's speakers work properly I think the better strategy is to buy something else. This type of fear is what prevented me from taking a chance on SBLs.

BTW--Petrik will be popping by in a couple of days and will be able to judge the Elites vs. Petites. I really doubt it will be much of a contest.

Vuk.

quote:

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I have tried all of your expert setup tips and I still perceive the quack/honk. So does everyone else! It's not as I've been careless either--remember, I'm the one with 7 levels, 3 exclusivley for audio, 2 of these the machinist variety. Maybe you've got some magic room or mysterious fault masking scenario.

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Can't be arsed with this argument anymore - this is my last post on the subject.

I just remeber all the total crap spouted about how Mana simply can't work, about ball nuts etc, about spikes being fundamentally flawed etc followed by the inevitable mass eating of words (which I respect). This will happen again folks, watch this space. With the best will in the world, you have been using quality hifi for about two and a half years, it is just possible others out there have a little more experience.

It does not matter how many bloody levels anyone owns if they give up before something is right.

Tony.

PS seeing that you have your system placed between your speakers, your spikes on seperate bits of wood, plus a bleedin' TV on the rack goes a long way to prove my point! Still a little to learn.

[This message was edited by Tony Lonorgan on WEDNESDAY 27 December 2000 at 09:24.]

The first time was at a Heathrow airport Hi Fi show in '85 ( I think) These were Kan 1's on Kan 1 stands in the Linn room. Fronted by LP12, Ittok, AsakT, 32, SNAPS, 250.

They were totally sublime. Mark Ellis Jones was with me & we just kept going back to the room, we couldn't believe how such a small speaker could give such a realistic performance. In a nearby room the Naim guys were having a bit of a nightmare trying to get a 6 pack PMS system to work.

The Kan room had _more_ bass than the Briks.

The second experience of Kans sounding awesome was an active pair that a chap owned whom I bought a Hicap from. These had real _slam_. difficult to believe unless you were there. These were Kan II's mounted on wall brackets. I checked the stability of this pair & were as solid as a rock.

The third pair,( & here I am a little immodest ) were in my own home. Not quite as enveloping & 'big' as the Linn room pair & not quite as much slam as the active pair, but bloody good, & certainly no 'honk'.

I used to work at Radford Hifi in the mid 80's & sold countless pairs of Kans. I was there for the transition from 1 to II, & almost each batch had tonal characteristics different from the previous pair. I often set up the speakers at customers houses to sadly quite mixed results. If I knew then what I know now....

This is where I might be a little controversial, but IMHO Kans work at their best on Sound Org Kan wall brackets. These must be slightly modified first. This involves adding a set of nuts to the upper spikes & then tighten to within an inch in their lives. Until these nuts were added, there was a hint of midrange honk.

The _only_ reason that I now use active IBL's & not Kans is that the Kan just will not go loud enough for my musical tastes. A track like Young Man Blues from The Who, Live At Leeds, just has to be played loud. IBL's don't go that much louder, but just about cut it in this department.

Anyone who has not heard Kans really strutting their stuff has missed out on quite an experience.
Once heard never forgotten, usually results in a purchasing a pair!

Bo

quote:

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I used to work at Radford Hifi in the mid 80's & sold countless pairs of Kans. I was there for the transition from 1 to II, & almost each batch had tonal characteristics different from the previous pair.

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Which variants do you rate the most highly?

I would like to find the ultimate pair (though suspect I might have). I have owned a final spec Mk I, a very early Mk II and my current final spec Mk II. I like my current ones best.

quote:

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This is where I might be a little controversial, but IMHO Kans work at their best on Sound Org Kan wall brackets.

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This is not the first time I have heard this advice. Anyone got a spare pair they don't need?

Tony.

However you should not be comparing Kans to Elites, the Elites are in a completly different class. They do the Kan speed, as well (if not better), but they can do all the other things that Kans just cann't do.

However you should not be comparing Kans to Elites, the Elites are in a completly different class. They do the Kan speed, as well (if not better), but they can do all the other things that Kans just cann't do.

However you should not be comparing Kans to Elites, the Elites are in a completly different class. They do the Kan speed, as well (if not better), but they can do all the other things that Kans just cann't do.

