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For the bass registers Kelinac's top model double-dips and adds a frontal bass-reflex pipe. These 17cm woofers use woven Carbon fiber membranes. With its biwire terminals this French speaker goes Deutsch and Nordrhein-Westfalen with WBT from Essen and their robust Nextgen jobs. At €4.000/pr the chic Kelinac isn't cheap but its bespoke drivers and workmanship suggested a more ambitious class. I pegged the price/performance ratio ultra fair well before hearing any peep. But already with "Punch in, punch out” from the sadly defunct southern rockers Seven Mary Three's American Standard album, I got a good first hit of the speaker's compelling lively character. On this number singer Jason Ross relied solely on accompaniment by drummer Giti Khalsa, an unusual choice which netted immediate observations.


1. I've rarely heard a playback drum set this realistically dry and punchy across all possible timbres. The Kelinac KEL 711MG really pulled off an exceptionally realistic illusion of true-to-live percussion. I nearly bought into feeling the air displacement of an actual drum skin, that's how immediate the experience was.


2. Timing was spot on. As a former drummer I'm hip to how important the time domain is. Here the French played in the pocket. That's how it ought to sound and no different. You could demur and claim that realistic timing with a €4.000 speaker should be a given. In principle yes but nuances remain. For example the equally French Genese Lyrr from Triangle I hosted a few years back; or T+A's TCD 310S I sampled far more recently... both played at the same general level but still blew up drum hits a bit to sound bigger than they should have to my ears. Marginal and complaints about peanuts perhaps but I still preferred the drier more direct take of the Kelinac.


3. The separation of adjacent bands (drums and vocals) came off very well. Jason Ross' voice was spatially very discrete and not drowned out or obscured by the at times very densely played drum set. No dominance effects.


After this promising if not musically challenging start I reached for the far more complex structures of David Bowie's The Next Day and ”Love is lost" und "Where are we now?". No hiccups. The Kelinac again impressed with its dry/wiry attitude particularly in the bass where pressure-rich always articulate relief conjured up a strange mental view of a shale tablet. Obviously fat bass thunderstorms and the 711 live on different menus. The Kelinac lacks the raw shove required. Even so the low bass register appears complete and without any fat injection which could lead to boom.