King Sound ‘the King Panel Speaker Review

Grills as “Sound Panels”

My final position of the speakers was of a moderate toe in; I do not prefer the parallel placement of planars; I always toe them in to suit. Toe-in is recommended in the Manual. I chose to have the fore, outer edge, of the speaker 51” from the front wall and the inner edge 44.5” to it. The side placement is tight, with only 12.5” from the outer edge of the speakers to the side walls. This obviously is not the ideal, as one would want the speakers to breathe more freely to their sides. Close side walls can cause unwanted angular reflections; at initial set up there was a bit of a “slap” to the sound and an unwarranted degradation to the soundstage as a result of it.

With limited space one has to be creative to resolve potential first reflection issues. As the speakers were placed a bit closer than the recommended minimum side wall distance and had no room treatments parallel to them, I found that the room was involved too much laterally; I was being distracted from focus on the speaker by the peripheral reflection. A nice answer presented itself with the very grills I had removed from the speaker. I preferred to listen without the front grills for this review as I sensed a touch more clarity without them. The grills are a good 5’ tall, with thin aluminum frames – perfect for setting them against the wall next to the speaker like a room tuning panel to absorb reflections!

The influence of this makeshift panel was profoundly beneficial. Sound from the speakers were immediately more tightly focused and the extraneous slap from the first reflection was all but eliminated. I never removed the screens from that position during the entire time of the review. In fact, I have enjoyed their use so much that I continued to use them even when the Kings were swapped out for other speakers to review! I moved the grills a few inches forward or back relative to the speakers, but found that locating them with the rear edge of the screen lined up with the outer edge of the speaker (forming a sloppy right angle) was ideal. Tricks like this are inexpensive and can radically alter the listening experience. Try not to overlook less obvious options for improvement when it comes to set up.

Is The King inclined to cooperate with you?

The speaker is designed to stand with a slight backward cant, as the front adjustable spikes (with built-in floor protecting discs) are longer than the rear fixed spikes. The design team at King Sound may have determined that the optimum position of the speakers was canted backwards, but there may be a select few listeners who prefer a forward slant on the speakers, especially if in a closer listening position. With the speaker positioned leaning to its fullest extent backwards I felt that the soundstage was slightly elevated and the speaker had less impact, especially in the bass. When erect, the speaker settled the phantom image squarely ahead of me and not three feet above my head, and across the entire frequency spectrum the performance was more “solid”. By this I mean a tendency to acquire attributes more like a dynamic speaker in terms of impact and intensity. This was a factor in the King’s ability to have impact approaching that of a dynamic speaker. Ed Momkus, another Dagogoan, who stopped by to hear the King, preferred the vertical orientation for this very reason. Ed Likes big floor standing speakers with slam, and he was taken aback by the impact of the King, especially when it sat upright.

Owners should not ignore such seemingly insignificant tuning/adjustments, as the little things can bring meaningful improvement. Initially I vacillated about the orientation, as I found something to love about either position. I have chosen for the long term a moderate position, which seems to split the difference between the airiness of the full backward slant and the solidity of the vertical position.

I did try the speakers with a forward, downward slant but was not tickled by the results; the soundstage collapsed far too much for my tastes; it literally seemed like the soundstage was slamming into the carpeting and the bass seemed to be glued to the ground. While at very low listening levels this might be acceptable for near field listening, I abandoned it gladly. It was a joy to return to the backward slant and the “wide open spaces” feel to the music.

Dynamics

While I’m on the subject of set up, I’ll comment on the dynamics of the King. Roger wanted information included in this review on my listening level, especially since I was in a room with moderate dimensions. I can appreciate that as it can help readers assess my perspective if I were to say something like they had “slam” and potency. These speakers had slam and potency ! For reference, my typical listening level is approximately 88-90 dB. This is not nearly “live” level, as I do not want to damage my hearing over time. I will leave it to others to push past the point of sensibility either in reviewing or casual listening. I found the King to loaf at that level, with not a hint of desperation or deterioration.

