Guest Post: The Kali IN-8s versus The PSI A-21-M V2’s

Kali Audio IN-8: Dipswitches and Sonarworks Measurements

Björn Warning. 7/12/2021.

Let’s start with the size and design of my control room.

My control room measures 4.85m x 4.53m x 2.64m (WxDxH)

The ceiling is built at an angle of roughly 8° running down from above my listening positioning to the front and the back of my room. I would have loved to construct different sizes at a steeper angle (preferably of more than 15°), but other aspects of my renovation/construction didn’t allow me to do that.

The control room is a free floating design and has no contact with the actual building or my recording rooms. The somewhat square design of my control room (again a constructive compromise I had to make) does obviously invite some acoustic problems. These are particularly noticeable in roughly the 40 Hz, 80 Hz, and 160 Hz regions. Where possible, some bass traps have been installed, as well as free floating acoustic panels made of different absorbing materials combined with diffusers.

The walls are finished with poplar wooden panels placed on top of absorbing sheets and the floor is laid with maple.

A large console, lots of screens, a large window and some 19-inch racks are the biggest flat surfaces.

For about 10 years, I have worked on PSI A-21M as my main monitors. The NS-10s need no introduction and are happily used for what they are meant to be used for. The surround system seen on the picture consists of a 7.1 set of Behringer Thruth B2031As and the accompanying subwoofer. This system is not meant to mix or to judge the sonic character of the music, but only to judge the placement of my sources. Although they are no way good enough to judge mixes, they do translate very well to the commonly seen JBL setups in movie theaters. The many movies I have mixed that didn’t have the budget to be remixed/mastered in actual Dolby licensed studios all sounded very close to the mix that I made in my own studio.

It is my stereo mixes and the overall judgement of sound where the real problems and thus insecurity comes in. The PSIs (good and expensive as they are) under perform and keep me in doubt about a good balance, particularly in the ‘problem’ areas of my room where the size and design of the space is to be blamed.

This is something that was not always apparent to me. I have mixed many albums over the last 10 years that were welcomed in terms of sound and quality, but over time, the issue became more and more obvious as different mastering facilities responded with roughly the same comments about my work.

I began to recognize and hear the problem myself, but in my own mixing environment I was in the dark even when using Sonarworks to help calibrate my system. When I heard the IN-8s at work in another studio, I was able to pin-point the problem area for the first time. I asked myself: “Is this because the 3-way system leaves a lot of room for the woofer to do what it is meant to do?”

I would have loved to change my main setup into a 3-way system, but any other serious 3-way design would have been prohibitively expensive. Beyond that, I didn’t know of any 3-way system that combined the midrange and tweeter in a coincident way. In my opinion, it is a genius design and a huge mystery as to why other designers had only come up with versions of it on the expensive end of the spectrum. If I had 10 thumbs, I would give the ideas behind the Kali IN-8 all 10 thumbs up!

So I ordered a pair of IN-8s to install them in my own control room and see if I would come to the same conclusions that I did when I listened to them at my friend’s place. To make sure that they would be placed at the best possible position and orientation and to measure how they would perform against the 10 times pricier PSI’s, I used Sonarworks to make a graphical plot of the speakers at work. I also tested the different possible dipswitch settings on the IN-8s to see which setting would present the best overall correction curve suggested by Sonarworks. I strongly believe that the less correction is done by Sonarworks, the better the monitor’s performance.

It is important to note that during recording sessions, I do not use Sonarworks at all, because I work in a direct monitoring analog fashion. I never (or almost never) use EQ or compression on my inputs, but I judge my microphone choice and placement at the source, so already at the recording stage, detailed monitoring is a very important part of the job.

PSIs vs. IN-8s

Let’s start with the first and most important question. How do the IN-8s perform in comparison to the PSIs? The PSIs show their best possible measurement in the position that they have been used in my room for the last decade. The graph of the IN-8s shows the best result I got after tweaking their placement as well as the different dipswitch settings.

