Audiophilepure

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” Up to this point, Vivid Audio’s V1.5 floorstander ($7700/pair), with its 1” catenary aluminum tweeter and 6.2” aluminum midrange-woofer, had been the best two-way speaker I’d heard. Its avant-garde appearance leaves its visual attractiveness up for debate, but I thought it was a sonic masterpiece. I felt the Vivid’s defining characteristic was its speed. From the lower midrange up past 20kHz, the ported V1.5 sounded obscenely fast and light on its feet. As with Magico’s S1 Mk.II, high levels of transparency and resolution were present and accounted for, but the way the Vivid achieved them was a bit different from the Magico’s. Indeed, while neither speaker demonstrated even a hint of midrange coloration, I found the S1 to be the more honest speaker. The V1.5 sounded consistently fast, which I attribute to a dash of upper-midrange sparkle. While I don’t necessarily think that a bad thing, the S1 Mk.II just sounded “right.”

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” However, the treble was slightly prominent. I doubt that anyone would describe the S1 Mk.II’s sound as “polite.” Yet it would be unfair to characterize the S1’s high-frequency performance as bright or edgy. It was merely . . . prominent. With “No Son of Mine,” this manifested itself in the drums and hi-hats that fill in behind Collins’s voice as the song continues; they took on a brasher, more vibrant sheen than I’m used to hearing. With Max Richter’s “recompositions” of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (16/44.1 FLAC, Deutsche Grammophon), as performed by the Berlin Concert House Chamber Orchestra conducted by André de Ridder, this treble prominence revealed itself in a different way via the violin of soloist Daniel Hope. Hope’s instrument sounded positively electric through the S1, with soaring extension, liquidity, and a wicked turn of pace. Despite pushing his instrument harder and harder as the piece progresses and the high-frequency transients become increasingly frenetic, the Magico’s diamond-coated beryllium dome never sounded hard or brittle.”