My spirits have been lifted

[Rodney Gold]

I used to tilt myG1's .. the drop in the spirits is mucho beneficial
Fresh out the box and in that terribly compromised plonked down position they sound better than they should..

 

[DaveyF]

up and singing , despite the compromised placement and fresh out the box , they already sound wonderful

Pics dont do the colour justice , its a richer colour than the photos provide
The Xover box can be spiked , I need to put castors on it so when I drag the speakers around the box follows
They go where the G1s stand when I do the comparison..

Wow, The new Spirit's look awesome! Love that colour!

The idea of an external x-over makes a lot of sense! When you have a speaker that can produce the kind of bass that these can, you definitely want to isolate the sensitive x-over network from the kind of vibration/force that the interior of the cabinet will elicit. I'm actually surprised that more high-end speaker manufacturer's don't opt for this more often; except it is more costly to implement. However, when we are talking speakers with mega $$ asking prices...come on guys.


P.S. Rodney, I would recommend that you pull the other pair of G1's as far away as possible from the pair being listened to. IMHO, you don't want them so close...as in the picture..because you will elicit the dreaded 'vertical blind' effect.

 

[Scott W]

It was explained to me that because the Spirit is fatter on the bottom to accommodate the new woofer section that it was necessary to lower the driver compliment. And also to give up some of the G1's height to new coming series of speaker. If it was a major problem I doubt the G1 would have been the success it has been for the last 10 years. I know several G1 owners who do not feel the need to tilt their G1's, me included. But if it was a problem the solution was an easy one, tilt away

Thanks Scott. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the G1 as Philip and I are almost neighbors. If there wasn't a problem how do you explain that Dickey created a new and better G1 Spirit flagship with the tweeter level now several inches lower than the G1

I still feel that the G2 and G3 image better than the original G1. The Spirit has dealt with that issue.

 

[Scott W]

Those G1 Spirits are beautiful Rodney. I love the color

 

[Steve williams]

It was explained to me that because the Spirit is fatter on the bottom to accommodate the new woofer section that it was necessary to lower the driver compliment. And also to give up some of the G1's height to new coming series of speaker. If it was a major problem I doubt the G1 would have been the success it has been for the last 10 years. I know several G1 owners who do not feel the need to tilt their G1's, me included. But if it was a problem the solution was an easy one, tilt away

Indeed, they imaged fine with the rear spikes on

 

[bonzo75]

Just create a MCH Rodney

 

[Scott W]

Use those K1's as surrounds and go 5 channel

Just create a MCH Rodney

View attachment 32198

 

[bonzo75]

Use those K1's as surrounds and go 5 channel

The above was a 5-CH

 

[NorthStar]

Rodney, visually they are certainly an excellent match to your room (color tone/decor). I know I know, it's the sound that counts.
Have a stupendous time evaluating/comparing their music reproduction.

 

[Steve williams]

Wow, The new Spirit's look awesome! Love that colour!

The idea of an external x-over makes a lot of sense! When you have a speaker that can produce the kind of bass that these can, you definitely want to isolate the sensitive x-over network from the kind of vibration/force that the interior of the cabinet will elicit. I'm actually surprised that more high-end speaker manufacturer's don't opt for this more often; except it is more costly to implement. However, when we are talking speakers with mega $$ asking prices...come on guys.


P.S. Rodney, I would recommend that you pull the other pair of G1's as far away as possible from the pair being listened to. IMHO, you don't want them so close...as in the picture..because you will elicit the dreaded 'vertical blind' effect.

I was under the impression that the external crossover is an optional item. Is this correct?

 

[Scott W]

It is not optional on the G1 Spirit.

I was under the impression that the external crossover is an optional item. Is this correct?

 

[sujay]

Vivid audio Giya G1 spirits in my front door entrance ...awaiting uncrating..tomorrow should be exciting....

Congratulations, Rodney! Now i feel compelled to come down to CPT to give them a listen........enjoy

 

[Elberoth]

Congrats, great speakers !

 

[Rodney Gold]

Initial impressions ..

I think these are very special speakers , even in the compromised position their qualities came thru in spades

I wheeled them to where my G1's were and wheeled the G1's to the back of the room and they sounded even better without the G1's next to em and in the right position

My pal who has a set of G1's and Devialets came round , he lives about a km from me and he was really gobsmacked , his comment was that the speakers have a valve like midrange and treble with iron fisted control (Yay class D amps sounding like valves)

Dropping the whole tweeter , mid tweeter and midrange a little further down than the G1's is very beneficial - it puts the listeners ears more on axis with the drivers ..

Treble is much sweeter and more airy and midrange is what can only be described as beautiful .. there seems a more "fleshing out" of the mids and the lower mids , a more textured sound. I think its due to the new midrange driver.. in fact the microdetail was astounding without anything sounding etched.

