I never get tired of Vivid’s big, colorful, dramatic speakers. They make me smile every time I see them. I think it’s fair to say that Vivid speakers are the most immediately recognizable products in all of audio.
In a room at the PGE Narodowy, I discovered the Giya G1 Spirit Cu speakers facing into the room against the dramatic backdrop of the stadium and soccer field below. With their pearlescent copper finish, they just took my breath away.
Laurence Dickie with the Vivid Audio G1 Spirit Cu
The €95,000-per-pair Cu version is an evolution of Vivid Audio’s Giya G1 Spirit, with technology that’s trickled down from the statement-level Moya M1 speaker. “Cu” is the chemical abbreviation for copper; but the suffix in the model name refers to more than the speaker’s gorgeous finish.
As I looked around the room, I saw Laurence Dickie, who cofounded Vivid Audio with Philip Guttentag, chatting with Ewald Verkerk, who represents both Vivid Audio and Mola Mola. I asked Dickie if he could provide me with some information about the Copper version of the G1 Spirit. “It’s a gilding of the lily,” he told me. “These are upgrades that elevate an already great speaker. We’re using copper pole caps to reduce distortion, which helps convey the depth and scale of the Moya. It helps give the Spirit that extra depth. It’s a very satisfying move across the board. We’ve achieved a measurable reduction in distortion, which you probably can’t hear. But lowering the distortion allows you to hear the benefits of the reduction in reflection and resonance. We made some other changes as well that improve the performance.”
There was lots going on in this room. I immediately glommed onto the €18,500 European Audio Team Forte turntable, the big sister of the Fortissimo S I reviewed earlier this year. Also ringing bells was the Mola Mola Lupe phono stage, which blew up my skirt when I recently reviewed it. There was big news here on the Mola Mola front though. The G1 Spirit Cu speakers were being bi-amped by two Mola Mola Ossetra stereo power amps. The Ossetra, which retails for €8990, has been shown in prototype form before, but this was its first showing as a production model. Mola Mola was going to release the Ossetra last year, but kept developing it, which turned out to be a good thing in the end.
“It was an engineer’s dream,” said Verkerk, “to have all that time to develop the product, make it as good as we can. And here we are.”
I sat down for a listen. I was immediately presented with a huge, effortless sense of drive and clarity. Once more, I requested Koby Israelite’s “Rampel” and hearing it via these superb speakers, I was just immersed. The G1 Spirit Cu pair just hammered out the bass, while remaining utterly delicate in the regions above.
Of course, there was limitless power backing up those speakers, with the Ossetras delivering 700W to each G1 Spirit Cu. We listened quite loudly, but it was like the amps were loafing, ready at any moment to obliterate us should they so desire.
“Rampel” segued into the next track, “Zafiel,” which starts with crunching heavy-metal guitar. Who in their right mind plays metal at a stereo show? Was I wearing out my welcome? Verkerk seemed jovial—but who really knows? Anyway, it sounded glorious—this state-of-the-art speaker system hammering out rich, textured, distorted electric guitar.
Dickie had made himself scarce, heading down with Doug Schneider to the room that was displaying a Bowers & Wilkins Nautilus speaker, which Dickie designed in the early 1990s and is still in production to this day. I continued listening.
Later, I went down to check out the Nautilus, having never seen one in person before. I tried to listen to the pair set up there. Goddamn, I really tried. But the music they were playing was so dreadful I wanted to scream. Because this was work, I hardened my heart and worked at listening through this awful noise. I managed to take away the sense of an extremely even-handed speaker, one that stressed a natural tonal balance combined with excellent imaging. That this speaker debuted in 1993 and is now 32 years old shows one of two things—either it was far, far ahead of its time, or we haven’t advanced the state of the art very much.
That night, we joined Dickie and Verkerk for dinner, and I made sure to get a seat close to Dickie so that I could grill him about both the G1 Spirit Cu and the Nautilus. We had a lovely time, as Dickie is exceptionally modest and a superb conversationalist.
We didn’t talk about audio as much as I’d expected, spending more time discussing our shared English heritage. But it was clear that Dickie is extremely proud of the Nautilus, feeling, I think, that it was his first-born speaker and had evolved into today’s Vivids. At one point I asked the question that had been in the back of my mind since we’d met up that day. “Did you manage to get a pair of Nautilus speakers for your own when you left B&W?”
“Well yes I did,” Dickie responded, looking wistful as he thought about it.
“Do you still have them? Are they hooked up?”
He seemed a touch sheepish when he answered. “Yes, I still have them, but no, they’re not hooked up. They need some work . . .”
Verkerk had been listening to our discussion—nothing seems to get by him. “I remember one of the first times I was at Dickie’s house,” he shouted from across the table. “I asked if I could use the toilet, and as I walked past the spare bedroom, I saw one of the Nautiluses in there, with clothes draped over it, drying.”
Jason Thorpe
Senior Editor, SoundStage!
