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I'm not surprised. I am a big believer in isolation--even on the CONTROL, so I'm certain that the effect would be even greater on a pair of speakers w/ all the electronics inside them. Mine are on a desk, in the (very) near field and I liked the way that the ISOAcoustics ISO stands worked (and the price). So I got them but I can't say I A/B'ed against anything else. @Beren, it would not surprise me at all if there was more improvement to be had. ... I used to use the Ardán Audio stands (those are in the picture for my bio), but they took up a lot of desk space and were fiddley. Like I said, I'm pleased with the ISO stands; I cannot say that I notice a significant change in audio quality one way or another since I switched.

Don't know if I'll be able to afford the BXTs... but I'm thinking about it. Does anyone have any experience with isolation/footers for the floor standers? I am using ISO Acoustics stands on my THREEs, so it seems like the Gaia's might be a good product to try. I was also thinking Stillpoints. But I am very curious about anyone's experience.

Lol, I didn't mean to start a firestorm (... or a tempest in teapot!). In my experience, things that "shouldn't" make a difference in audio, often do... but also sometimes don't. (I remember back to the Julian Hirsch Stereo Review days when allegedly sensible people said all solid state amps with the same rated power absolutely had to sound precisely the same; they sounded an awful lot like @Emlin does now.) I am not an engineer and do not claim to be able to explain why these things matter... I have some ideas, but they are probably wrong at best, and silly at worst. I like that Bruno Putzeys has said more than once that engineers really ought to listen to what audiophiles say they are hearing, because they are often right (often against all scientific sense of the day), but that they ought to and pay almost no attention to why they think they are hearing it, because they probably have no idea what they are talking about. I know about confirmation bias, but I chose to agree with Bruno. And I know that I trust my ears because, if I/we don't, why are we in this hobby at all? I'll leave the "why" to someone who actually knows what the hell they're talking about.

The Kii dealer from whom I bought my THREEs is a Kubala Sosna (KS) dealer. He suggested KS and I got a pair of Fascination PCs. My experience was different from @fpalm69: I did perceive a clear improvement vs. the stock PCs. If I were to describe it, I'd say that the sound was more "relaxed," I just felt like the presentation was smoother and more coherent and I didn't have to work as hard to enjoy the speakers. That said, the differences were not night and day--they were subtle, but repeatable. A much bigger improvement for me was to put the CONTROL on Black Ravioli footers/pads. It really made a big difference--bigger, I think, than the power cords for significantly less $$$. When I heard how significant an improvement (even modest) vibration reduction had on my system, it freaks me out when I see people putting their CONTROL on iPad stands and such. BTW, way, way, way back on this thread, I reported the improvement of the Black Raviolis. Which I guess makes sense, since all of my sources are plugged into it. But someone replied (sorry, I don't recall who) and they said that they also heard a big improvement when they isolated their CONTROL even though they were only passing sources through the XLRs on the back of the speakers--the CONTROL was only being used for volume control and setup. I cannot confirm his (her?) experience, but that is at least one more person who found that isolating the CONTROL made a big improvement to SQ. I hope that helps.

Thanks for the update @Rubysea. I haven't run into any of the problems that this update seems intended to address--perhaps because I don't use any of the Kii filters b/c I am EQing with Audiolense (the difference isn't huge but I think it's worthwhile). What I am waiting on is more news about their "big" preamp/streamer, is this thing ever going to drop!?! Does anyone have any new info? I was planning on asking Kii about this at HiFI Munich a few months ago but, with no audio shows this year, the opportunities to get answers to such questions are pretty limited. Still, if anyone has any info, I'd appreciate a heads up.

Thanks @Cazzesman. There's not much out on the BXT (... maybe because of it's price relative to the THREE?). Anyway, looking forward to reading.

Hi @ragwo, unfortunately, I was unable to make REW work. Given that so many others have, I think that the problem must be with me--not with REW. I broke down and bought Audiolense a few days ago; I haven't set it up yet. Maybe this weekend. Hopefully, I'll have better success than with REW!

