FinkTeam KIM - thoughts?

@zlone - Echo Audio in Portland had a pair a couple of years ago. I’d read about them and was curious, so drove over to give them a listen. For what it’s worth, I was pretty underwhelmed by them. I remember walking away wondering what their most compelling quality was… nothing came to mind. I think they were being driven by an older Audio Research preamp and Balanced Audio Tech (BAT) amp. 

@bluethinker Thanks for the comments. I will find out in a couple weeks as I ran across a used pair. I am admittedly shooting in the dark here, and was not planning on another change right away, but so be it. If this does not work out I will have make dedicated trip to an audio hotbed city and find something that speaks to me. 

I have been very happy with the Studio Electric M4 that I have been comparing with the QLN. They have really opened my eyes/ears to a sound that appeals to me. I have high hopes that the KIM will take this up another notch. I will be sure to post my thoughts once the new speakers have settled in to the system and my ears.

It has been about a couple months now since I installed my ‘new to me’ FinkTeam KIM speakers and I thought I would follow up with impressions. I have had six pairs of speakers in the last three or four years, searching for just the right sound for my small room. I have made two trips to AXPONA to scout out brands that I want to explore further, two of which I bought along the way. I do believe we have a winner!

For most of the speakers that I tried, I was able to demo or at least hear a sibling to get an idea of their general sound. The KIM’s however are a challenge to demo from the middle of the country, not a lot of dealers here in the US, and mostly on the coasts. So this was a bit of a leap based on reviews and lots of very detailed discussions with AI on the KIM and many other speakers and comparisons thereof. For those who scoff at using AI for such a purpose, I can only say that you get out of it what you put in, and asking the right questions, challenging the positive reinforcement of AI once it senses you have made a decision, and taking it all with a grain of salt, can yield very useful information.

Listening impressions a month later can differ quite a bit from those first few days with a set of new speakers. I can say that I was pretty wowed right out of the box, and I continue to be impressed on a daily basis. And I have had a couple of speakers that did not wow me on day one, and at least one set that never grabbed me. I knew the KIM’s were special right away.

They’re just some boxes with drivers in them, right? Well, not exactly in this case. There are few things that make the KIM’s different from your typical box speaker. The box itself, MDF of course, but multiple layers, with damping adhesive to bind them together. The front baffle is a full 1.5” thick. These boxes do not talk back. The design factors go on, and the efforts put into this speaker design are described on their site in great detail. Point is, on paper, these are unique and well designed.

After a lot of listening, I would describe these speakers as exceedingly neutral, yet not the slightest bit sterile. They are not exciting, which might lead some listeners to dismiss them when directly compared to other speakers that might offer a bit more color. @bluethinker, this might have been your experience. To me, they are just ‘right’. To add to this, they are the first pair of speakers that my wife has commented on, ‘these sound like the real thing’. And they do.

Key to being successful for me is the ability to play well at lower levels. My peaks are typically around 65 dB. I can say of all the speakers I have tried, these are the absolute best in this respect. Detail is there and bass is articulate and full. Having an 8” mid/woofer vs the typical 6” seems to make a big difference, and the AMT tweeter offers exceptional detail without being bright or forward.

If I had to pick an area where they come up short, I would say they do not have quite the soundstage that my previous QLN 3’s had, though I am still working on placement and I expect that I will be able to improve it yet. Possibly limiting is the reduced vertical dispersion of the AMT tweeter vs the dome of the QLN.

Despite that, I believe that I have arrived. The KIM’s will be a fixture in my system for some time to come, but never say never.

Thanks @whipsaw for your comments and help. I am super thrilled with the outcome.

@zlone 

Thank you for the interesting update! I am, as you might guess, very happy that you are having a positive experience with the KIMs. Your descriptions are excellent, and neutral yet not sterile is a good encapsulation. The inert quality that you touched on is also of primary importance, and I believe that the cabinet design is a big part of allows the speakers to perform exceptionally well.

I am very familiar with the temptation to squeeze a bit more out of a systems, but barring my living in a home with a much larger listening room space in the future, I feel no desire to move any further down the long speaker upgrade path on which I have been travelling for nearly 50 years now.

Have you experimented with vibration control yet? I found the addition of the IsoAcoustics GAIA made a noticeable improvement, to my ears (they fit well with the dedicated KIM stands).

@whipsaw Have you experimented with vibration control yet? I found the addition of the IsoAcoustics GAIA made a noticeable improvement, to my ears (they fit well with the dedicated KIM stands).

I used Gaia's on my KEF Reference One's with very good results, and had planned to try the Stack Auva's on the KIM's. I sort of fell into an intermediate solution while tuning the speakers to my room. I am fairly tall and initially the soundstage was presenting fairly low, so I did the natural thing and raised the front footers to angle the speakers up. This raised the soundstage, but over time I realized it was messing with the timing. I know that sounds crazy, but these speakers seem to reveal even the smallest change. Anyway, I backed that out and made sure the speakers stands were perfectly level, and instead put them on some 3/4" slabs of limestone I had laying around, as most people do, and put soft fiber furniture gliders on the bottom of the stone to insulate it from and to and protect the wood floor. Wow, what a change! It really tightened things up. I may still go with the Auva's, but they are fairly spendy, so it is not part of the immediate plan. I use their Ethernet Regenerator with good results and have great confidence in their products. 

I have been tweaking/voicing my system over the last couple months, I have not had a speaker reflect changes to this degree. It has been a lot of fun.