What makes the Kudos difference?
A music-led approach to loudspeaker design
According to the laws of physics, the bumblebee can’t fly. Ask two technical experts to measure a loudspeaker and the results will be different. Conclusion? Scientific measurements aren’t absolute and don’t always tell the full story.
At Kudos we use music as our primary tool in designing and assessing loudspeakers. Measuring loudspeakers in the traditional technical way is useful for fault analysis but often gives a misleading view of a product’s musical abilities.
During his many years as a live sound engineer, Kudos’ Derek Gilligan discovered that technical measurements don’t reflect everything that we hear. There’s no substitute for extensive critical listening in a variety of scenarios. With live music, adjustments are made according to the sound that the musicians want, but also are based on the audience’s reaction and the fact that every single venue is different. Even in the same auditorium, a half-full room requires a different set-up than a capacity crowd.
This invaluable experience inspired Derek to take a different view of loudspeaker design. Of course Kudos still use traditional measurements, but only to investigate technical issues within a design. If a prototype loudspeaker sounds superb in a variety of rooms and to many different listeners, then the product has a good chance of making it into the Kudos range. Sometimes this may result in less-than-perfect technical measurements but we don’t consider that a problem. Particularly since those measurements often involve just one speaker, measured at a distance of one metre, in a laboratory. Hardly a reflection of a pair of speakers’ true performance!
The human ear is a fine technical instrument. At Kudos, we use it to tune and test every single product which leaves our premises. And not one product will leave until we’re 100% happy with it.