DSP crossover Vivid Giya

[hvbias]

I have read rumors either here or another forum that a full DSP crossover Giya is in the works. With the G1 Spirit having external crossovers, this seems to be one more step towards that direction? Anyone else with more information?

 

[dallasjustice]

It makes sense for two reasons, if true:
1. Dick designed the nautilus and it has a DSP crossover. He's also made favorable comments in the past about DSP crossovers.
2. As you say, the spirit has an external crossover, which is a first for vivid.

 

[Frank Dernie]

It makes sense for two reasons, if true:
1. Dick designed the nautilus and it has a DSP crossover. He's also made favorable comments in the past about DSP crossovers.
2. As you say, the spirit has an external crossover, which is a first for vivid.

Interesting. Has the Nautilus always had a DSP crossover? I ask because they were in my final knockout audition when I chose new speakers about 20 years ago. I knew they were active and 8 mono amps were used in the demo but hadn't realised the crossover had any digital technology in it. I believe the Apogee DAX was a digital active crossover (it was active Apogee Divas I was replacing)

 

[Rodney Gold]

Im considering going fully active with my giya spirits ..
There was a fully DSP active spirit at Munich..tho no impressions were posted that I can find
I would use class D amps .. something like the D-sonic amps that use the pascal module and use 3 of their 600w amps for the mid/treble side and a 1.5kw module for the bass. In terms of price the 4 amps isnt too bad..$9k all in .. the spirits can handle 1650w rms on a coninual basis .. insane levels for a 92db speaker

The issue for me is the DSP crossover..at Munich , a trinnov altitude 32 was used and it is rather pricey ($20 000 to $30 000) ... beyond what I would pay ... I would most likely use a MiniDSP or some other DSP unit and would need dickies "recipe" as going DIY DSP active and getting all the settings right is beyond me.
However , According to Philip Guttentag , boss man of Vivid , there is no HUGE benefit in going fully DSP active anyway..
I have had active , DSP active and passive setups and can't say that active beats passive when it comes to sound quality
Vivid will not warranty the spirits if you do go DIY dsp actives.. very easy to damage drivers in that scenario..

 

[Frank Dernie]

Im considering going fully active with my giya spirits ..
There was a fully DSP active spirit at Munich..tho no impressions were posted that I can find
I would use class D amps .. something like the D-sonic amps that use the pascal module and use 3 of their 600w amps for the mid/treble side and a 1.5kw module for the bass. In terms of price the 4 amps isnt too bad..$9k all in .. the spirits can handle 1650w rms on a coninual basis .. insane levels for a 92db speaker

The issue for me is the DSP crossover..at Munich , a trinnov altitude 32 was used and it is rather pricey ($20 000 to $30 000) ... beyond what I would pay ... I would most likely use a MiniDSP or some other DSP unit and would need dickies "recipe" as going DIY DSP active and getting all the settings right is beyond me.
However , According to Philip Guttentag , boss man of Vivid , there is no HUGE benefit in going fully DSP active anyway..
I have had active , DSP active and passive setups and can't say that active beats passive when it comes to sound quality
Vivid will not warranty the spirits if you do go DIY dsp actives.. very easy to damage drivers in that scenario..

Linn demonstrated their Exakt system at the Scalford enthusiast's show. I mentioned it briefly in a post when I returned from the show.
The difference for Scalford was that only engineers were present and they were demonstrating the technical capability and how to use it. No marketing people there, in fact this was the first time a big maker had been at the show. People who registered were given access to their web based software to try themselves.
The point of the Linn guys being there in this way was that they knew that back in the day there were a lot of enthusiasts making amps and speakers themselves but a smaller proportion nowadays, with most being at Scalford and they wanted to give another choice to DIY enthusiasts.

The chief engineer on the system had built a kit speaker from one of the UK drive unit suppliers (ie they were not using Linn speakers for the demonstration) .
They demonstrated various levels of correction, starting with DSP emulation of a passive crossover and then progressively increasing the sophistication of the correction, first taking out the bigger phase and amplitude errors and eventually removing barely visible kinks in the response.
They played back the same music files at each stage of the development of the DSP filter using a rock music track and an exerpt from a simply miked Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera. At each stage the difference on the rock track was discernible but that on the simply miked track was marked.
In the end the comparison between the speaker using the emulated passive crossover and the fully developed DSP crossover on the G&S track was one of the biggest improvements I have heard demonstrated. The benefit on the, presumably, multi-miked and heavily manipulated rock track was much, much less, but worthwhile IMO.

I currently use Devialet amps into either 20 year old Goldmund Epilog 1&2 speakers (chosen over the B&W Nautilus at the audition I mentioned in No3 above) or Tune Audio Anima horns. Nothing about this system lends itself to going active
I was so impressed by the demo I am seriously considering doing a crossover for one of my other sets of speakers. The Linn software produces a file for one of their Exakt boxes, which is quite expensive but probably SOTA and nicely made.

