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
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
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
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.
