Aug 2011 - Sister company Kaiser - first review of Vivace speaker

In August 2011 we saw the publication of the first full review of the Vivace loudspeaker from our sister company Kaiser Acoustics of Bavaria. Written by Paul Messenger and published in issue 82 of Hi>Fi Plus, its an excellent review of an outstanding product.

What is fascinating about the review is how Paul clearly described his own journey with the speakers, whereby he overturned his own experience with more conventional designs once he started to understand the fantastic musical qualities of the speakers.

There are a couple of points we'd like to mention from our own experience with the Vivace, and a good knowledge of Paul's listening room. Steve Elford has been to Paul's house many times and his room is bass sensitive - which he clearly says in the review. And because the speaker is so compact relative to other full-range designs, there is an initial tendancy to position it as if it was a 'small' speaker. Also, you must take into acount that any reviewer's room and system is always a significant compromise - with kit moving in and out all the time it quite simply can never be correctly optimised for any one particular design.

Next is Pauls description of the relative presence level of the speaker. And here he is initially comparing the Vivace sound with previous experience of other over-bright designs, and again he clearly states this. In our view, drivers like the Mundorf Air Motion Transducer as used in the Vivace are so much more capable of tracking the input signal without 'joining in' than conventional drivers, that it just takes a while for the listener to switch off the filter that his brain had previously created. Try a few weeks in front of the Vivace then go back to something with conventional drivers and you would be shocked at the levels of distortion.

And of course with all of these issues, Paul completely got it in the end. The technology, engineering and materials that go into the Vivace are extensive - the result of which in musical terms is that the Vivace is so exciting, gripping and revealing of a performance that they are totally addictive. And they look damn good too.

Here is a copy of the full review.

If you are interested in finding out more about the Vivace the following may help:

     The UK importer is The Right Note, based in Bath. Their website is here.

     For info about dealers and distributors around the rest of the globe please see details on the Kaiser website here.