In a sense the Contriva G3 produced the best sound I have heard from an audio system. I listen to over 100 systems a year, they range in price from $300 to $3,000,000 and doing this you quickly learn that the idea of singular best is at least potentially misleading at this stage of technological development. Different excellent systems do different things exceptionally well. Still, it is rare to listen to a system extensively and think that it is amongst the best in a range of highly valuable properties, and that was the conclusion that I wasn’t expecting but did arrive at after listening to a bevvy of albums on the Contriva G3’s.

Its not every day that a reviewer elucidates so insightfully not just on the component they are reviewing but on that component as a whole in the context of a hifi system. Tom Martin here reviews the newly released Contriva G3 floorstander and not only does he really understand the speaker and makes some very accurate and intelligent comments about the product and they way they perform, but also makes some very astute remarks about speakers in general and their degrees of colouration and transparency. If only all magazine reviewers were as perceptive as Tom. The youtube video can be found here.

The exceptional quality of the Contrivas is their brand of transparency. The Contrivas make you think that many other speakers have some kind of mild thin filter somewhere in the chain. At the same time, the Contrivas deliver this transparency with a sense of naturalness and almost gentleness at times, that leads to the conclusion that they must be very low distortion devices, With some speakers transparency is eventually revealed as an artefact that causes fatigue but that isn’t what’s going on here.