These tiny speakers will throw a party for your ears – CNET

Last weekend I reviewed the fabulous Q Acoustics 3050i tower speakers, but then I thought too bad not everybody has room for speakers as big as these bad boys. So this time I went for downright tiny speakers, the Totem Acoustic KIN Mini, which measure a trim 5 x 8.9 x 5.8 inches (126x226x146 mm). Surely these tykes will fit in even the smallest rooms, and deep bass is supplied by the matching KIN Sub, which is mighty small for a subwoofer, just 9.5 x 11.25 x 11.5 inches (241x286x292 mm). Could these little speakers, aided by a subwoofer, compete with the tower speakers?

The KIN Mini speakers feature 4 inch (105mm) phenolic honeycomb woofers and .75 inch (20mm) soft dome tweeters. The speakers have a small bass port just above their heavy duty bi-wire speaker cable connectors. Impedance is rated at 8 ohms.

The sealed (non-ported) KIN Sub hosts an 8 inch (203mm) carbon fiber woofer that gets motivated by the built-in 150 watt Class D amplifier. Build quality of the review samples was very decent, as was their white satin painted finish and white cloth grilles. Of course the speakers and sub are also available in black satin with matching grilles. The speakers and subs are fitted with anti-skid aluminum feet.

The KIN Mini speakers sell for $500, £399, AU$775 per pair, the KIN Sub used in this review retails for $699, £599, AU$1,000, but there’s also the somewhat smaller KIN Sub Mini that runs $500, £399, AU$700.

Setup

Listening sessions took place in CNET’s comfy NYC listening room where I used the KIN speakers and sub with a Sony STR DN1080 AV receiver. The ‘Sub has three controls on its rear panel — Volume, Phase, and Crossover — and that last one is continuously variable from 50 to 200 Hertz. Setting the volume control was tricky, it’s very sensitive and getting the sub’s volume set just right whenever I changed movies or music took some time. No single volume setting was right for everything.

The KIN Sub sports stereo RCA inputs and outputs, plus speaker level inputs and outputs. I initially used the receiver’s RCA sub output hooked up to the sub and tweaked the STR-DN1080’s bass management, with the speaker size set to “Small.” I experimented with different crossover settings, from 50 Hz to 150 Hz and never felt the blend between the sub and speakers was as smooth as I like. Then I tried running the KIN Minis as “Large” speakers, effectively bypassing the crossover, and the sound was much improved. Not perfect, but better.

Since most stereo integrated amps don’t have dedicated RCA subwoofer outputs I also tried using the KIN Sub’s speaker level inputs and outputs and had good results with them. Both KIN system hookup methods — RCA and speaker level — worked equally well.

Listening

The KIN Mini speakers and KIN Sub sound a lot bigger than they are. Starting with the Revenant Blu-ray, the battle scenes between the fur trappers and the Indians were viscerally alive. And later with the waterfall scene the roar of the surging water was intense. The little three piece system isn’t lacking in power!

I next tried something completely different, Ēriks Ešenvalds: Doors of Heaven, an exquisite choral recording. The sound of the massed voices and soloists was breathtaking in its clarity, I had goosebumps listening to this soul stirring music.

I squeezed in some high-resolution audio listening time with Kraftwerk’s 3-D The Catalog high Blu-ray, the band’s synths churning textures and details were on full display. The KIN Sub’s control over the low frequencies was good, but the blend between sub and speakers wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked. Sometimes there was a gap in the bass response between sub and speakers.

The little system could play loud, but I could localize the bass coming from the sub that was to the right of the right channel KIN Mini speaker. Centering the subwoofer between the left and right channel KIN Minis speakers helped minimize that, but that centered sub placement strategy isn’t possible in every room. Most folks want to place the sub off to one side or another. When I stopped focusing on where the bass was coming from and just enjoy the music the three piece Totem system sound was wholly engaging.

Still, the Totem Acoustic KIN Mini/KIN Sub system as tested runs $1,199, and it’s nowhere as powerful as the Q Acoustics 3050i towers I reviewed last week. The 3050i’s midrange was also more natural sounding and dynamics are much livelier. Oh, and the 3050i goes for $800 a pair in the US, £649 in the UK, and AU$1,399 in Australia, so they’re more affordable than the three-piece Totem system. Still, for a lot of folks the 3050is will be much too big, for them the seriously compact KIN Mini/KIN Sub system is well worth considering.