PSI A-21M V2

Kali Audio IN-8 V1

To get the clearest and best comparable graphical reading, I turned on the ‘listening spot’ function in Sonarworks and set its performance to 100%. In real life, I prefer to drive Sonarworks at 50%.

The green line shows the correction curve (so the opposite curve of the ‘before’ reading), and the purple line shows the result after correction.

The biggest differences between the PSIs and the Kalis seem to be in the low and low-mid range. The strange boosts in the PSIs in the low-midrange as well as the inconsistency between both speakers seem to show very well why I was having problems judging my mixes in that area. The only real visible difference between both Kalis is the boost in the low-end of my right speaker. This is due to the difference in placement and nothing I can overcome without building a completely new studio.

Because the boost exists only in the 40/50 Hz range (which has almost no effect on stereo judgment) this is an easy issue to learn to live with.

When the function to compensate for differences between speakers (listening spot) is switched off, the PSIs show a difference of 2.1 dB and 1 sample (0.02ms) whereas the Kalis show a difference of 0.7 dB and no time domain differences at all.

This outcome makes Swiss mountains shiver and defies all expectations beyond those that I had after hearing the Kalis in action for the first time.

XLR vs. RCA

We now go back in time. After I set up the speakers at different places and tried vertical against horizontal placement, I found that horizontal placement worked the best. It only outperformed the vertical placement once I raised the speakers so that the tweeters were at ear height and away from the surface of my mixing console.

The result was a better stereo image and a tighter overall sound. I also played with different placements, and exactly as you would expect, the Kalis seemed to perform best when placed closer to me and away from the wall and window. Strangely enough, the PSIs always performed best when placed further away from me and closer to the wall. It had always puzzled me, but painstaking measurements proved that they actually did.

In short…they might have never been the right speakers for my room in the first place, but that is a bit easy to say after enjoying them for almost 10 years.

The first thing I noticed was that I had to crank up the volume of the Kalis to get them to be as loud as my other speaker systems. This invited more of the hiss coming out of the Kalis. I changed the input from balanced XLR to the unbalanced RCA connection, set the volume of the Kalis back at 0 dB and measured the difference.

XLR

RCA

Other than a very slight difference in the overall volume, the curves showed exactly the same outcome. This confirmed my listening tests. I later received an answer from Kali, again confirming that there is no difference other than the -10 vs.+4 sensitivity of the different inputs. They also confirmed that the most neutral volume settings for the Kalis is either fully cranked up (+6) or at the center (0 détente).

Dipswitch settings

I then tested different dipswitch settings trying to get the best overall outcome and hoping to see the closest graphical outcome between my right and left speaker.

Because some listening tests seemed to show that the high could use a bit of a boost, I performed almost all tests with switches 6 and 7 on.

Switches 1, 6 and 7 on

Switches 1, 4, 6 and 7 on

Switches 6 and 7 on

Switches 2, 6 and 7 on

Switches 1, 2, 6 and 7 on

Switches 1, 2, and 3 off; Switches 4, 5, 6 and 7 on

Switches 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 on

After I played around with different dipswitch settings, I compared the outcome off all of the setups on my left and right speaker, with the idea that both speakers might perform better together when they didn’t have the same dipswitch settings.

Left speaker: Switches 4, 5, 6 and 7 on, Right speaker: Switches 1, 6 and 7 on

This experiment yielded an interesting result. Both speakers seemed to perform more like each other. The downside, however, was a bit more boost of the sub-low region of one of the speakers.

IsoAcoustic Stands vs. Foam

Still not completely satisfied with all the results and looking to create more possible improvements, I ordered a pair of IsoAcoustic stands. My speaker stands are very solid, sturdy, and filled with sand, but the speakers were placed on top of foam pads. I was advised to try the IsoAcoustic stands because a colleague producer said they are a pretty noticeable improvement. Once the IsoAcoustic stands were installed, I measured the Kalis again.

