Special Reprint K&F PASSIO Test Production Partner 10/11

Compact universal tool from the K&F ProRental series

"The company Kling & Freitag from Hannover, Germany, has established an excellent reputation as a supplier of high-quality speakers for mobile use and fixed installations within the last few years. This partially resulted from a very thorough design process leading to long product cycles. For professionalusers this is an important aspect preferable to a constant flooding of the product portfolio with "new and improved" products.

...

Looking at the Passio in detail we find a lot of differences in comparison with the mainstream of small 6" PA-speakers. Instead of 1 x 6" driver we find 2 x 5" drivers, the projection angle is rather pointed with 70 x 60, the drivers are positioned following D'Appolito (tweeter in the middle between the woofers) and there is a lot more that can not be recognized on first sight.

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The Passion was pleasingly neutral ... and delivering smooth silky hights. These characteristics stayed independently of the level and it was surprising how much power could be gotten from the small Passio. Of course this led to the idea again to add a subwoofer and have fun in a club setting as well. Even some aspects which are otherwise only experienced with studio monitors - e.g. the spatial projection precision and stability – where impressive with the Passio. Overall this speaker is really fun to use - not because of any show effects, but because it sounds very good overall. The other candidates were soon forgotten this way.

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With the Passio Kling & Freitag has created another great product after the Gravis 12. The legacy of the very successful CA106 was a heavy burden and was very well used in the design of the Passio. Experience, wish lists and problems with the CA106 were exactly analysed and consequently influenced this completely new design. The result is very impressive. A compact speaker of the highest quality in every situation, light and extremely solid and with very good sound characteristics. It is not hard to imagine that the Passio might soon reach sales of 10,000 units as well."

Extract from: Production Partner 10/2011
Text and lab tests: Anselm Goertz
Translation: Alex Merck

The reprint as PDF is available here.