Thank you, @Rubysea, and @firedog for your advice. I'll try and give it a shot one more time this week... if it doesn't work, I guess it's on to Audiolense. Thanks again!

PLEASE HELP ME RE: REW and Kii EQ So, I decided to try and use the new Kii firmware to do additional EQ. As suggested by many here, I bought a miniDSP umik-1 mic., a good mic. stand and downloaded REW. Since then, the process has been equal parts terrible and frustrating. I know that I probably ought to be hitting the REW forums but 1. these forums are huge with no easy indication of where to go or where to begin, 2. they often try and be very exhaustive, which is admirable generally, but not when I just want to do very simple things--like get my mic set up and take a few measurements, and 3. are often very specific to use cases that are of absolutely no interest to me (e.g. using REW as a convolution engine for loading setting sinto Roon, or whatever). Further, given that some people on this form have used the exact same equipment I have to achieve the exact same results I'm seeking, I thought I might try here first, if anyone would be willing to help. To begin with, I have downloaded the the correct umik-1 mic cal. file from miniDSP and successfully read it into the Calibration file in Preferences. As suggested by REW, I selected the ASIO driver for my YellowTech PUC-2 USB-AES D-to-D converter (which goes AES into the speakers) and have left the Sampling Rate at the default 48kHz. I have set levels to "Use main speaker test signal to check/set levels." All also in Preferences. So far, so good, I think. From there my problems include: 1. The GUI on both the REW and the umik-1 pages do not match my GUI. I suspect I have a newer rev. (I have REW V5.19) and, also, I am using WIndows 10 and they seem to be screenshotting Apple OS. Anyway, with the images completely off, I cannot seem to find simple answers to things like, in Preferences, what does the Input/Output/Timing Reference Output/Loopback Input mean--what is 2: in 2 or 1: Out 1 mean and should I care? 2. I play pink noise from the Generator and only get signal out of the right channel. This doesn't seem correct to me... but I cannot figure out if maybe I am supposed to do one and then the other? Or, if not, how to even begin to get sound out of both channels. 3. When I play pink noise and check it against the levels (following the instructions--as best I can--from the umik-1 page) the sound-meter does move a bit, but although I am supposed to push the sound to about 75dB, mine always sticks around 30.0 - 30.5 dB(z) F/-102 dBFS, no matter how loud (or soft) I turn up my speakers (--or "speaker" since, as I said, sound only comes out of the right channel). Like I said, it does bounce around a bit, so it appears to be reading something but, whatever that is, it's nothing to do with the sound coming out of my system. This should be so simple but, basically, nothing looks or works as it should. So I haven't even begun to try and tackle doing an actual measurement. I cannot begin to say how much I hate this process. All I want to do is find the freq., Q and magnitude of any room nodes/peaks and program their inverse into the Kii CONTROL's EQ--simple, no? Currently, I am at 100% failure, maybe it's just me. Can anyone who has used [1. the Kii CONTROL, 2. the Kii THREEs, 3. a miniDSP umik-1 USB mic, 4. REW and 5. Windows 10] tell me how they got measurements so that they could enter them into the CONTROL? If so, i'd be eternally grateful. Thanks in advance.

Unfortunately, that's my conclusion as well... though, as I said, I'd hoped to be proved wrong at Munich.

Yes, I had heard the same thing--and I had also heard that it would: 1. Support the WiSA connection (which has been confirmed to be supported by the THREEs already); 2. Have it's own streamer/renderer built-in. 3. Like @firedog I would almost certainly buy it, if/when it comes out So when something went wrong with one of my THREEs about 8-10 months ago, Kii tried to diagnose it over the internet before I sent it to Grace Design, which was the importer at that time, for repair (as it turned out, the power supply bricked and I ended up having to send it in for repair anyway). However, none other than Chris Reichard was on phone when we were trying to diagnose the speaker. So decided to take the opportunity to ask him about the pre-amp directly. He: 1. Was willing to confirm that the "big" preamp was on the Kii "roadmap," but could not confirm--or even comment on--when it might be available; 2. Said that the features I listed above sounded more or less right, but he could neither confirm nor deny specific features until the preamp was actually introduced. So there you have it, just how "concrete" that is I cannot say, but that is at least confirmation from the top that it is something that Kii is working on. Honestly, I'd hoped that they might surprise us all with the big pre at Munich 2020 but, with that being canceled due to the CV, who knows. And I might have been overly optimistic about that anyway....

