Against such an intro, you'd be right to expect an effective example to the contrary. Enter South Africa's Vivid Audio loudspeakers. Like race-car chassis, they're housed in wind-slippery very low-mass enclosures made of balsa-core glass-fibre composites. Once you step closer, only slightly less obvious to the eye is that the drivers are proprietary and different. And particuarly with the baby of the Giya range under review today, it's also apparent that the drivers terminate in unusual ways, i.e. those strange tubes inside the loop which the G1 and G2 siblings conceal. Mention the radically styled B&W Nautilus concept speaker of yore and the genetic connections become clear [photo © Jake Purches, UK]. Tapered tubes are absorptively loaded to capture their drivers' rear emissions. That eliminates their reflective contributions from the relevant front-radiated information. With Joël Chevassus on staff having reviewed the K1 and G1 to include plenty of background information and photos on the Vivid Audio facility and its lead designer Laurence Dickie, interested readers will refer to them to eliminate redundancies.


Very unceremoniously, this gets us back at the cover shot. A not very tall Mr. Dickie must lean down to rest his elbow on the G4. As a bona fide 5-driver 4-way with horizontally opposed woofers—just like a BMW motorcycle boxer engine—our Giya monster stands just one meter tall. That's shockingly compact once you experience its very aspirated SPL potential. The form factor is obviously the antithesis to the oak-clad Tonmöbel of various rectangular proportions. Whether it'll inspire lust or revulsion depends on each viewer. No argument, it is an unapologetically modernist look. But its palette of stock automotive lacquers and surcharge options makes for a broad range of customization choices. If you're sick and tired of box speakers with their off-the-rack cones'n'domes, Vivid play a rather different tune. It's about how curves follow function, baby!