KLH Model 3

VITAL STATS

Model	KLH Model 3
Enclosure Type	Sealed, Acoustic suspension design
Drive Units	1 x 1-inch aluminium dome with soft rubber suspension 1x 8-inch pulp paper cone with 1.5-inch diameter flat wire voice coil
Bi-Wiring	No
Impedance	6 ohm (compatible with 4, 6, or 8 ohm rated amplifier)
Sensitivity	88 dB
Frequency Response	46 Hz to 20 kHz
Power Handling	150 Watts (600 peak)
Dimensions	718 x 311 x 482 mm (HxWxD)
Weight	16.4 kg ea. including riser base
Playlist	https://tidal.com/playlist/6686a4d4-3deb-4c12-9be5-51191e60b3c0

PRICE +/-R49,990.00 per pair

SUPPLIED BY Cinema Architects 011-601-0653

WEBSITE www.cinemaarchitects.co.za

This is my first encounter with the KLH brand. American made in Indiana, the Model 3s look like large bookshelf speakers that sit relatively low in the room angled up with stands (they call these riser bases) to meet your ears. I speak a lot these days of the visual cognitive bias that accompanies ones listened experience and the immediate observation is that the sound stage from these speakers is going to be low, based purely on the height of the tweeter being that much lower than conventional.

As we shall see, ermm, hear, this is not the case. At all.

I removed the grilles from the speakers (these are usefully magnetic) and the speakers are visually poorer for it. The grilles are an off cream colour (called old world linen) recessed to fit almost flush with the front of the walnut veneer finished cabinets. But I always listen with the grilles off for reference mainly from force of habit I suppose. In this case however I think I’d keep them on if I owned these speakers – the look is a little retro 70’s but done attractively. The marketing bumpf calls the style ‘modern classic’ with the word ‘timeless’ chucked in there somewhere too, I am sure…

At the rear we find two decent binding posts (5-way gold plated) accompanied by a selector switch offering you a choice of one of three settings (Lo, Mid and Hi). Whilst I understand the ethos, I hate having choice. Having to make decisions about how I want a speaker to react just annoys me. KLH reference the switch as a Three Position Acoustic Balance Switch which I find to be an additional complication/decision point for me that I neither want nor need from a speaker. Give me what you got and I’ll do the rest.

That said I do understand why KLH included it. The speakers are designer, and fitting them into a room in the modern environment means that including a modicum of room treatment right there at the speaker is clever. It affords greater installation flexibility and that makes sense. If you want ‘straight through’ the situation is easily resolved because the ‘Hi’ position is the ‘preferred selection for neutral to dead listening spaces’, which is where it stayed pretty much throughout the course of the review. The other two settings are used to tone down live to very lively listening spaces by inserting a -1.5 dB and -3.0 dB offset from 400 Hz and above. I did try them and in my fairly live listening room I still preferred them on Hi. Remember all that is happening here is that you’re damping down the frequency response from the middle range and up – it’s not a massive step change.

I ran the speakers in for a few days as they were sealed box units that arrived for review. Sitting down for the first of a few critical listening sessions showed that the visual bias painted by one’s eyes as to where the sound stage was going to find itself is exactly that.

A bias. It was the first thing I was listening for because that is what our eyes do to our brains. Happily, there is none of it. The sound stage is absolutely spot on and even just using the listening positioning from my MLs the Model 3’s imaging was near perfect from the get-go. I put that down to experience of toe in and setting up speaker listening positions!

That or sheer dumb luck.

As it happens the 3s are relatively forgiving of positioning from a toe in point of view. Line them more or less accurately and you’re on your way. I did so some fine tuning, but moving them in from the side walls and back and forth from the rear walls didn’t make any stark improvements to the already wide, deep and correctly heighted sound stage. There are obvious room effects on the low end, but I ran the speakers about a meter away from the rear walls and I have no complaints about the bass response from the speakers.

Accuracy is excellent. I mean truly excellent. The Model 3s have all the precision of small bookshelf monitors and they effortlessly track precisely across the stage. Instruments and vocals are placed precisely as they are in the recordings and technical execution across height and width variation is spot on.

Response is also fast. You get that all important sense of space and pace that is so important in the listening experience and particularly when you want to hear reverb that fades at the correct speed to create the illusion of a much larger listened environment than the one four walls, a floor and a ceiling physically constrain you to.

You will note that the mid bass drivers are paper cones. I want to touch on that a little because in discussions with speaker designers and builders the philosophy behind drivers is about as intense as that around Formula One engines. The point here is that there are cogent and coherent reasons for the use of paper (pulp fibre) in cones given the incredible strength and low mass that can be engineered with them. There are many reasons why the material is used and none of them are for cheap shortcuts.

It shows because this accuracy extends to the tonality across the spectrum. Whilst KLH claims a flat response throughout, I suspect my room as it stands at the moment is a little bass flattering as I got a sense of a somewhat bolstered low end and more enthusiastic real bass response than the 46 Hz low end may suggest. The sense is that the Model 3s give you as much of everything all the way down to 46 Hz as possible and it’s plenty good enough.

The result is also that timbre across instruments is excellent, particularly from the double bass. Crossover between the drivers is invisible and harmonics in recordings are easily dispatched with. These are speakers that if you give them the detail to begin with, will give you the sonic picture filled in. Just add music. It all goes to show that 8-inch paper pulp cones can do a proper job, and especially so on the low end without sacrificing or colouring music in the process.

As might be expected now, vocals in the mid-range are distinctly clear and authentic. I particularly liked how these speakers dealt with Lady Gaga and her somewhat whimsy gutterality (yes, yes a new word) that is uniquely her own vocal range. The more I hear of her the more longevity I hear in her voice – she is going to be with us for a long time (she reminds me of Agnetha and Anni-Fred and you don’t get higher praise than that).

Being American-made speakers, naturally I thought it appropriate to play some decent European recordings and in classical Mozart and Stravinsky one is able to not only to hear the strings on the violins, but it is possible to get close to being able to single out the lead violin. Brash brass is presented as is and by now I was expecting good things and good things is what you will get. Try a flute on for size and focus with these speakers and you’ll quickly hear what I mean. There is speed, ambience and presence with a good recording giving inch-perfect precision in placement, and this means that you get the depth and air around it that a flute requires to sound like a flute.

By now, you’ll note that bad recordings are not going to sound great. Garbage in, no DSP to save you, garbage out. End of.

The other seemingly innocuous detail is that of power. Good efficient speakers get away with less power and at 88 dB the Model 3s find themselves in the place where you can drive them with 50 watts of amplifier. 150 watts is better and if you can get to 250 watts they’ll dance around all day long at close to their maximum SPL with less of a fuss for your amp. These are speakers that will do well with big power behind them, but you’ll be perfectly happy with 50 watts at a slightly lower volume level too. It comes back to the target room…

For my first encounter with KLH I come away impressed. They are clearly well designed, well thought out audiophile-grade speakers that tip a nod to the modern living environment and yet still come up with the goods to deliver top drawer audio authenticity to the listened experience. Impressive.

William Kelly