Both speakers image exceptionally and have huge soundstages , I think there is very little difference in that dept .. both are absolutely holographic albeit I have to give the spirits the nod for better instrument separation and a slightly more coherent sound right now..they do the G1 trick of allowing you to follow each instrument and thread in the music to come to a totally musical performance. soundstage stretches way beyond the speakers on both sets

Bass is plainly tighter and more potent but initially was lumpy due to room nodes and no correction, I whacked in 2 notch filters to kill my 10+db nodes at 21 and 42 hz (using the parametric with roon) and got a pretty good result.. DIRAC will do better .. but I will wait for the bass units to run in over the next week before i do that.
In terms of dynamics... very horn like .. blinding speed.. the rythm and pace of music is quite eye opening as compared to what I am used to

How loud.. well you can turn it up to ungodly levels , levels which no sane person would listen at .. and all that happens is it gets louder..no distortion.. no compression..nada!!!!

But what is most telling to me is the fact that I sat and let the music wash over me .. no " critical listening" to the various audiophile qualities , I played Katie Noonan : songs of latin skies .. a cd I know well.. the emotional response it elicited superceeded any other time I have heard this album.. went on to the 2 cd Brubeck at the Carnegie (1963)..an incredibly dynamic performance and was wowed..and must have listened to a further 4 cd's or so .. all without overtly analysing anything.

These are just initial impressions , probably inspired in some part by the shiny new toy syndrome ..I dont want to wax lyrical or critique in full until I have played around more with positioning and bass management and do some back to back comparisons with the G1's

I know its not a cheap upgrade from the G1's but I think it offers excellent value for money in terms of what you get .. they are indeed G1's on steroids.. but IMHO have the potential to offer more than that with better setup and so on.
At work right now but am dying to get back home... the 5 day long weekend we have will be spent in my man cave.. Im not going anywhere

I will take some better pics than the lousy cell "spur of the moment" ones I posted

 

[Rob181]

Initial impressions ..

I think these are very special speakers , even in the compromised position their qualities came thru in spades

I wheeled them to where my G1's were and wheeled the G1's to the back of the room and they sounded even better without the G1's next to em and in the right position

My pal who has a set of G1's and Devialets came round , he lives about a km from me and he was really gobsmacked , his comment was that the speakers have a valve like midrange and treble with iron fisted control (Yay class D amps sounding like valves)

Dropping the whole tweeter , mid tweeter and midrange a little further down than the G1's is very beneficial - it puts the listeners ears more on axis with the drivers ..

Treble is much sweeter and more airy and midrange is what can only be described as beautiful .. there seems a more "fleshing out" of the mids and the lower mids , a more textured sound. I think its due to the new midrange driver.. in fact the microdetail was astounding without anything sounding etched.

Both speakers image exceptionally and have huge soundstages , I think there is very little difference in that dept .. both are absolutely holographic albeit I have to give the spirits the nod for better instrument separation and a slightly more coherent sound right now..they do the G1 trick of allowing you to follow each instrument and thread in the music to come to a totally musical performance. soundstage stretches way beyond the speakers on both sets

Bass is plainly tighter and more potent but initially was lumpy due to room nodes and no correction, I whacked in 2 notch filters to kill my 10+db nodes at 21 and 42 hz (using the parametric with roon) and got a pretty good result.. DIRAC will do better .. but I will wait for the bass units to run in over the next week before i do that.
In terms of dynamics... very horn like .. blinding speed.. the rythm and pace of music is quite eye opening as compared to what I am used to

How loud.. well you can turn it up to ungodly levels , levels which no sane person would listen at .. and all that happens is it gets louder..no distortion.. no compression..nada!!!!

But what is most telling to me is the fact that I sat and let the music wash over me .. no " critical listening" to the various audiophile qualities , I played Katie Noonan : songs of latin skies .. a cd I know well.. the emotional response it elicited superceeded any other time I have heard this album.. went on to the 2 cd Brubeck at the Carnegie (1963)..an incredibly dynamic performance and was wowed..and must have listened to a further 4 cd's or so .. all without overtly analysing anything.

These are just initial impressions , probably inspired in some part by the shiny new toy syndrome ..I dont want to wax lyrical or critique in full until I have played around more with positioning and bass management and do some back to back comparisons with the G1's

I know its not a cheap upgrade from the G1's but I think it offers excellent value for money in terms of what you get .. they are indeed G1's on steroids.. but IMHO have the potential to offer more than that with better setup and so on.
At work right now but am dying to get back home... the 5 day long weekend we have will be spent in my man cave.. Im not going anywhere

I will take some better pics than the lousy cell "spur of the moment" ones I posted

WOW...now I am impressed...a South African using a Katie Noonan CD for reference music...great choice...just not well known outside of AUS...

 

[Fiddle Faddle]

Dropping the whole tweeter , mid tweeter and midrange a little further down than the G1's is very beneficial - it puts the listeners ears more on axis with the drivers ..

Treble is much sweeter and more airy and midrange is what can only be described as beautiful .. there seems a more "fleshing out" of the mids and the lower mids , a more textured sound. I think its due to the new midrange driver.. in fact the microdetail was astounding without anything sounding etched.

That makes a lot of sense, but I also notice that the G1 has very obvious and quite thick bars over the two top drivers - something the Spirit does not have. The Spirit just has "honeycomb" type covers and not the very thick bars that the G1 has.