I guess the only downside here is that it wouldn't correct for my computer or TV playback (connected through XLR and Toslink, respectively); only my music player (connected through USB). But it does seem like an easier solution for that use case... and only the last is really used for "critical listening"--the Kii's sound just fine already with, say, a Netflix movie streamed over my TV. Thanks everyone for the info. Gotta get started, one way or another.

Hey @Rubysea, @H665, and everyone else who's contributed to this topic, thanks for the info. I (think) I would like to do the same thing all of you are doing, more or less. But I have no experience in this sort of EQ, so I just want to be sure I have this straight: 1. Obviously, the need for the UMIK-1 is self-explanatory, but... 2. ... I'm less clear about what REW does. As I read their documentation, REW reads the output from the UMIK-1 and then compares it to a flat (or house-curve) response and then calculates notch-filters to match the actual output to the desired output. You can read said output and see where problems are in your system. 3. Then, according to MiniDSP, you're supposed to save these filters into a .txt file and load them into MiniDSP software, but you guys're saying: write these filters down and then program them into the Kii CONTROL by hand? 3.5. Just to be clear, what's the benefit of doing this into the Kii and not into MiniDSP software and/or, say, Roon? How/why am I benefited by doing the EQ in the CONTROL and not some other place in the playback chain? 4. Could you guys please go into a little more detail about the process of EQ'ing with the notch filters and combining those with the "Boundry" EQ? Would the idea be to get as close to flat and/or to "house/target curve"as possible with the "Boundry" EQ --and only then work in the notch filters to knock down remaining peaks? Or is there some other, better way of thinking about using all of these new advanced EQ capabilities? 5. As always, a big THANKS in advance to the AS-Kii community.

Updated without any problems. But the Bluetooth isn't working 100% for me. When I tested it with my iPhone, it connected, played, metadata-ed everything just fine. But when I try and connect with the BT from my Windows 10 PC, it seems to work okay, the Control is discoverable, connected and then selected as the output device, but no sound comes through. I've tried a number of apps and none of them actually make any sound. Which is weird as hell, because the level-meter in the "Sound" utility is bouncing up and down, but no sound. Another oddity, the Kii COntrol shows up as a BT headset and mic., not speakers--and not as a Kii "device," as I believe that they are supposed to. But I have verified that the headphones found in the "Sound" utility are, indeed, the Kii's--when I turn the Kii BT off, the Headphones show that they are disconnected. Given that my phone works flawlessly, I assume that the problem's with my computer... but I cannot think what that problem might be. Any ideas? I've attached an image of my desktop and the BT utilities, FYI. Thanks in advance for any help.

Great review Chris. And I've always had a very soft spot for EMM Labs DACs--my first truly reference DAC was from EMM Labs... but herein lies a problem. In the review, you said that the DV2 is "the first digital to analog converter from EMM to include built-in volume control." This is not true however. My EMM LABs, DAC, the DCC2, also had a volume control. (Here's a link to the DCC2 brochure from EMM Labs.) Unlike the DV2, the DCC2's volume control was analog--based, I believe on their Switchman preamp technology). In fact, using an analog volume control/pre circuitry allowed the DCC2 to have pure analog inputs too. Anyway, thanks for the review Chris, and thanks too for making me think back to my DCC2, which I still remember very fondly. Meitner did--and does--make some very special gear. And while $30k is an insane amount of cash of any audio equipment, when you compare it to, say, the MSB Select /Reference DACs or the dcs Vivaldi stack today (or as I did against the dcs Elgar stack back then), I always thought that EMM Labs actually delivered very good (SoTA) value for the money.