svart-hvitt
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You forgot to mention:
The "component variations" issue was taken care of long ago and is no longer an issue. It was only an issue in some of the very early models.
You only quoted part of the distortion measurements from that article, and the article itself mentions how for the vast majority of the spectrum the results are better. Hence "remarkable".
Other measurements in other reviews gave better results and much closer to those claimed by Kii. Maybe your quoted article is the outlier?
Listen to them: at any kind of even close to normal volume the last thing you would say is that they sound distorted or colored. In my room they give quite useful bass output even below 20 hz. Yes, not as loud as at 30hz, but quite audible.
The BXT module clearly isn't for most users. Clearly for those with very large listening spaces or those who have to have that last bit of bass or realistic sound pressure levels for certain types of recordings. So I don't think the BXT says anything negative about the Kii. The original standmount was built to a specific purpose and certain decisions were made about what couldn't be done in order to get there. Bruno once described it as (my paraphrase) not wanting the pursuit of the perfect to prevent the actual production of the speaker. The Kii people said years ago they intended to produce both bigger and smaller models.
This seems to me simply them fulfilling that idea. What's the big deal?
The Kiis are fine speakers. I’ve heard them numerous times, in my own room too, and with BXT. The Kii may in fact be the one speaker I have heard the most times in different environments...
But the Kiis are hyped. Cardioid? ME Geithain did that decades ago. Their marketing is of the audiophile kind (even their product specialists during official presentations). The price is too high for what you get. And they are small speakers, and size matters in speakers, especially in lower frequencies, of course.