King Sound ‘the King Panel Speaker Review

Amplification

Speaking of pumping, the King is inefficient, at 83 dB sensitivity and 6 Ohm nominal impedance. This is not a speaker made for low-power SET amps. Neither is it suitable for amps which are sensitive to low impedance loads. Especially when amps are bridged, their impedance load typically halves, on occasion putting the amp in a perilous position if mated with a speaker like the King. As the King’s impedance reaches 1.8 Ohms at about 20kHz, a look at your amp’s specifications is in order. Do not sacrifice an amp for the sake of experimentation.

Allow me to demonstrate in this regard: My first amplifiers to be offered up to the Kings were theCambridge Audio Azur 840W pair on loan for review. Both in stereo and dual mono mode, each one is 200wpc into 8 Ohms and 350wpc into 4 Ohms. In Bridged Mono mode they are a nifty 500wpc into 8 Ohms and 800wpc into 4 Ohms. The 840W’s do not double their power as the impedance is halved, so what might happen if these amps, in Bridged Mono, were not stable into a 2 Ohm load? No matter, I’d try them anyway. That sounds rather foolish, and it would be if the 840W’s were just another pair of amps.They were not; they were amps with extensive protection circuitry, as I outlined in my review of them. I conducted this test with the King speakers in part to see when the protection circuitry would trigger and what the result would be. I was fully aware that the amps might go “poof” when I turned them on, and indeed they did!

If these were different amps without the 5-layer protection circuitry Cambridge boasts about in its manual, trust me, I would have been absolutely freaking out! I have never blown an amp and aim to never blow any amp I have obtained for a review. I pride myself on proper matching and set up of equipment. The only reason I tried it was because these amps could test the load without harming them. I also was curious as to what degree they would prevent unwanted bursts of noise from the speakers. Two potentially very bad things did not happen: they did not send a surge through the system, and they did not get cooked. Their front lights twinkled their “reset” indication, and one touch of the power button reset them! Can you imagine an amp so reliable that you can “blow it up” and it can be completely restored seconds later? I adore these things. It’s never my intent to harm equipment on loan, and I was ready to accept Cambridge’s claims of the protection circuitry’s effectiveness, but this demonstration of durability certainly was compelling, even while confirming that the King is not just any old “slap an amp on them” speaker.

Initially, I was disappointed that the 840W’s seemed to not handle the Kings. I am sure that you would be sorely disappointed if you were to sacrifice your bridged amps with instability below 4 Ohms to the King. The simple lesson: Know your amps, and if you do not have enough information in the manual, contact the manufacturer. Don’t assume your amp will handle whatever speaker you throw at it in any mode it operates. Impedance matching most of the time is important for sonics but not life and death (of components). Once in a while it is life and death. Let the know-it-all guy be the one with the blown amp, and you the one with the properly matched amp for the speakers.

Minutes later I was reconfigured and had the Azur 840W’s running in Dual Mono mode pumping their magic into the Kings. The Magic of the Azur amp is clarity, spades of it. Combine them with the King, which shines in terms of clarity, and the result is an overwhelmingly plasmic (as in plasma TV) image of the music. Just as one can stare into a mirror up close, I felt I could get my ears right up to the instruments, to the vocalist, nearly to the studio!

It was readily apparent that the King would reveal all. They are a door through which one can walk into the “rooms” of the attending components to admire them. Instead of standing outside the room, one feels ushered into it. As surely as the top of a component can be pulled and one can spy the “guts” of it, one hears through the invisible frame of the King to the internals of the amplification, source and cables. Never in my room with any other speaker have I come so close to experiencing the juxtaposition of “it’s (the speaker) not there” and “it’s (the music) all there,” simultaneously.

Use of the Cambridge Audio Azur 840E Preamp along with the amps was a bit sterile. The Kings are prone to expose solid-state sterility, so one has to be very aware of just how much will be revealed through them. While the 840E/W combo was not as clinical with the Legacy Focus SE, it was with the King. For that reason I switched to the VAC Renaissance Signature Preamplifier MkII before the Azur Amps. This is quite the mismatch dollar-wise, a $14K preamp with two amps totaling under $6K. However, the 840W is far and away one of the best economical solid-state amps I’ve used, or heard, for that matter; the pairing was sonically appropriate. The Ayon Audio CD-2 was used as source, and the Wireworld Silver Electra series speaker cables along with the Platinum interconnects were all involved.

This was a taste of Nano-Age audio. The VAC Preamplifier MkII tends to be voluminous in nature, so it really amplified the venue through the Kings. Jamie Bonk’s A Perfect Tomorrow made for a perfect today; on the track “Small Pleasures” I heard a wealth of tactile information as his fingers reached, slid and released the strings of his guitar. There has not been another speaker in my home to resolve both the initial contact of the fingers upon string and the scraping of skin as the wire is freed. It is thrilling to participate in the split second timing of the performance!