Vienna Acoustics Kiss vs. Dynaudio Contour S3.4

Hi

Am already using Cardas interconnects so that is not the culprit.

Anyone with experience with the Vienna Acoustics Kiss speakers?

Mikey8811, I will try to answer your query as well as I can, although I know I may fall a little short of your need for specific info... I own Vienna Die Muzik; have owned Vienna Mahler v1.5; and have auditioned Kiss several times at length. Any whoolliness or bloat in the bass of Vienna speakers is almost always due to inaccurate placement... And yes, placing Vienna speakers can be a real chore, and is best performed by a Vienna-trained professional. With proper placement, Muzik, Mahler, and Kiss all sound amazing.... Musical, tuneful, and revealing.

Mahler is the most forgiving of the 3, but not the most revealing.... Kiss is wonderfully transparent, but cannot deliver the image density and gravitas required for larger scale vocal or instrumental works, which are instead best served by Die Muzik.

To add to the mix, there should be now a new speaker, called the Vienna Beethoven Imperial Grand... It is housed in a cabined derived from the original Beethoven Grand, but is based on technology trickled down from the Muzik, including a coincident treble/midrange driver, a supertweeter, and (so I believe) 3 bass drivers. It should list for about $10K. I have not heard it yet, but it is my understanding that it it is expected to deliver some of the grandness of Die Muzik at a more conservative price point.... It is worth looking into.

To put things into perspective, the power requirements of these speakers are on the high side, and they like amps that retain their "torque" on lower impedance loads, but they vary a little bit. Interestingly, damping factor has not been a gating factor.... Best results for Muzik have been with an amp with a moderate damping factor.... Here is my own experience just to give you an idea about behavior with amps with different power characteristics... You may extrapolate about possible results with your own amps:

Mahlers.... Used them with magnificent results with Rolwand M7 (350W/8O and very high current), and Rowland M312 (500W/8O and 45A peak, damping factor 1000)... Have not used them with other amps.

Die Muzik: No problem at all with Bel Canto REF1000M monos (500W/8O, damping factor 1000), Rowland M312, and best this faar with Rowland M725 monos (330W/8O, may be 30A peak), and damping factor in 200 range. A little underpowered with Rowland M625 stereo (300W/8O), and markedly underpowered with Bel Canto REF500M monos (250W/8O).

I have heard Kiss in demos giving excellent performances with Rowland M312, Rowland Continuum 500, and a few Boulder amps.... Kiss are also known to match very well with amps that are slightly less powerful like the Rowland M625 (hve not heard this combination).

As I mentioned, I have not heard Beethoven Imperial Grand yet, but I conjecture that their power requirements may be a little more moderate than DIe Muzik and Mahler.

Best, Guido

Thanks Guido

That was very informative.

With the Kiss being driven by a pure class A Krell FPB 200c which from my experience is less resolving than the Continuum 500 in the treble but has more body, what do you think the results will be like?

Is my assumption correct that the Kiss has the Vienna Acoustics house sound of being laid back and warm like the Beethoven Baby Grand but is more resolving as opposed to Dynaudio which is more neutral and slightly cooler?

Thanks

Hi again Guido

I forgot to add that from what I have seen, the Kiss is a deep speaker - deeper than my current Dynaudio's by about 1 foot.

I currently place my speakers about 4.5 feet from the wall behind them. So with the Kiss, I will only be able to place them about 3.5 feet away from the back wall. Is that enough breathing room?

Hi Mickey, at least in principle, you should be able to find a sweetspot for Kiss within 3.5 feet from the back wall. However, there is no telling where exactly that sweet spot will be... With Vienna speakers, the setup is an empyrical process that yields unique placements in each room.

Kiss is exceedingly nimble and musical, and is more revealing than classic Vienna products... Like with all Vienna products, it can sound too warm or even too shouty if not placed correctly. With correct placement, it is a very neutral speaker, meaning that its frequency distribution does not suffer of hot spots or holes. However, if by "neutral" we mean tonally skinny, Kiss is not '"neutral" at all, because it conveys a significan amount of harmonic content throughout its range... Not being too familiar with Dynaudio speakers, I would prefer to hold off on a conjectural comparison.

It is worth bearing in mind that Kiss is essentially a large bookshelf speaker on an integrated stand... It lacks the lineup of deep bass drivers found in Muzik, Mahler, and Beethoven Imperial. Hence, pairing Kiss with an amp that favors bass may increase its bass cues, but will remain short of generating the visceral authority of the other Vienna speakers that I mentioned.

Saluti, Guido