Hey! Would you like to introduce yourself, your team and Kien?
Kien consist of 4 engineers, Jorn, Sten, Thibaut and Florent.
Jorn and Florent met in January 2013 while doing their graduation project at Bang & Olufsen in Denmark. In November 2013, Sten (Jorn’s brother) joined Jorn and Florent and the idea arose. Thibaut and Florent went to university together in France and Thibaut joined the team in September 2014.
From left to right: Florent, Jorn, Sten, Thibaut
Can you tell us about the history of Kien?
Jorn and Florent were both annoyed by B&O’s marketing trick of advertising their products completely wireless despite the always indispensable power cables. After graduation the two joined forces with Sten and shared their annoyances regarding audio products.
Later on, the team conducted a survey with over 250 respondents, showing that people are greatly annoyed with current audio systems.
What is Kien made from?
Kien is made from different materials. The housing is made from injected moulded ABS. Single knitted fabric is also used around the grill covering the drivers.
How have recent technologies and innovations helped the design of Kien?
Kien is using Bluetooth 4.0 low energy to stream music, but also to track the person’s location. It allows Kien to have a better battery life.
Furthermore, Kien is compatible with Dolby surround standards.
How does Kien outperform its competitors?
Kien is not proprietary, which means that you can stream your music with any app you already have on your smartphone/tablet/laptop. Furthermore, Kien is completely wirefree so you don’t have to plug it to an electricity socket (in contrary to Sonos). Lastly, Kien is setting itself up automatically, thanks to our localisation algorithms. Kien know where every speakers are, and where the listener is, to adjust the audio characteristics to the listener’s exact location.
How would buying and using Kien improve the customer’s music enjoyment?
Kien allows you to make any kind of setup anywhere. Whether you want to listen to music at home, watch a movie with surround sound, or bring your music to the park, you don’t have to buy 3 different systems. You can use Kien only.
Can you explain how the charging system works. Is it energy efficient?
To charge the Satellites, you can simply stack them on the subwoofer, which then acts as a charging station. The power connection is made by direct contact so it’s much more energy efficient than induction charging for example.
Who would benefit most from Kien?
People interested in a high fidelity multi-room and surround solution, that they can also easily bring outside their house.
Where do you see Kien in five years time?
In 5 years time, we want Kien to be the audio standard in terms of user-experience, acoustics and design. We wish that Kien will present in 25,000 households.
By then, Kien will be the life of the party!
