Vivid Audio Kaya S12

The big brain behind Vivid Audio and the Kaya S12 – Lawrence’ Dic’ Dickie – once shared an anecdote with me some years back. When Vivid Audio first launched its distinctive, unique-looking loudspeakers at a hi-fi show, the first reaction from the first member of the public to walk into the room was, “Oh no, not again!” Presumably, he comes from a long line of people who had seen it all before, tutting at everything from the wheel (“It’s just a square with the edges knocked off!”) to the Apollo space program (“We’ve had fireworks for years… what’s the big deal?”).

However, one of Vivid Audio’s real-world issues is that people like the idea of genuinely distinctive-looking loudspeakers and buy boring boxes ‘to play it safe’. The Kaya line is partly a way of addressing the need to make a loudspeaker cabinet that doesn’t ‘play it safe’ for sound (and sonic) reasons while creating a more universally acceptable design. As a result, the Kaya S12 stand-mount loudspeaker is the smallest and most domestically chummy of the whole range.

Organic Shape

There’s something very organic to the shape of the Vivid Audio Kaya S12, especially on its dedicated three-point stand. That 12-litre RIMcast polyurethane resin cabinet looks less like a loudspeaker and more like a flower or a large seedpod. This design is so clever because three-footed speakers have traditionally either looked like truncated Ikea living room lighting systems or something out of The War of the Worlds but with fewer death rays. Giving those three legs a gentle concave makes them look like the speaker grows out of them.

The injection-moulded enclosure shape of the Kaya S12 is not just there to creep out fans of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The front baffle gives the tweeter a gentle horn-loading, and the overall shape creates the ideal rear chamber size for both treble and mid-bass units, aided by the tapered tube reflex first used in Vivid Audio’s behemoth Giya G1. The design also reduces internal cabinet resonance from the outset, making it an ideal platform for the drive units to do their stuff unimpeded by the box itself.

Unlike most loudspeaker ‘builders’, Vivid Audio is one of the few who make their drive units. In the case of the Kaya S12, the company uses the same 26mm D26 Tapered Tube-loaded carbon-reinforced catenary dome tweeter throughout the line. In contrast, the long-throw 100mm C100L alloy dome/cone driver is explicitly designed for the Kaya S12. Of course, the cabinet making virtually no impact on the loudspeaker’s sound means more of the heavy sonic lifting is on the character of the drive units. If they have a ‘character’, it will be thrown into sharp highlight because the cabinet leaves few places to hide.

Everything under scrutiny

Every aspect of what goes into making a drive unit comes under Dic’s scrutiny. Those long-standing ‘well, we’ve always done it that way’ facets of loudspeaker driver engineering are stress-tested and – if found wanting – he seeks a better way of doing things. For example, the internal architecture of the enclosure features a unique tapered absorber that surrounds the rear of the mid-bass driver. Absorbent material fills the radial slots formed by the deep ribs in this absorber; each absorbs a different frequency and prevents interference with the action of the cone. TL;DR version; the enclosure is deader than Elvis.

This scrutiny even looks to the slightest changes; Vivid Audio uses flat wire instead of conventionally drawn round wire for winding voice coils. It means the loudspeakers’ sound doesn’t require hundreds of hours or run in and doesn’t take an hour or so of playing to ‘come on song’ in a listening session. Of course, it also benefits a loudspeaker at its incursion extremes, meaning you can bass play louder for longer too!

However, don’t take its ease of running in to mean the loudspeaker is a pushover; it demands careful installation and partnership. The Kaya S12 needs a little ‘breathing space’ between it and the rear wall, but not so much that it leaves the listener in a small room using the speakers as headphones.

Head vs Heart

In most loudspeakers, there seems to be a ‘head vs heart’ trade-off; you either get a loudspeaker that sounds remarkably detailed and analytical, with outstanding imagery and shimmering ‘micro-dynamics’ or one that is consummately musical, entertaining and rhythmically ‘in the pocket’. The Vivid Audio Kaya S12 is not like most loudspeakers. It blends rhythmic drive and energy with the transparency that makes you think of electrostatic loudspeakers. That applies universally; from ‘To Be Loved’ from Adele’s therapy session album 30[Columbia/Melted Stone], through the lo-fi brilliance of The Clash’s ‘White Riot’ [The Clash, CBS], to Arvo Pärt’s chillingly atmospheric ‘Speigel im Speigel’ [Alina, Spivakov et al., ECM]. In every case, the musical insight comes from the detail and the underlying depth of performance. You get that elusive combination of insight into the recording and that sense of a musical performance.

However, the big thing from this little speaker is the relative absence of distortion. It’s a paradox that while we strive to reduce distortion in electronics, loudspeakers frequently have more significant deviations from accuracy. However, when you hear one of those rare loudspeakers like the Kaya S12 that doesn’t have the same degree of distortion found in other speakers, you hear music as even more of a cohesive whole than usual. It’s beguiling in the extreme.

This transparency is not easy to pin down, as it’s a bit of a group effort on the part of the Kaya S12. The quieting effect of that cabinet and the absorber did not introduce sing-along sessions to hold back the drive units. It’s the drive units themselves. It’s even the stand, which seems capable of doing its job while adding or subtracting nothing. Put all those elements together, and you have a sound just so damn lifelike that you want to hear more.

