Kiva 2

The re-designed and re-imagined Kiva 2, takes an already great performing speaker and improves upon it in multiple ways. Physically, the Kiva 2 takes on a proportional presence to fit seamlessly into any listening environment. The drive units have also been rearranged into a more traditional layout with the tweeter at the top and the other units neatly arranged below. The Kiva 2 provides a big sound in an elegant form that will improve any space in both performance and visual impact.

Inspired and derived from Viginti, the Kiva 2 cabinet features wall thickness of 1.53” to 1.79” constructed of multiple layers of MDF and HDF with aluminum baffle braces. The cross-sectional area of the low frequency port is optimized to minimize any chuffing or compression issues. Modified transmission line midrange loading with 100% acoustic fill. Non-settling fill and felt are used throughout.

Individual quasi-transmission line chambers for each midrange driver: each of the two midrange drivers is loaded into a heavily damped, quasi-transmission line tube which tapers as it opens to the rear of the enclosure. This design eliminates the problem of internal reflected acoustic energy coming back through the driver diaphragm. As a driver propagates acoustic energy into the room, an equal amount of energy is generated within the enclosure by the rear or back wave of the driver diaphragm. Given a massive and rigid enclosure, the back wave’s only ‘path’ out of the box and into the room is through the diaphragm. Driver diaphragms are, by necessity, thin and light to minimize mass and increase efficiency, but these qualities also constitute a good transmission point for sound. This back wave starts 180 degrees out of phase with the front wave and then experiences additional phase progression as it reflects inside the cabinet. Once this energy travels through the diaphragm it superimposes on the front wave, causing phase (and thus level) distortions to the net sound heard by the listener. Treating the walls with absorbent material or filling the enclosure loosely with a fibrous tangle absorptive material offers some help but this benefit occurs mainly at high frequencies due to their shorter wavelengths. In the midrange and lower midrange frequencies where our ears are most sensitive to distortion, absorptive materials offer much less benefit.

The tweeter is a thin-ply carbon diaphragm dome for the perfect balance of detail and warmth for smooth, fatigue-free listening. The dual 7.5 inch woofers in the Kiva are configured in the same manner as the 10 inch woofers in the Viginti. Though smaller in diameter, the combination of dual bass drivers delivers similar sound quality.