Doug Schneider has posted a review of the Vivid Audio B1 loudspeakers ($15,000) at Soundstage! Hi-Fi. His conclusions:
Vivid Audio’s B1 is an extraordinarily good loudspeaker that has midrange and high-frequency neutrality, transparency, and refinement that are second to none. In resolution and detail in those mid- and upper ranges, every other speaker I’ve heard comes in second to it. Listening with the B1 was like training a microscope on my records — it was truly revelatory in that regard. This makes the B1 a reference-caliber monitoring tool and a great home loudspeaker.
But the B1 isn’t perfect — just close to it. Its mids and highs bowled me over, but not its bass. I wish its low bass went slightly deeper, and mostly that setting them up to get the smoothest, deepest low- and upper-bass performance wasn’t as tricky as it turned out to be. Those are my biggest beefs. However, those drawbacks will be somewhat room-dependent, and there are three Vivid models above the B1 that are all larger. Usually, bass performance gets better as the speaker gets bigger.
You can read the full review here.
In addition, measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada’s National Research Council can be found here.
