Here’s some of what Steve Guttenberg said about the sound, transcribed:
”…speaker just lit up, was very lively, almost like a Klipschorn or JBL, it had speed and live sound quality, except tonally the KAYA 25 are ahead of the horns I have listened to here at home. It’s a more refined speaker and the imaging is refined well ahead of any horn speaker, because it has a very open, unboxy sound quality, the speaker really does get out of the way.
Music opened, speakers got out of the way. Vinyl: ECHO COLLECTIVE - Kaya 25 let the music exist and populate the room.
CD : NILS FROHM “SOLO’ - Everything about the piano, the physicality of the piano is in this recording and released by these speakers. You felt you were right there, and you also hear the room the piano was in, so it’s really like a spatial oddessy.
I like the way the Kaya 25 Set the music free, and the dynamic shading of each note, the fast tracks, the more subtle nuances, subtle differences in dynamics, big ones,little ones, this speaker really tracked those differences with ease.
CD: THE BLACK KEYS “DELTA DREAM” - Not a great recording, bright, brash, compressed, annoyingly so. In your face, not audiophile, but a musical experience….
….compare my Pure Audio Project Duet 15 open baffle speakers (15” woofer)…, my reference compared with the Kaya 25. It’s a much larger, different speaker, fills the room in a different way. It’s bigger, meatier sounding speaker than the Kaya 25. The Kaya 25 is much faster, more clearer, and does transient response of brass and percussion so much better than the Pure Audio Project.
SO STEVE, WHAT DO YOU REALLY THINK?
The Vivid Kaya takes you there, inside the recording. The good, the bad, the ugly and it let’s you hear it incredibly well,but it’s a totally refined sounding speaker, which I associate with low distortion. Midrange,voices sound so right, so present and I just kept listening….With this speaker I just wanted to keep going and going, and that is the highest praise.
Compare with KEF REF 3 META ($15,000)- Much larger, different speaker, fills room in different way. Its a bigger, fatter, meatier sounding speaker.” End of quote.
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Interesting : He used a 20Watt Ultralinear valve amp and 200Watt NAD 23 and preferred the sound of the valve amp more. He also used a 7Watt SET and this was quickly removed. The Kaya’s an 85 ohm / 85 dB speaker and reaches down to 40Hz.
Another stunning achievement by Laurence Dickie & team. Kudos to them!
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