 

[Purité Audio]

We ( Christof Faller really ) have successfully 'activated' a few pairs of passive loudspeakers now using the Illusonic IAP rocessors, the unit does everything and the best part is that Christof does everything for you.
Keith

 

[Cosmik]

The full DSP crossover in hardware terms is just a chunk of CPU processing power: it could be a fraction of a PC's workload or a Raspberry Pi. As long as the DAC is asynchronous and packet based, the processing hardware is irrelevant.

The software is a simple, repetitive number cruncher that processes incoming samples with, effectively, a WAV file for each driver. The design of the 'WAV' is, of course, the (slightly) interesting bit.

The upshot is that a system costing $200 can give identical results to the one costing $30,000 mentioned above.

How much learning curve would you be prepared to stomach in order to save $29,800? In my case, it would be quite a lot.

I guess the most contentious point is: do you regard the speaker/room combination as "a system" that should sum to neutral? If so, I fear the results will be disappointing, but at least you would just need to wave a mic around where you sit in your room.

If, on the other hand, you want to make a neutral speaker which is then placed in the listening room (with some very minor room-dependent EQ to compensate for the speaker's non-ideal dispersion) the trickiest part is finding a measurement room suitable for making the pseudo-anechoic measurements of your speaker - but this can make life a lot easier at the low frequencies:

A loudspeaker test technique is described which depends on nearfield pressure measurements made in a nonanechoic environment. The technique allows extremely simple measurements to be made of frequency response, power response, distortion, and electroacoustical efficiency.

 

[Rodney Gold]

You can easily use a unit like the miniDSP 4x10hd to implement a 4 way crossover. Its $499.

The issue isnt really about that .. its about getting the crossover right..there is no guarantee that this will be any better than the passive G1 spirits and entails a lot of extra user work if you don't have the exact values , slopes , delays , phase etc ..its about reinventing the wheel .. Add to that is the fact that Vivid make their own drivers and the driver specs arent published.

Dickie , the speaker designer has the wherewithal and tools to do it , I don't

So in all likelihood I will stick to passive and DIRAC and just upgrade my amps to the 1kw versions .. I only considered full DSP active because I have had my 500w amps clipping when playing some stuff with ultra low freq at concert levels (Try Cameron Carpenter 's "sisters of mercy" off his album "if you could read my mind" .. on tidal)

 

[Rodney Gold]

Keith , the IAP 8 , which is what I would need is North of $20 000 !!!

I bought myself an abletec ALC1000 module based class d amp (600w/chan) and have been playing with biamping..using the devialets to drive the mids/treble and the devialets pre out to drive the bass amp.
I thought I got it right in respect of matching the gains of both amps by measuring ACV at the speaker terminals whilst playing a 100hz tone and changing the pre outs max Vrms in the devialet ( you can set pre output max V rms from 0.2 to 4v)
..but I musta messed up somewhere as when it got loud there was horrible distortion..need to investigate where I went wrong

 

[dallasjustice]

To me, trying to jerry rig a speaker originally designed to be passive into an active with digital XO has zero appeal.

IMO, the best digital active speakers were designed that way from the ground up. I'm looking forward to the Lexicon Sl-1; Not to be confused with LS1.

 

[hvbias]

To me, trying to jerry rig a speaker originally designed to be passive into an active with digital XO has zero appeal.

IMO, the best digital active speakers were designed that way from the ground up. I'm looking forward to the Lexicon Sl-1; Not to be confused with LS1.

I am taking an educated guess that they were designed/simulated with DSP then the passive crossovers were built to approximate them since the passive crossovers are 4th order L-R.

I agree unless the designer gave me his exact DSP settings, I wouldn't want to do it myself (or let a third party) with a speaker at the level of the Vivid; you'd need an anechoic chamber and plenty of knowledge to do it properly with just the basic information of "4th order L-R". A fully active Salon 2 would also be of interest to me, but the G3's polars look better.

 

[dallasjustice]

I am taking an educated guess that they were designed/simulated with DSP then the passive crossovers were built to approximate them since the passive crossovers are 4th order L-R.

I agree unless the designer gave me his exact DSP settings, I wouldn't want to do it myself (or let a third party) with a speaker at the level of the Vivid; you'd need an anechoic chamber and plenty of knowledge to do it properly with just the basic information of "4th order L-R". A fully active Salon 2 would also be of interest to me, but the G3's polars look better.

Really Vivid Giya speakers have the best off-axis response of any passive speaker. I used to own the G3. It's a wonderful speaker. My dealer owns the G1. Its also awesome. My issues with Vivid has nothing to do with the speaker's performance. I honestly don't know whether using a digital crossover could significantly improve the Giya's off-axis. Maybe the on axis could be more tailored to the listener's liking. But the same thing could also be done with Dirac Live or Acourate.

