Vivid Audio speakers, my experience
So I am sharing my experiences with this company, their product and services for those who may be interested or on the fence.
For those who do not know Vivid Audio, it is a speaker company based in South Africa, founded by previous B&W engineer Laurence Dickie who designed the famous 800 Nautilus series speakers and their distributor Philip Gottentag. Vivid speakers are unique to say the least.
I have a pair of B-1 speakers and they sounded good. While their products work, it is all good and wonders. But I have so disenchanted by my recent experience with their US customer service. I am quitting this company altogether.
The drivers on the B-1 (especially the tweeters) are completely exposed and easily subject to damages from, say, children’s poking fingers. That happened to my drivers. Also, one of the speakers started producing a distortion in the upper bass/lower mid range. I sort of traced the problem to one of the woofers. I contacted Vivid customer service in US about replacing these drivers. They put me in touch with one of their dealers (Supra HiFi, be aware!) who quoted me astronomical prices (so high that is about 70% of the MSRP for the 10 year old speakers). I did some research and found other people got their replacement for way lower prices. So I reached out to the Vivid Audio in South Africa. So it turns out Scott from Supra HiFi quoted me about 5x the correct prices!
So Vivid pointed me to their US rep again who was supposed to get the replacement drivers from Vivid to me. Because Vivid has no service facility in the US, they cannot provide any technical services like diagnosis, let alone repairs. So the customer needed to replace the drivers themselves, which is fine. But because I am not a professional, I may not have diagnosed the full scope of the problem with my speakers. So I asked their US rep Todd whether I could return the undamaged woofer to him in the case if replacing the driver alone does not fix the speakers. He said no because he was concerned about reselling the driver if it was returned. I was shocked. Since Vivid has not service capacity in the US, I though this is the minimum they can do to help. I was so disheartened by this response that I did not reply in a month because I was giving up on this company.
Today, I finally reminded myself to write the email to the owner and their US rep that I am quitting this company.
Anyway, this is my experience. YMMV.
A few months back I had the opportunity to look inside one of the Vivid Giya G3's. The quality of the parts was shockingly poor! The connectors looked like they were sourced from Home Depot! Same for the wiring! The cabinets are also nothing to talk about as far as quality. What is so amazing is that the Vivid speakers sound as great as they typically do....one can only imagine what they would sound like if they were constructed from quality parts and drivers!!
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@larry5729 + 10 on that. My wife would kick me out and my dog….. |
Yet...some of the best systems I have ever heard utilized Vivid speakers. The Giya G1 and Spirits are superb sounding speakers. I once discussed with their old distributor how amazing it was that these speakers could sound the way they did, considering the drivers that they utilized. Now after looking at the insides and seeing how poorly they are constructed, i am even more amazed. I wouldn’t discount the line, but they would have to be at a fraction of what they typically cost. |
