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Swan Hivi X3 Review (Active Monitors)

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 88 53.7%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 67 40.9%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther

    Votes: 7 4.3%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 2 1.2%

  • Total voters
    164

Xyrium

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Total cross between the old Munro Eggs and Gennies, with the performance of neither. I bet Danny could fix it! ;)
 

Cars-N-Cans

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Great review of a flawed speaker. It pains to see how China, after great & original DAC creations at 1/10th of the price of comparable US/UK products, seems unable to replicate the deed with speakers. Back to the drawing board for a more favorable quality/price ratio.
Speaker design is substantially harder and more involved. Electronics are much easier to get perfect, in my opinion. They seem to be making good headway with the IEMs and headphones, though, so I think at some point they will break into the high performance/audiophile speaker segment as well with competent offerings. I think it’s really just a matter of time.
 

kongwee

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They still pop up commonly in electronics, esp. electrolytics, but the ICs as well. Those are the most commonly counterfeited parts from what I have seen, and anything on e-bay will certainly be suspect. Another place they get parts is e-waste pulls. If it’s a matter of some heat shrink tubing over a no-name cap or simply sanding and laser engraving an IC again I don’t think there is a lot of cost involved, and the temptation to cheat will be stronger with components that are older or more rare. I’m not saying the replica amps you refer to use fake components, but if it’s at a real low price point despite being decked out with all the best “brands” I do become suspect. Anyhow, here it seems to be more just ripping off the look of a big brand to move product.
I don't judge on ebay. I doubt ebay allow replica on their store. You can sue them directly. I went to Taobao where they show their classic amp replica. You already can't fake with resistor, transistor, caps. it is not worth it. Laser engraving isn't cheap, manpower to remove name isn't cheap. It is lots cheaper to buy original component. Just buy a roll or bulk and last a whole year. That why Topping start their own brand. All these famous component level brand are so cheap even their own country brand can't compete, not to say the decades long monopoly on this industry.
 

pavuol

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You can't deny some uniqueness in color options..
swan_X3_colors.jpeg
 

voodooless

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GXAlan

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Last edited:

Universal Cereal Bus

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Too small of a fish for Genelec to bother going after them. The product is also very hard to find so I think it is on its way out. If not already....
That's 1:1 the Genelec look, with the ISOpods, the grilles and the rounded aluminium cabinet. Is that even legal..?

Genelec would have two legal avenues: trade dress and design patent. I'm no expert in either but I understand trade dress would be harder to prove because Genelec would bear the onus of establishing certain threshold distinctiveness requirements about its purported trade dress; the defendant (Swan) would also have a very strong argument that Genelec's distinguishing features are primarily functional and therefore disqualifying of trade dress.

The easier-to-prove IP infringement would be design patent. Genelec has the following US design patents

...of which only this one seems even remotely close

...but is now expired as you can see. So the answer in the US is most likely YES this speaker is legal!

There's also much thread misinformation about the difficulty of suing a Chinese company. You'd only sue them in China if Genelec has design patent registrations in China (doubt it). And as I demonstrated above, Genelec has US design patents, so it can sue in the US. It doesn't just have to sue Swan; it can sue the importer, the distributor, the seller (Amazon), etc. It can even sue in the ITC instead of Federal court.
 

lewdish

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Looks like Hivi still can't compare to the real Genelecs. I think it will be a little while before we see some more Chinese brand speakers that can compete with the rest of the market similar to how the chifi headphone & IEM game is. I like when there's reviews like this because theres a lot we can learn from a products design and its flaws. Though you'd think a company like Hivi who manufactures oem drivers for many companies would have done measurements on their own to build a better product. $250 sounds cheap, but the X8 which is their largest version of this speaker costs $2500 a pair which by all means is still cheap when compared to the real Genelec, but that's still a pretty expensive setup for something that could probably be beat for a lot less if this says much about the lineup.
 

Beave

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They should rename this model the Swans Hivi Genericlac.

Isn't Swans Hivi the same company that made a line of speakers that looked suspiciously like B&W, going so far as to have yellow cones and a tweeter on top of the cabinet?
 

wwenze

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The hivi bump, the opposite of bbc dip.

+5 dB at 4khz, who ever has voiced them must have ears from hell. ;)
This seems to be the public image of Swanspeakers

However Swan's own measurements say the speaker is flat.

Looking at the vertical directivity plot, looks like a few degrees below tweeter axis the dip in FR at 4kHz appears to cancel out the bump at 4kHz. Perhaps the manufacturer used somewhere else as the axis? Using anything else other than the waveguide as the axis feels weird, tho.
 

anphex

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Wow, I can well imagine that soon there will be some weird ebay or Amazon shop that sells Genelecs but then ships these things and just changes the logo on the front and puts a sticker over the back.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

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So the dip at 200Hz should not exist if the MF setting is set to "0"
I set all dip switches to zero. They are finicky though with very little gap between settings. Or maybe the switch is dirty. Alternatively their measurements are wrong and there is still a dip. I put my money on the last one. :)
 

Bruce Morgen

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Hivi/Swan is a pretty big brand in China, they make a lot of raw drivers as well. Them being China based would make it difficult for Genelec to go after them though.

Yup. The PRC is where intellectual property rights go to die.:mad:
 

FeddyLost

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Genelec of a smoker.
I don't care about intellectual property, but the result is disappointing anyway. Looks like they couldn't steal the constuction properly and measure product before release.
 

uwotm8

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Oh such a Genelec cosplay:D:facepalm:
They have cosplayed iconic Dynaudio drivers too, would be funny to see how speakers equipped with that "divaudio" measure
 
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