FinkTeam KIM - thoughts?

@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.

Good stuff, thanks.

You are obvious well-experienced, and sophisticated, but I'll add one more detail. For many years I basically followed the equilateral triangle speaker placement formula, with a little tweaking. Then, after having been exposed to Jim Smith's approach (X = distance between tweeters, Y = distance between your ear and the speaker; X/Y is 83%), I found that the imaging improved, including with the KIMs.

YMMV

@whipsaw Thanks for the tip, I will investigate further. I have been chatting with AI on better placement, and already have some improvements. I find placement tweaking anxiety inducing and rather exhausting, and tend to quit and listen to music. I will get there. 

Wow these things look intriguing. I had only ever heard of their big speaker design which I think has a 15 inch driver for lows. These look much more compatible with the average room, and by that I mean normal sized. 

Thanks for the updates, and hopefully they just keep getting better as you dial in placement. That can be a journey of trial and error, but worth it in the end.