I was very surprised at the intensity of the bottom-end. Remember, I have the VAC power supply on constantly, which vastly helps the Kings reach deeper than with the wall warts. I have not come to expect bass worth much from more affordable ESL designs, and frankly, not from several upscale designs either. Up to this point one has had to have ceilings ten feet tall to accommodate the largest models, or stick hefty subwoofers alongside the panels to have any semblance of true full-range. Not any longer; the King pumps out a very respectable bottom-end! No, it’s not the punch-in-the-gut 16 Hz of the Legacy Audio Focus SE, but it’s far more than a solid 32Hz. I say “solid” because it seems lower than the bass achieved by all manner of smallish floor standing speakers having 8” bass drivers with claimed 30 Hz +/-3dB. Although I see numbers in the specs suggesting that the Legacy Focus has much lower response, the experience of the King suggests that it is in much closer terms of performance in the bottom-end than the numbers suggest. Ed had also heard the Legacy Focus SE, and concurred with this assessment. The King simply sounded very respectable as well as phenomenally taut in the low frequencies.

You shouldn’t expect a planar to behave identically to a dynamic speaker in the wave launch. You’re not going to have the same experience with the King as you will a big 12- to 15-inch driver dynamic speaker. But you are going to have easily detectable, if not profound, and serious bass. I call profound bass from subwoofers “ground shaking bass”; I call serious bass solid, palpable bass. I do not call the 40-50 Hz bass of many planars either serious or profound. The King launches a wall of bass at you, not a medicine ball of bass. I have used the analogy before, and it is appropriate now: the King is akin to Straight Line Wind, not a tornado. The sense of presence is every bit as strong as a dynamic speaker, but the sense of focus and locus of power is less concentrated. Whatever is traded off in terms of sheer impact as heard through the King is offset by a superior accuracy. Regarding the word “accuracy” do not think clinical or technical, think authentic. This is one of only a handful of full-range planar designs in the world under $20K to produce the tone, texture and microdynamics of a bass note breathtakingly well.

Over the course of the review I put the Kings to work on a lot of bottom-end loaded material. Among the nastiest tests was something I found through my Rhapsody subscription with the Sonos Digital Music System, a group called Bass Addiction, with a very heavy synth bass line. For Whom the Bass Tolls, the title of their work, gives some sense of the group’s objective – to test the limits of an audio system’s capabilities. One senses their attitude to be, “If the listener expires while playing our music, tough.” The bass contained on this disc dwells in subterranean depths, at a frequency level beneath whatever might be found in some audiophiles’ entire music collections. One might consider it a Techno-earthquake, prepared to shake your ceiling tiles loose or rattle your windows, whichever can be destroyed first.

The King did not shake the ceiling tiles loose or rattle windows, partially because I built my room to take that kind of punishment, but also because the King did track with all but the most extreme LF moments. On “Metropolis” and “Fifteen Inches” the King did not make every hair on my head quiver, but it did have some clear reproduction down to subwoofer level, well below 25 Hz. All but the most worm-crawling-on-the-ground-low bass was palpable. More mainstream artists like Lee Ann Womack and Leanne Rimes, who often use solid electric bass support, the King handled with not just competency, but with fortitude. Unless you need to feel the bass frothing your blood, you will hear a satisfactory amount with the King. Time and again I played the same music with the King as I had with the Legacy Focus SE, a speaker with twin 12” bass drivers per cabinet, and the King perceptually caught the vast majority of the bottom-end action. I’ve not heard similarly from any planar at any price point close to the King.

How do the King’s rock? Quite well, thank you! I’m not going to suggest that the gravitas of the King is such that it can supplant the largest of full-range dynamic speakers for heavy music, however… Boston is one of those classic rock bands you can always turn to for mindless rock riffs. I anticipated correctly that the very lowest thumping bass line would be just touched, but I was caught off guard by the nuances in the recordings of “Don’t Look Back” and “Foreplay/Long time”. I had never heard the band members exercise such skill, such deftness at their craft! As a teen I enjoyed the lightheartedness of their music, but now I can hear into their band as incisively as an X-ray image revealing a chest cavity.

It occurs to me that when I was younger I marginalized some groups or genres of music, as I couldn’t satisfactorily hear what they were playing. Now that I do hear what they were playing, I appreciate them all the more. The received wisdom in audio is that some speaker technologies are inferior for heavy music like rock. Flying in the face of such “wisdom”, having heard it myself I would actively seek out the Kings for rock music! Fully accepting their lack of substrate shifting bass, I would still prefer them to almost all of the dynamic speakers I have ever used to play hard music. Between the “wall of sound” character of the planar speaker, their retina-dialating precision, and their ultra-taut bottom-end, I happily use them to pump up the jams.