While there are quite a few brands of speakers that many Naim devotees own and recommend as being well matched to Naim gear (Neat, Qudos, Proac, ATC, etc.) Vivid is not a brand generally found on that “list.”
Why?
Are there any members that have listened to or own Vivid speakers in their Nam system and found them to be a good match?
I highly recommend you try a pair for home audition…they are amazing. My room is less than ideal but they still work great…I think they would work well in rooms up to around 5m x 6m…they are quite powerful and efficient.
Hi looking at your room those speakers don’t look oversized…and you look like have treated it really well. What sort of issues are you having??? The Vivid’s sound very tight… with a beautiful mid range and sweet high frequency. The speakers love the leading edge of notes…I will post some pictures soon. The Kaya range in my view is quite a well proportioned and look great. My little Vivids fit in nicely even in my listed building. I suggest you have a chat with Analogue Seduction and try a pair…in your home…
I moved house just before lock down and have a dedicated room but to say the sound collapsed is an understatement - sounded great in my old house 5m square with brick walls and in the new house the room is 5m long and c4m wide with some insteps that narrow to c3.1m. The walls are plaster-boarded all round (an old fireplace has been plaster-boarded up and there are large gaps between wall and plaster board and one wall it is back to back plasterboard with a large gap.
After a frustrating 18 months trying to solve with different speakers I settled on treating the room with GIK panels (dealt with first reflection points on side walls and ceiling and tri traps in the corner and monster traps behind listening position. It’s much better but still not as good in my old house. Some speaker movement / positioning has improved things (old speaker placement was equidistant from back wall to side wall creating boundary interference). Sounding much better but still not as cohesive as my old house. I think some bass is still being sucked out somewhere….
Planning a little more room treatment as want to solve this before burning my dealers time on speaker demos which is high effort.
Reading your comments made me curious on if I should just explore different speakers.
I would be careful…what is it about the sound that upsets you…is it the mid and top…and stereo and imaging…or lack of bass… Have you tried carefully altering your seating and speaker locations. The Kanta speakers are supposed to be quite well balanced … which is puzzling. I recently did a full REW equalisation just as an experiment and tried that and it was both good and bad. In my Room I have really bad modes at 60hz or so… The Vivid’s have an amazing mid and top end… the bottom end is fast at the same time quite full so I do a touch of equalisation with dsp at that point only…which means the speakers give what they are good at. Have you run REW to see how your room measures…
How does your setup compared to listening with good headphones…I find this helps to realign your brain so that you can establish what you are missing… Try sitting in your chair and A B demo with headphones switching from one to another at the same volume…
I haven’t gone down the REW route, not super confident but may explore….
Good counsel on headphones - I have Sennheiser Hd800 and matching headphone amp. I will give that a go as I do go “listening blind” after a while when moving speakers around for best position……
It’s a faff as I am normally a plug and play kind of person but the room was so bad I am having to take action.
Perhaps sit down with your partner and watch The Fifth Element together – then tell your partner how amazing the green opera singer alien is – it may warm her up to the GIYA design
Thinking about the headphone - speaker comparison, it unfortunately doesn’t account for the sound of the amp and speakers–just the source and preamp. The brightness in my system began after I had my NAP300 DR’d.