So who is behind Kv2audio? Glad you asked...

…from audioPRO INTERNATIONAL
KV2 is a relatively new brand that has made giant strides and established itself among the major manufacturers over the past seven years. Gary Cooper reports…

If KV2 seems like a relatively recent addition to the ranks of pro audio suppliers, then it’s proof that its marketing re-launch a couple of years ago has been successful. In fact, KV has been around for over five years now, inspired by founder and renowned audio engineer George Krampera and currently undergoing a metamorphosis as it evolves from being seen as the new kid on the block into a fully-fledged pro audio business.

This can be an incredibly hard transition to make. It isn’t (necessarily) that pro audio buyers are snobs, but for the old school or those who use their ears only as a last resort in their PA buying decisions, sadly, the brand is sometimes more important than the band. Operations director Andy Simmons says: “We were coming up against some of the big names in the industry in shoot-outs and we were winning – not always, but quite often – and with that level of technology and success from an audio perspective we also needed our brand image to be seen as in that league.”

It should come as no surprise that KV2 is reaching beyond its origins. President/CEO and founding member Jonathan Reece-Farren takes us back to where it all began: “With all but one of the start up team being former Mackie employees, it was wrongly assumed that KV2 was simply ‘the thinking man’s Mackie’. George Krampera had gone to Mackie as a result of them buying into his and Marcelo Vercelli’s Fussion system. He ended up helping with the MI side of Mackie’s business and over the following year his lab in Czech developed a whole line of MI products for Mackie in the SA range, which catapulted them to success. While all this was great for Mackie, for Krampera it was a little like the biggest genius in HD stadium LED screens being asked to design a 14-inch colour portable TV for sale into the local supermarkets.

“The American dream had become Krampera’s nightmare and a decision was made for him to leave Mackie in 2002, and for us to set up KV2 Audio later that same year. From that point the ideas and technologies in his head just overflowed and his passion to offer the best sound coupled with the best value went on to evolve into KV2.”

Though it grew out of Krampera’s time with Mackie, his reputation was more cutting-edge – particularly during his time at RCF and B&C, when he made several quite major innovations in loudspeaker component design, some of which are still used today by competitors of KV2 Audio.

Simmons continues: “Krampera is one of those annoyingly clever people who has a fantastic knowledge of acoustics, electronics, components and system design. That is very much reflected in our systems. It is only by putting all of those key disciplines together that you begin to unlock the true potential of very high definition audio which we believe will take pro audio systems to the next level, and I pointedly refer to them as ‘systems’ not loudspeakers, because what we do is offer a complete system where each component is matched and each item in the system complements the other perfectly, it’s not somebody else’s loudspeaker, somebody else’s amplifier and somebody else’s processor.

“There are lots of powered boxes on the market where manufacturers just bolt a Class D amplifier on the back of an existing passive model and call it an active system. All our EX top boxes are bi-amplified, with two very different amplifier topologies because they’re doing totally different jobs. Add in technologies like Trans-coil for drastically reducing distortion and increasing vocal clarity, NVPD Nitride titanium coating on our compression drivers for an open high frequency response and you have an exceptional, accurate and honest sounding speaker. The best part is that these are the words we read on forums and hear directly from  the mouths of KV2 Audio users, not our own marketing hype.”

Speaker technology is very much a part of this and his design skills are still being applied in a deal with 18 Sound, which takes and builds his designs for KV2 under an exclusive agreement, allowing them to use Krampera’s ideas after KV2 has first put them on the market. “It gives us a huge resource for transducer design,” says Simmons.

These integrated systems are built in the company’s plant in the Czech Republic. According to Simmons, Czech has a skilled orkforce, builds products to very reliable standards and currently has one of the most stable global economies.

When questioned about Far Eastern manufacturing Jonathan Reece-Farren smiles. “We are actually part owned by one of the largest loudspeaker manufacturing companies in China. The intention was never to move KV2 production to China, as so many other ompanies have tried to do, but to utilise their resources by bringing an MI brand to market which will be manufactured in our Chinese facility. That is happening right now, and with the official launch of the KX Audio range of MI products at the forthcoming PLASA show we are all very excited about this new
dimension to the business.

“It was my decision to separate the brands. KX is meant to be a ‘my first KV2’ and having established a name for higher-end pro audio products we now have a platform to offer a slice of that technology but in a different format to up and coming bands, musicians, DJs and engineers without adversely affecting the core business.”

On the question of digital and the future Reece-Farren defends their analog position. “We’re not anti-digital – we’re just pro-audio, as Krampera puts it. He believes that digital does work, but it is just too expensive to do properly at the moment. Most of the digital technology adopted by the pro audio industry today was actually designed for use in telecommunications. That is why the bandwidth is so limited and they sound harsh and fuzzy.

