KAISER KAWERO! Classic
Floorstanding loudspeakers
The Kawero! Classics exhibit one of the finest workmanships I have ever experience. The way the speakers are built is exquisite and the selection of materials is mouthwatering. Kaiser Acoustics is a small family business so each pair of speakers is actually tailor-built to the point that one can define how sensitive the drivers of the Kawero! Classic should be.
Function and form
Kawero stands for Kaiser, Weber and Rottenwoehrer – the last names of the three men behind original Kaiser Acoustics. The bottom end to midrange gets quite complicated with the Kawero! – the front-firing 18cm active driver from Audio Technology (the one which is seen which covers unusually wide frequency range from 60Hz to 5.5kHz) is supported by another passive radiator on the rear of the enclosure to compensate for the baffle step. Plus, there is another rear-firing 25cm woofer that extends below 60Hz. Plus, there is a down-firing bass-reflex port that is tuned to 27Hz. The company claims that such the design enables keeping the conveniently high sensitivity at 92dB. The drivers (all from Audio Technology) are made of paper, reinforced by carbon fibres and finished by violin lacquer.
On the top of the Kawero! there is a 2.5” ribbon tweeter with oil damping made by Serbian Raal (70-20 XR); the tweeter module is adjustable for toe-in and front to back time alignment.
All through the speakers only premium parts (Duelund, Mundorf, WBT, silver, gold palladium wiring etc.) are used. Despite its rather standard dimensions (121 x 33 x 49 cm) the Kawero! weighs hefty 99kg.
Bass management
The cabinet of Kawero! is built from ‘Panzerholz’ that is a layered and pressurized birch wood and fibre composite that exhibits high density and unlike conventional materials has different propagation speed of sound in each direction. The main enclosure – except of the top and bottom – has non-parallel panels. All this contributes to the controlled volume of bass that I heard.
By the combination of the complementary units firing in three directions (front, back and to the floor) the Kawero! Classic can make impressive bass presence in a room. The dynamic articulation is very good as apparently the cabinets do not contribute by their resonances – these speakers were among the most inert I have rapped on. When I played really loud it did not make a lot of difference and the bass remained defined and controlled.
Clarity & delicacy
The top end of the Kawero! delivers high resolution in spades. The sound is detailed and forward, the highs are like überprecise laser beams that illuminate even the darkest corners of recordings. I loved the transparency and tons of air that make listening a unique experience. The good thing is that a listener may decide how much detail he or she wants by toeing in or out the ribbon module yet the off-axis listening results into fast drop in energy.
Tonal accuracy
It was difficult to me to decide if the timbre of the Kawero! Classic is right or not. To me the sound was like a mosaic – all the elements had accurate colours and placements so the sound worked as a whole, yet it required certain zoom-out to enjoy it as sometimes individual mosaic stones appeared to be spaced more than usual. Often I had the feeling that I was listening to two different speakers, one super-precise and the other one relaxed, the former sitting on the top of the latter. I perceived a kind of recession in the mids, perhaps not in the energy rather in the quality. In other words, the speed and the narrow operating range of the ribbon tweeter was not adequately supported by the speed and the dispersion pattern of the mids and lows. I already heard hybrid ribbon/cone designs that sounded more seamless, especially on the chamber music.
Searching on the internet I have learnt the designers tried to shape the frequency of the Kawero! Classic to achieve attractive voicing – “a peak between 5 - 8kHz is said to raise the virtual height of singers to about 1.6m, another peak between 1 - 2kHz, purportedly deepens the soundstage.” I do not believe that such voicing should be a part of design in high-end speakers, they should be as close to the source as possible, without any alterations, be they additive or subtractive.
Spatial resolution
The Kawero! Classic can throw a big soundstage, much bigger than expected judging by the speakers’ size. Left to right and front to back the imaging is quite holographic and very palpable. The sound has embracing quality to it, I assume this si due to the simple fact that it works with reflections, like omnidirectional speakers. The result was magic – yet I am entirely convinced that it should have been magic with every recording that was played back.
My reservations to the sound are closely linked to the configuration that was auditioned and it is likely that the findings of someone else somewhere else will be different. Kaiser Acoustics offer a lot of customizable elements - the Classic for example can be ordered with different woofer sensitivities to accommodate the customer’s listening environment (+1.5dB or -1.8dB). The extras also include bi-wiring, the veneer of your choice, piano lacquer, different internal cabling or an external cross-over. Should you wish to own beautiful speakers with beautiful sound the Kawero! is one of options.
Recommended resellers
Exaudio, Praha, tel. +420 773 193 933
Manufacturer's website: http://www.kaiser-acoustics.com
Associated components
- Source components: Kondo Ginga, Kronos Sparta + Helena
- Amplifiers: Engstrom The Monica preamplifier and phono, The Lars monoblocks, Kondo Ge-10 MM Phono, G-1000 pre and Kagura 211 power amplifiers
- Cables: Kondo, Bibacord OCC
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