Left speaker: Switches 4, 5, 6 and 7 on, Right speaker: Switches 1, 6 and 7 on

Speakers placed on IsoAcoustic stands

As the graph shows, there is definitely a difference between placing the Kalis on foam and placing them on IsoAcoustic stands. Finally, I took the time to listen to a lot of different commercial mixes and some of my own. Again, the Kalis revealed the same issues in my mixes as I had noticed when I first heard them at my friend’s place.

In the meantime, I remastered a mix of a live performance and sent both results (master on PSIs and the master on Kalis) to the musician who had commissioned me to master the audio and video for his YouTube channel. I also sent both results to the producer that got me into Kalis in the first place. They both chose the “Kali master” without question. Not a bad sign…

Final Adjustments

After getting used to the way the IN-8s sounded and listening again to different commercial mixes, I started to doubt the high boost I had been using. Some mixes seemed to be a bit too aggressive to my taste. It is very good to precisely hear audible distortion going on in the more “modern” productions, but sometimes it can be painful. Amy Winehouse being the best example.

I thought it would also be a good idea to see how the IN-8s would perform when the dipswitches on both speakers were set up in the same way now that they were placed on the IsoAcoustic stands. A final measurement and some listening confirmed my thoughts. The result shown below, is, to my ears and eyes, the best possible result. You might say that the overall high boost suggests that switches 6 and 7 could be switched on again, but listening to the Kails without the high-boost engaged is less fatiguing and still reveals more than enough detail in the high region. Perhaps it is a matter of taste.

Switch 1 on, Speakers placed on IsoAcoustics

Summing it Up

First off, all I can say is how surprised and impressed I am with the Kali Audio IN-8s. They not only seem to reveal some problem areas in my own mixes (isn’t that what studio monitoring should be all about?), but they also present a great deal of detail. The way I can hear clicks, hiss, pops and other irregularities feels like wearing headphones. The stereo image is stunning. When sitting at the right spot, it is almost as if sound comes out of a center speaker while I simultaneously hear exactly what is panned to the right or left. A better judgement of reverbs, stereo spread, and, presumably, compression seems at hand.

Of all my speaker setups, the IN-8s perform best when the left and right speaker have the same settings with the exception of a slight difference in volume (less than the 1 dB suggested by Sonarworks) mostly necessary due to a boost around the 40/50 Hz region caused by my room and setup placing one speaker closer to a corner than the other. There is almost no difference on the rest of the spectrum. In terms of time-domain difference there is none.

It is very convenient to have so many ways to adjust the IN-8s behavior by using the dipswitches. Although I ended up using the same setup for both speakers, I can definitely think of situations where a different setup for the left and the right speaker might work. Compared to the comparably modest options on most other systems, the dipswitches definitely open up more possibilities.

For any speaker, it proves to be a very good idea to try all kind of different placements, settings, orientations, and even decoupling stands--something we all know but are sometimes too lazy to do. It proved more than worth the investment, both in time and money.

I can’t speak to any speaker being the best option for any situation. I am still very surprised how speakers in this price-range not only sound incredible but also completely outperform speakers that are roughly 10 times the price. This doesn’t mean that the PSIs are anywhere close to useless or worthless at all; It must be partly due to my own situation and room. Beyond that, a coincident 3-way design with the mid-range and tweeter at the same spot is genius if you ask me.

Although they perform much, much better in my situation, judging what is going on in the low- and mid-low range there is some “sloppiness” still to be heard in this spectrum. Aside from that, there is the audible hiss, and although I am very impressed by the way the different dipswitch settings make it pretty straightforward to set the IN-8s up in any particular room, the high boost feels a bit “rough” and a little bit too big. The development department of KaliAudio told me that soon a Version 2 will be coming into the market, and it is exactly these issues that they said they will improve upon in the update. Looking forward trying V2!

Last but Not Least…

I emailed Kali audio and got a surprisingly fast and detailed answer to all my questions. They seem to be very open about their design, and it is always good to know that should any issues arise or questions come up, they will easily be addressed.

In the coming weeks, I will redo some old mixes to see if the IN-8s yield better mixes. From what I’ve heard and seen so far, my expectations are high.

Björn Warning

Warning Studios - Amsterdam