“For our flagship VHD product we needed the best of both analog and digital technologies to make it truly exceptional. On the digital side our requirement was for a delay processor but we decided to raise the bar and design our own. The result was a DSD delay line based on SACD technology, but sampling at a much higher six MHz. That’s 60 times higher resolution than anything currently in the pro audio market, and one of the reasons why VHD carries the whole sound and atmosphere so much more effectively in the longer distance compared with line arrays using lots of complex low sample rate processing.

“Krampera gets frustrated that what’s commonly used has very high inherent distortions, but no one ever talks about that. He recently teamed up with the university in Prague to undertake a year-long study into his claims that many of the digital products used today have real and measurable inherent distortion approaching seven to ten per cent. Having seen the proof from his own testing, the university has commissioned a paper which will be published late in 2009.

“It’s always been one of Krampera’s philosophies to offer ‘the best sound and the best value’ – he won’t just follow the latest trend, like line array. He will build something that absolutely performs above your expectations but at a price that represents true value,” states Reece-Farren. “With VHD we have sold over 100 systems in the last 18 months and people constantly tell us it sounds and works so much better than any line array system.”

Though it started out as a US-based company, KV2 today has its sales and marketing HQ in Harrogate, UK as well as having offices in China, Poland, Australia and America. “We realise it takes time to build a brand, but in a relatively short period we have forged some fairly major success on a global level,” Reece-Farren notes. KV2 is realistic that the sort of brand awareness and perceptual shift it hopes for won’t take place overnight. But with the demand for quality sound showing no diminution, it’s hard not to feel that KV2 has a lot to look forward to.

------------------------------------------------------

...from Goliath Business News

Since the Czech Republic emerged from the Eastern Bloc, native audio pioneer George Krampera has been able to return to his roots, establish his own ground rules and settle into an organic business relationship with his worldwide associates. This network of partners and admirers--an enviable prize by any standards--was achieved with extraordinary tenacity.

Escaping from Communist Czechoslovakia with a young family in 1982, he arrived in Canada unknown. Within a few years he was a key member of staff at Yorkville Sound, later forming his own guitar amp company, Rex. But by the early '90s, with the Velvet Revolution and the collapse of Soviet control changing the domestic backdrop, a key offer from RCF lured him back to Europe and led to a hugely fruitful relationship that made his name and set him on a course of innovation in sound reinforcement design that continues today.

No stranger to corporate politics and economics, he navigated the acquisition by Mackie of his post-RCF venture, Fussion, before achieving a new autonomy with a flesh company able to exploit the advantages of his homeland, combined with his globe-trotting experience. Today, for instance, his brother runs the factory where the three-year-old brand KV2 Audio is made, while handpicked KV2 Audio associates evangelise his vision across the planet.

Electronics almost seems to be in your blood ...

"I was always surrounded by tubes as a child. My father was an electronics engineer and made the first televisions in Czechoslovakia. Following suit, when I was 14 1 built the first real amplifier used on a professional stage here. It was very difficult to get an amp at that time! It was the same with loudspeakers--almost impossible. A high-powered, high-output speaker from JBL, for example, cost a year's wages."

Why sound and not TV?

"I always worked with musicians. After military service, they tried to enrol me for defence projects, but I refused--my relationship with the Communist authorities was very clear, open and honest: they knew perfectly well I detested their regime. So by the late '70s I managed to become a professional sound engineer; there was already a rock scene in Prague. But, of course, there was no choice but to build all of the backline and PA myself. A few people had contacts in the West and brought stuff in, but it was always a big problem.

"By 1982 it was clear that they would try to shut down the band I was working with, because our music--and lyrics--were so against the system. So I decided to leave the country."

I'm guessing that wasn't easy ...

"You could get a passport to visit Yugoslavia, but not to leave the Eastern Bloc. The Czech-Austrian border was heavily guarded, but not the Yugoslav-Austrian border--in places, that was just rocks across cornfields. A friend in Austria knew where these places were because he knew of a coffee-smuggling route. So I got passports for my family, we took a 'vacation' in Yugoslavia found the spot, moved the rocks and drove across the fields."

Why Canada?

"It always looked like a dream country to me, like a big Czechoslovakia! It was easy to get asylum in Austria and then transit to Canada. The first English phrase I learned was 'I do not understand'. But I got a job fixing TVs and satellite receivers and after about a year I went to Toronto and found Yorkville Sound--just as they were developing a new range of guitar amps, fortunately.

When I later formed my own amp company, Rex, we sold more amps in Canada than Marshall, but I always wanted to move into high-quality PA loudspeakers and the offer from RCF came just at the right time."