When it comes to digital XOs and active speakers, I really think no current speaker's technology has scratched the surface of what is really possible. That's exciting and depressing, at the same time.

 

[hvbias]

Really Vivid Giya speakers have the best off-axis response of any passive speaker. I used to own the G3. It's a wonderful speaker. My dealer owns the G1. Its also awesome. My issues with Vivid has nothing to do with the speaker's performance. I honestly don't know whether using a digital crossover could significantly improve the Giya's off-axis. Maybe the on axis could be more tailored to the listener's liking. But the same thing could also be done with Dirac Live or Acourate.

When it comes to digital XOs and active speakers. I really think no current speaker's technology has scratched the surface of what is really possible. That's exciting and depressing, at the same time.

At 34 I consider it exciting However compared to the rest of the tech world/biotech/medicine this seems to be moving at a glacial pace and I don't think it's because we don't have the means, one the high end crowd are dogmatic about progress like this and two the "mainstream" high end seem to be more focused on home theater than music.

I wouldn't be trying to improve the off axis, but the step response. I'm confident with all DSP crossovers that could certainly be improved, and Mitch's book seems to say the same that this needs to be done at a crossover level.

 

[RayDunzl]

I wouldn't be trying to improve the off axis, but the step response.

Examples:

Passive 2-way (MartinLogan run full-range) plus cheap subs, raw and with AcourateDRC at the listening postion:

JBL LSR 308 (bi-amped active), raw and with AcourateDRC at the listening postion:

 

[Rodney Gold]

Beolab 90's ..the only speaker I would have considered vs my spirits .. but not a pair in sight in Sunny South Africa.
I think the off axis response of the spirits is in a different league to the G1's .. walk from the listening position and the soundstage and imaging only collapse once you physically behind the speakers ..

 

[NorthSky]

Beolab 90's ..the only speaker I would have considered vs my spirits .. but not a pair in sight in Sunny South Africa.
I think the off axis response of the spirits is in a different league to the G1's .. walk from the listening position and the soundstage and imaging only collapse once you physically behind the speakers ..

I was just going to mention it.

It has been real slow to integrate the technology to affordable speakers; I don't understand why speaker's manufacturers are not adapting with today' s world.
Maybe because the LPs are coming back and they prefer the purity of turntable's sound and retro integrity?
Maybe because DSP chips are too expensive?
Maybe because humans are slow to evolve?
I just don't know...
We have great ideas, great technologies, and great ways of getting great DSP acoustic sound for our cars...all that jazz.

 

[Purité Audio]

They are the best loudspeakers I have heard, I am hoping Kii in time release a big brother to the THREE.
Keith

 

[Cosmik]

I have a theory that DSP is not taking off all that quickly because people are misusing it. Give them a microphone and some pretty graphs, and their natural instinct is to try to make what reaches their ear look like the signal. In other words, whether they know it or not, they are trying to get the speaker/room combination to sound like an anechoic chamber - something they wouldn't want even if they could achieve it. Instead they get something that is the worst of all worlds: it doesn't sound like the signal, and it doesn't sound like the signal with added real, coherent, acoustic room ambience.

They need to use DSP to create a neutral speaker only, and then they will find themselves reminded of the best hi-fi experiences they had before the invention of DSP* - the ones that addicted them to hi-fi in the first place - but even better.

* and the ubiquity of bass reflex

 

[dallasjustice]

I disagree. The most exciting things about DSP have yet to be widely implemented.

It IS possible to eliminate room modes using multiple speakers and DSP/delay. It IS possible to eliminate nasty Allison effect using basically the same setup. This is exactly what DIRAC promises to do with forthcoming software--possibly vapor ware.

So the future of DSP, IMO, will be multi channel systems and the distinction between home theater and hifi will be blurred.

If DSP can truly eliminate bass room anomalies, it will be the biggest leap forward for DSP yet. At that point, even die hard audiophiles will have to sign up.

I have a theory that DSP is not taking off all that quickly because people are misusing it. Give them a microphone and some pretty graphs, and their natural instinct is to try to make what reaches their ear look like the signal. In other words, whether they know it or not, they are trying to get the speaker/room combination to sound like an anechoic chamber - something they wouldn't want even if they could achieve it. Instead they get something that is the worst of all worlds: it doesn't sound like the signal, and it doesn't sound like the signal with added real, coherent, acoustic room ambience.

They need to use DSP to create a neutral speaker only, and then they will find themselves reminded of the best hi-fi experiences they had before the invention of DSP* - the ones that addicted them to hi-fi in the first place - but even better.

* and the ubiquity of bass reflex

 

[NorthSky]

Dr. Floyd E. Toole, about thirty years ago mentioned something to the tune that the future is in DSP integrated speakers.