Полочная акустика — Vivid KAYA S12

The Kaya S12 is the smallest loudspeaker ever made by Vivid Audio, the company founded in South Africa with design in West Sussex, England, and chief designer and co-founder Laurence Dickie. Launched in September 2020, it is a two-way stand-mount of 12 litres internal volume that shares its drivers with larger Kaya models and introduces Vivid's patented Omni-Absorber cabinet. Kaya is the Zulu word for home.

Key specs that matter

It uses a D26 26 mm alloy dome tweeter with tapered tube loading and a C100L long-throw 100 mm alloy cone mid/bass, crossed over at 3 kHz. The frequency range is 45 Hz to 25 kHz at -6 dB. Sensitivity is 85 dB at 2.83 V/1 m, nominal impedance is 8 ohms with a 5.3 ohm minimum, and 25 W to 125 W amplifiers are recommended. Second and third harmonic distortion is below 0.5% at 1 W, and the tweeter's first break-up mode is at 44 kHz. The cabinet measures 400 x 237 x 254 mm in its three dimensions, height first, and it tips the scales at 6 kg.

Engineering and use context

The cabinet is moulded from RIMcast polyurethane, a stiff material suited to small volumes, and its curved shape avoids flat panels. The Omni-Absorber structure deals with internal reflections that small two-way cabinets normally cannot absorb. The mid/bass uses Vivid's exponentially tapered tube-loaded reflex design from the larger Giya G1, with bass tuning just above 40 Hz and a gradual roll-off, and a large dust cap refined by finite element analysis raises its break-up frequency. The D26 tweeter, used across Vivid's range, adds stiffness with a carbon fibre ring around the dome's edge, and runs an edge-wound aluminium voice coil driven by eight radially polarised neodymium magnets. The flux in the gap is so high that a special ferrofluid was formulated for it. Behind the dome, a fibre-damped, exponentially tapered tube absorbs the rear wave. A shallow waveguide raises tweeter output, aids time alignment and matches its dispersion to the mid/bass at crossover. Production takes place in Vivid's UK factory, and Vivid lists three standard paints for it, namely Lexus Pearl White, Oyster Matte and Piano Black, and will apply any PPG automotive colour to order.

Pairing

The Kaya S12 suits rooms up to about 20 m2. Vivid offers a matching stand, sold together with the speaker as a package, and a separate wall bracket shaped to the cabinet, and the shape suits multichannel and studio monitor use.

Alternatives

Vivid Audio's Oval V1.5 is the stand-mount two-way of the earlier Oval range.