My days of guitar wrangling are largely behind me, but a well-turned Telecaster can still make me think of playing again. Amateur musicians listening to masters of that instrument will play music on the Kaya S12 like a masterclass because the clean and detailed loudspeaker gets you in the spaces between the notes. Playing ‘Soft Winds’ from Ed Bickert’s Out of the Past CD [Sackville] is a perfect example; it can sound like drab dinner jazz, but the playing is masterful. Here, Bickert’s masterful ‘grips’ (impossible jazz chords) almost seem attainable and understandable, and there is so little between you and the late Canadian jazzer. It’s like being in a session with the guy.

Do (more) than one thing well

We’ve often had snippets of this before, often on loudspeakers that do one thing well at the expense of the whole. I remember hearing a loudspeaker playing Dylan’s harmonica like it was in the room but making almost every other instrument sound like Dylan’s harmonica. Here, you get that stunning ‘unencumbered by artifice’ presentation, but it cuts across all instruments. Again, I could rattle off a list of recordings ­– both commonly used ones like Joyce DiDonato and Trentemøller and more ‘for personal use’ albums like Grinderman and Heavy are the Head – but it applies universally. The Kaya S12 is like having less loudspeaker and more studio or concert hall in your room.

No, it’s not the only product that delivers that degree of musical insight, but it’s one of the few that can get even close to the degree of detail and precision you get from top-end audio trailblazers at a fraction of the price and size.

It’s hard to avoid discussing the size of the loudspeaker because the Vivid Audio Kaya S12 highlights the difference between regular humans and homo audiophilius. Asked to sit in front of what we consider ‘reasonable’ sized loudspeakers, ordinary people are intimidated by the physical dimensions of the big boxes in front of them. The Kaya S12 doesn’t have the same physical presence, so rank-and-file humans look at them in terms of their aesthetics… and often find them a pleasing shape. Meanwhile, audiophiles look at a loudspeaker like the Kaya S12, proclaim it ‘too dinky’, then are astonished at the scale of the sound it produces… and find it a pleasing shape sounds like a win-win to me.

The size of the loudspeaker is both its greatest strength and its lone weakness. Being so ‘dinky’, the Kaya S12 acts almost as a ‘point source’, meaning its stereo and detail reproduction are outstanding. Stereo soundstaging is staggeringly good as the loudspeaker effectively removes itself from the room, leaving the instruments each occupying their place within a three-dimensional space. Even if that is the impression of dimensionality created by delay and panning, you feel enveloped in a sound-field that is physically and emotionally ‘there’ in the room with you. This spatial excellence has a degree of detail and precision that is almost impossible to replicate at anything close to the Kaya S12’s price and size.

Plumbing the depths?

The lone weakness described above is bass depth. The Kaya S12 does a remarkable job at plumbing the depths given the constraints of size and drive-unit acreage, and it rolls off cleanly, so you get the impression of those deep bass notes even if you don’t get quite the same gut-punching intensity. Although it gets surprisingly close irrespective of room size. In a small room, however (which, let’s face it, is where the Kaya S12 will likely spend its days), this clean roll-off is almost ideal as it doesn’t trigger standing wave resonances where the room ‘joins in’ with the music. The nearly preternatural bass speed and effortless, bouncy, infectious sense of rhythm baked into the Kaya S12 make partnering it with a subwoofer very difficult. A good sub will anchor the sound in space, but the Kaya S12 speed will take that ‘anchor’ concept and take it to mean ‘holding everything back’.

Discussing a subwoofer almost misses the Vivid Audio Kaya S12’s point. More than just a ‘good’ loudspeaker, the Kaya S12 is also an ‘important’ one. It’s important because it reflects the increasing understanding that ‘metropolitan’ listeners exist and do more than listen on headphones. It’s a source of some personal frustration that high-enders with a profound love of music but who live in large cities with small rooms are left out in the cold by most audio. The ‘oh well, compromises must be made’ stance is as wrong as ‘let’s shoe-horn a vast system into a small room’. The Kaya S12 is a legitimately high-end loudspeaker for such rooms. That it isn’t a full-range design is an advantage in spaces so small that anything below 60Hz has its in-wall accompaniment. But the uncompromised performance, from that taut bass to the upper limits of hearing, makes it something special. That Vivid audio no-distortion, super clear, and, it has to be said, ‘vivid’ sound is in full effect here, scaled down – but not shrunken – to work in a broader range of rooms than you’d expect.

‘Impressed’ doesn’t even describe my feelings toward the Vivid Audio Kaya S12. The Kaya S12 takes the ‘loudspeaker for small rooms’ concept to new heights. Its combination of stereo focus, detail and clean bass makes the Kaya S12 a cerebral performer; the tremendous sense of musical performance and excellent beat give it some heart, too. While it might not be the first choice for dub reggae or church organ fanatics, I’d happily trade bass weight for bass precision, especially as trying to get both in the same box requires a more significant investment in loudspeakers in a larger room. Those of us living in The Big City – where space is at a considerable premium – have just got a new champion to fight our corner.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Type: Reflex-loaded two-way stand‑mount loudspeaker
• Drive units: Tweeter – 26mm alloy dome with tapered tube loading, Mid/bass – 100mm long throw alloy cone
• Nominal frequency response: -6dB 45–25,000 Hz
• Nominal impedance: 8 Ohms
• Crossover frequency: 3kHz
• Connectors: single wire binding posts
• Sensitivity: 87dB 1w/1m
• Finishes: gloss piano black, gloss Pearl white, custom colours, matte Oyster grey
• Dimensions H×W×D: 480 × 237 × 254mm
• Weight: 6kg
• Price: from £6,000 (stand £1,500)

Manufacturer: Vivid Audio

URL: vividaudio.com

Tel: +44(0)7515 127049

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