Zob
(TF, if your looking, do you recon I could get a job as a dodgy Journo?)

I bought Kan-Is as standby speakers, and had not got around to trying them in my system.

A while ago a friend of mine asked me to checkout his system as it was sounding 'strange'. From his description I guessed it was the speakers, so took over the Kans to confirm it. His system was Arcam CD, 72/Hi/250, 20'x12' room. This was my first Kan setup experience.

Initially I thought they were obviously small sounding, honking, strained, harsh.

We played with the system and things were better, but not cured.

We then moved the speakers a few inches at a time until it snapped into place and re-did the stand setup, and bingo.

Honk was gone, bass weight had arrived. This was no longer a small speaker sound. And the musical flow, lyricism, ease, control - amazing.

There is absolutely no question that if you heard honking they weren't setup correctly or don't suit your room.

One question for you, Vuk - does your abode have wooden or brick construction? If you can't place Kans against a brick wall you might as well forget it. The lack of boundary reinforcement would probably be the source of your honk.

Tony,

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I remain deeply suspicious of reflex ports, and especially rear ports - low frequencies arriving ... through a hole in a box, and then bounced off a totally unknown rear wall before you hear them

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I don't see how a sound wave can bounce off anything which is closer to it's source than it's wavelength. Even a 100Hz tone (well above the range produced by a port) has a wavelength of over 3 metres. These sounds will seamlessly diffract around the carcass of the speaker. (You might get some interference with clean airflow through the port if it's mounted close to the rear wall, but that's a different matter entirely).

I have read that considerable mid-range energy can escape through a port, and this might be less intrusive if it is directed away from the listener.

Christmas Cheer to you both, Martin

quote:

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I don't see how a sound wave can bounce off anything which is closer to it's source than it's wavelength. Even a 100Hz tone (well above the range produced by a port) has a wavelength of over 3 metres. These sounds will seamlessly diffract around the carcass of the speaker.

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Martin,

I have absolutely no doubt that you are theoretically totally correct, though I am one of those irritating persons that can just about always hear a port. At the recent spate of UK hi-fi shows, one of my friends and I played the noble game of port spotting. Simply pop your head into a room, hear the first bass note, decide has the speaker got one. We were both pretty much one hundred percent accurate within a matter of seconds. The only things that threw us were auxiliary bass reflex devices such as on Vandersteen speakers.

The things that wind me up the most with so many loudspeakers is a lack of grip resulting in a obvious overhang, or the tendency to exaggerate certain bass notes at the expense of others. A run down a bass neck sounds completely uneven, and certain bad ports seem to bend the pitch off key.

I actually feel speaker design is going backwards at the moment, I still refuse to believe you can market a floorstander for under about a grand that even slightly works, if there is one out there I certainly have not heard it yet. I am deeply sceptical about the current insistence on reflex ports, as I said above, I can always clearly hear them… play me a pair, hand me a bass and I will be able to tell you what note the port is tuned to.

It seems most speakers are marketed today on their ability to produce a comparatively large sense of scale, regardless of whether they can hold a tune or not, let alone whether they can time. The combination of cheap floorstander plus port is IMHO disastrous. Compare one of these ported cheap floorstanders to a half decent infinite baffle stand mount (say a pair old AR18s that could be had for about 30 quid from a car boot sale!) and from my perspective they are left completely dead in the water musically.

If its in a box, then I want it infinite baffle, if its cheap, then make it smaller. My friend goes one step further, he wants both infinite baffle and three way.

I must also admit that I love panel speakers, if they did not have such a treble hot spot I would be very interested indeed in Quad 57s, I expect I will someday own a pair for a while.

Tony.

I have taken all of your advice about Kans and went to great lengths to borrow them, find the proper stands and move them around centimetre by centimetre. My back wall is a house wall with brick on the outside, but drywall on the inside. I have managed to get many speakers to work and it's not quoite clear what would be so wrong with Kans. The Naim representative (who owns the Kans) has over a quarter of a century of setup experience, a much better room than I and they still sound the same at his place--that's why he doesn't use them. If there is a way to remove the tonal problems, then none of us here in London, Canada (and I add Kan-tuky Petrik to the list) have managed to figure it out. I'll point out again that the problem we all here just happens to correlate perfectly with a response aberration that can be measured in Kans.

