MULTIMEDIA

Vivid Giya G3 Loudspeaker Review (Part 1)

9/9/2014 11:05:05 AM
The curvy Vivid Giya G3 loudspeaker is a smaller version of the Giya G2, itself a Giya G1 ‘mini-me’. And at CES this year, the company showed a Giya G4 and it’s even smaller. If Giya got any smaller, it would be the world’s most radical desktop, but Vivid has stated it’s done with Honey, I Shrunk The Speakers. For now.

The G3 challenge for Vivid engineer Lawrence ‘Dic’ Dickie was to make a smaller Giya, but not so small that it wouldn’t take the 125mm upper mid driver seen on bigger Giyas. All three Giya models share a common motor system for the bass drivers, arranged back to back and firing sideways in this model. It’s effectively like putting a V12 engine in a Mini; the cones are only 135mm in diameter, but have the magnet system from a 225mm driver. With a short coil in a long gap, control is not likely to be an issue; it’s more likely that the bass system could sound overly dry. You could even end up with midrange that’s capable of high SPLs but no bass. That is unless the company is Vivid, which has the enormous advantage of being able to design the cabinet, the drivers and the crossovers as one system. This is because it makes every part of its speakers at its facility in Durban, South Africa. So Dic designed the bass system to give the best fusion of speed and extension that he can in this four-way, five driver loudspeaker.

Engineer Lawrence ‘Dic’ Dickie with Giya G1,G2 and G3

Engineer Lawrence ‘Dic’ Dickie with Giya G1,G2 and G3

The cabinet construction remains a sandwich of glass reinforced plastic (GRP) skins either side of end grain balsa. This results in an immensely stiff yet relatively lightweight cabinet that ensures minimum vibration at audio frequencies, and thus minimises cabinet colouration. It also allows for automotive quality paint finishes in the colour of your choice.

The tweeter and midrange drivers have catenary rather than spherically shaped domes and this, combined with the protective crossbars, makes them look relatively ovoid. Both have tapered tubes to damp rearward output and use edge-wound aluminium voice coils, which provide the best match with the aluminium domes. The tweeter uses specially formulated ferrofluid that can tolerate the massive flux density created by the radially polarised, neodymium magnet system that Vivid employs. The aforementioned mid-bass driver is the same employed in the bigger Giyas: an aluminium cone with a 50mm copper ribbon coil on a highly vented former with a radially polarized magnet structure and compliant mounting. The smaller bass drivers and reduced volume of G3 compared to G2 means that system sensitivity should have been lower than it turned out, but Dic came up with a crossover configuration that produced a figure almost as good as the G2 at the time. As a result the crossovers on G2 and G1 were revised and gained another 3/4 dB of sensitivity.

Vivid Giya G3 rear view

Vivid Giya G3 rear view

As ever with Giya, the bi-wire terminals are hidden under the base. This looks good, but is fiddly to use. Spikes help raise the base, but Vivid doesn’t consider them essential.

My initial impressions were very similar to those encountered with the G2: immense transparency to the driving system, in this case Naim NDS streamer, Townshend Allegri passive controller and ATC P1 power amp. But results didn’t seem to gel as well. Yes, I could hear a lot thanks to the inherently ‘quiet’ nature of the cabinets and the bass extension was prodigious – too much for the room, in fact. Given that this had not been the case with G1 and G2, I figured that the extra power available from the P1 was the reason, but I didn’t want to give up the extension and grip by moving to a less powerful amp. This amp is one of the most powerful I have had the pleasure of using, yet it is also transparent to tempo, very revealing, and possessed of powerful bass.

Every part of Giya G3 speaker is made at its facility in Durban, South Africa

Every part of Giya G3 speaker is made at its facility in Durban, South Africa

The answer proved to be the use of Townshend Seismic speaker bases. These raised the speakers a small amount and decoupled them from the floor. This tightened up the bottom end, which meant the timing became spot on. Combine that with the resolution that the G3 brings to the rest of the audioband, and you have a window into the performance that few loudspeakers can match. Now the sound could escape the enclosures completely, the soundstage became precisely as wide, high, and deep as the recording allowed, and the detail coalesced into a musical experience that was like no other. Bugge Wesseltoft’s ‘Leave My Head Alone Brain’ [Duo, Universal] expanded out into the room and revealed that at least some of its inspiration came from ‘Take Five’, both piano lead pieces after all. Now it was difficult to press pause, especially when the recent live album Norwegian Woods kicked its drum and revealed the scale of the venue. The singer’s voice appeared in the room out of nowhere and inhabited it to the extent that it would have been rude to do anything but listen.

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