Under the rules of the ‘shoot out’ each company had three 12-minute segments throughout the day, with no time allowed to tweak the boxes. Fortunately, KV2’s ‘Audio Twins’ were on hand in the shape of Andy Austin Brown and Jonathan Reece-Farren. Austin Brown explains: "We had just enough time to situate the speakers, plug in the mixer and we were on. You have to remember that this was the first time that we’d heard the speakers as a complete pair in a left/right configuration, so we just put some vocals and music playback, straight and flat through the mixer."
To add to their apprehension a bit of a buzz had gone around the show that a new speaker was about to be launched to the world, so quite a crowd had built up. "From an onlooker’s point of view, the size of our system must have looked almost comical, a bit like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a canoe," said Reece-Farren, "Fortunately for us, this was no Titanic, and the only thing going down was the tight, impressive bass. I couldn’t help smiling to myself, it was even more impressive than I had expected."
Andy Austin Brown continued: "They just could not believe that two small ES 1.0 mid/high cabinets and two ES 2.5 subs were making such a sound. The organizers had a man with a decibel meter and he measured the same output from our small system as the 16 better known brand boxes to our left. Even the dwarfing line array to our right only achieved 6dB more with over 16kW of amplification, and three times as many cabinets. If the reaction of the people at this show is anything to go by, I think a lot of people are going to be pleasantly surprised when they finally get to hear KV2."
Letusa’s José Panizo was enthusiastic in his praise: "I think we have only touched the surface here today. We plan to take KV2 out on the road with live demonstrations throughout Spain."
Jonathan Reece-Farren adds: "We all had faith in George’s [referring to product designer George Krampera] technology and yet again that faith was rewarded today."
(Lee Baldock)