Anyhow, my point in mentioning the levels wasn't an argument about aptitude, but a way of saying that if someone as obsessive as me is forced to give up, then it would be fair to say that the speaker is too finicky. I don't mean to discourage people from trying them out since, at least, it is not a very expensive proposition.

I have explained about the floor contact and that is was based on experimentation. I tried 4 alternatives with the Kans. I also understand that it's best not to have anything between the speakers, but I have no attractive alternative at present. No need to be offensive and insulting about all this.

Vuk.

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No need to be offensive and insulting about all this.

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I put up with loads before I actually was. I just found the whole "I say this therefore it is right regardless of any evidence produced by anyone else" argument both offensive and insulting!

A theory is only any good until it is disproved. Bob, Martin, Zob and myself all have experience that disproves that theory.

Game over, Thank you for playing.

Tony.

You really are getting wound up about this. I am not saying I am right, but merely that none of us here have ever heard Kans without honk. I accept that you and and a few others have, though the setup required to achieve that is apparently not something that can be communicated. Could you try reversing perpectives for a second? Imagine a case in which Joel, Jawed, John and the whole gang agreed with you about some weird characteristic of speaker X, but that I kept telling you "no, no, you haven't set it up properly". You try everything I suggest and it still won't work. You talk to more people, including your dealer and staff who installed hundreds of them and they all tell you I am crazy and you are right, yet you keep trying to get them to work. In the end, you throw up your arms, because everyone in town seems to have been right. Would I be justified in getting angry at you?

Vuk.

I agree with Vuk that this is not worth getting one's knickers in a twist about... but I agree with Tony that Kans _can_ sound totally believable without any 'honk', it's just that Vuk has not heard them like this _yet_.

I'm sure one day, maybe years from now, Vuk will hear a pair really doing it properly. Until that day Tony ( & some others including myself ) know how good they can sound, & Vuk will be sceptical about this.

That's life!

Bob.

Just to clear things up a bit, since we seem to have gone down a strange path here, I have heard Kans sound good: I had Kan 2s here a while ago and although they were set up too far apart, too far away from the walls and not on Kan stands, they performed better than Kan 1s with all the "correct" setup. Still, there was the famous "honk", but I could certainly live with it and it's not such a big deal to me as this thread is making it seem. In the end, Kans do not have deep enough bass to play orchestral music in a way that satisfies me and that's why I've gone to a different speaker. Look, it's not as if I dismissed them haphasardly--how many people here persevere so much with my crazy advice? I suspect that my room is also a little too big for Kans and most small speakers, yet the Rogers Evil Twins seemed to have no trouble (very odd, that one), although they played Perry Cuomo bass on every record.

Vuk.

P.S. I really do like Kans:

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You really are getting wound up about this.

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I'm not at all. I am actually finding it really funny, certainly passes the time on a very boring day at work. Ah well I'm off for five days now, I will spend all the time trying to get my Kans to honk for you.

quote:

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I have taken all of your advice about Kans and went to great lengths to borrow them, find the proper stands and move them around centimetre by centimetre. My back wall is a house wall with brick on the outside, but drywall on the inside.

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Some things are simply not meant to be. My guess would be that you will probably not get spectacular results with SBLs either as the room requirements for both is similar, and when Kans honk, SBLs will probably screech or shout.

I am not sure what drywall actually is, but if it is what I would know as plasterboard then it is far from ideal. The back wall in my current flat is plasterboard, and whilst I do not get the honk, I am certainly not getting quite the amount of bass extension I have managed elsewhere. I am not bothered as I plan to move as soon as I can find a Kan friendly flat to buy with a nice solid brick flat wall. Will probably try the wall brackets then if I can find some.

Tony.

BTW, looking at your delightful picture of the Sam Fox disc, I remembered that you used to use a Reference Table. Your pics with the 6 tier shows no RT, is that out of frame?

Bob.

FWIW, even though I now use IBL's, I've still kept my late vintage Kan 1's & wall brackets ( sorry Tony )

The Reference Table and deck are off to the side (please ignore the mess my pet spider Boris made on the ceiling):

Closer up:

Vuk.