Price: $95,000 per pair.
Website: www.vividaudio.com
Design: The Vivid Audio Giya G1 Spirit (G1S) is a four-way, five-driver floorstanding speaker that measures 63″H ×17.3″W × 32.3″D and weighs 149 pounds. It comes in three standard finishes: Piano Black, Pearl White, or Oyster Matte. Bespoke colors are available, starting at an additional $5000 per pair.
The G1S is the flagship model in Vivid’s range of loudspeakers, all of which are designed by the company’s acclaimed technical director, Laurence Dickie. Vivid’s research-and-development department, and Dickie himself, are UK-based, while the G1S is manufactured at the company’s main factory in South Africa (some limited manufacturing of other Vivids happens in the UK). The G1S’s cabinet is described by Vivid as a “glass-reinforced balsa-cored sandwich composite” and is shaped to provide the drivers—all designed and manufactured in-house—with an acoustically clean launching surface as free of edge diffraction as possible. The light-but-stiff enclosure is intended to push any cabinet resonances below the level of audibility.
The two 11″ woofers are mounted in a reaction-canceling arrangement on either side of the Giya’s enclosure, and all of the drivers—woofers, 1″ tweeter, 2″ dome midrange, and 6.5″ lower mid—use Dickie’s signature Tapered Tube Loading technique. The G1S has a rated sensitivity of 92dB/2.83V/1m, on-axis. The frequency response is specified as 29Hz to 33,000Hz, with a tight window of +/-2dB (‑6dB points at 26Hz and 36kHz). The nominal impedance is pegged at 6 ohms.
Why I chose them: The Vivid Giya G1S speakers are large, but sonically they completely disappear when playing music. In fact, they better most standmount speakers in this regard—I’ll call it acoustic invisibility—as only the music exists in the space in front of my listening position, free from any distortion or interference.
The Vivids are able to reproduce dynamics with startling realism, and are able to scale with any music at any sane volume level. Bass is not only deep, but physically impactful, with the ability to start and stop on a dime. Play your favorite Led Zeppelin cut and crank the volume level past where most speakers fail and you’ll have an experience that may be unique in high-end audio. Dial back the volume control and play some intimate jazz, recorded live at your favorite club—you’ll hear details you never knew were captured on the recording. The cool part of the Vivid G1S speaker experience is this: a pair of G1 Spirits can create these almost polar opposites of fine music reproduction, but they can also do everything in between with equal measure. As part of the Ultra Reference System, they ensure that the speakers are never the limiting factor in the review process.
. . . Jeff Fritz
jeff@soundstagenetwork.com