I am not trying to be an expert that I am clearly not, but in all my experience, putting substantial things in the way of drivers like this is usually an attempt to resolve intrinsic and inherent sonic imperfections in the speaker's dispersion pattern and / or relative output characteristics at certain axis points, whereas to me the most optimal way of doing it is to try and engineer these problems out right from the earliest design stages of the drivers and the cabinet whilst designing it in such a way that the higher frequency drive units are as close to ear height as possible. So I can't help but think that in the Spirit, dispersion and outputs have been better optimised and therefore there is no need for the more radical (and visually less appealing to me) approach used in the G1. I think that this might have something to do with the improvements you have noted. I don't think the G1 would have worked as well had the drive units been lower as they are in the Spirit.

And like another poster mentioned, the copper-colour looks a whole lot better in your listening room than black does. I honestly think that counts for something. Our ability to be immersed in our musical experiences is significantly effected by our physical surroundings. If something looks aesthetically better, it will sound better all other things being equal because it influences our mode for the better. Even if you had two sets of Spirits - one in copper and one in black, the copper would sound better to me

btw, I see they call that colour "Sahara". Of course it is. They must have got the car manufacturers to help out with the naming!

 

[Ron Resnick]

That is a wonderful early report, Rodney!

Congratulations! I am very happy for you!

 

[Rodney Gold]

Hiya
rob .,. discovered Katia and Karin Schaupp on tidal and loved the album from the word go .. they also have another album called songs of the southern skies
FF
The spirit tweeters have that salt and pepper shaker top type protection .. Im sure that and the fact that they are using a carbon fiber stiffening ring and xover tweaks have something to do with the treble quality

Aesthetics play a big part , I tried listening last night with the lights off... 5 minutes later they were back on.
The colour is actually copper, more red than pinkish which the photo suggests
The sahara is a very pale golden light sand colour.... they do use automotive paints so a car guy could well have named it ..

 

[DaveyF]

Congrats again, Rodney. Looking forward to some more photos. For any speaker to sound considerably better than the G1's says a lot! The Spirit's must be incredible.

 

[ashandger]

Initial impressions ..

I think these are very special speakers , even in the compromised position their qualities came thru in spades

I wheeled them to where my G1's were and wheeled the G1's to the back of the room and they sounded even better without the G1's next to em and in the right position

My pal who has a set of G1's and Devialets came round , he lives about a km from me and he was really gobsmacked , his comment was that the speakers have a valve like midrange and treble with iron fisted control (Yay class D amps sounding like valves)

Dropping the whole tweeter , mid tweeter and midrange a little further down than the G1's is very beneficial - it puts the listeners ears more on axis with the drivers ..

Treble is much sweeter and more airy and midrange is what can only be described as beautiful .. there seems a more "fleshing out" of the mids and the lower mids , a more textured sound. I think its due to the new midrange driver.. in fact the microdetail was astounding without anything sounding etched.

Both speakers image exceptionally and have huge soundstages , I think there is very little difference in that dept .. both are absolutely holographic albeit I have to give the spirits the nod for better instrument separation and a slightly more coherent sound right now..they do the G1 trick of allowing you to follow each instrument and thread in the music to come to a totally musical performance. soundstage stretches way beyond the speakers on both sets

Bass is plainly tighter and more potent but initially was lumpy due to room nodes and no correction, I whacked in 2 notch filters to kill my 10+db nodes at 21 and 42 hz (using the parametric with roon) and got a pretty good result.. DIRAC will do better .. but I will wait for the bass units to run in over the next week before i do that.
In terms of dynamics... very horn like .. blinding speed.. the rythm and pace of music is quite eye opening as compared to what I am used to

How loud.. well you can turn it up to ungodly levels , levels which no sane person would listen at .. and all that happens is it gets louder..no distortion.. no compression..nada!!!!

But what is most telling to me is the fact that I sat and let the music wash over me .. no " critical listening" to the various audiophile qualities , I played Katie Noonan : songs of latin skies .. a cd I know well.. the emotional response it elicited superceeded any other time I have heard this album.. went on to the 2 cd Brubeck at the Carnegie (1963)..an incredibly dynamic performance and was wowed..and must have listened to a further 4 cd's or so .. all without overtly analysing anything.

These are just initial impressions , probably inspired in some part by the shiny new toy syndrome ..I dont want to wax lyrical or critique in full until I have played around more with positioning and bass management and do some back to back comparisons with the G1's

I know its not a cheap upgrade from the G1's but I think it offers excellent value for money in terms of what you get .. they are indeed G1's on steroids.. but IMHO have the potential to offer more than that with better setup and so on.
At work right now but am dying to get back home... the 5 day long weekend we have will be spent in my man cave.. Im not going anywhere

I will take some better pics than the lousy cell "spur of the moment" ones I posted

Hello Rodney, congrats on your new speakers and many thanks for sharing your impressions. May I ask what the dimensions are of your room? Spirits are also on my shortlist. Many thanks.