Riviera Labs – GPoint Audio

Riviera Audio Laboratories s.r.l. is a relatively young Italian company, only founded in January 2017, but producing innovative products of the highest quality for the upper reaches of the audio market. The products are not only visually breath-taking, but equally striking with the quality of their performance, which is not always the case on the crowded hi-end audio Vanity Fair. As we are always hungry for the best sound we can find, we passed our critical ears over their products, which swiftly, (and happily), resulted in them being proudly included the brand into our small collection of wonders.

People Behind the brand

Riviera has brought together the complementary skills of three members to produce audio components aimed at bringing new advances in analogue sound, merging passion, technology and innovation.

First and foremost, Luca Chiomenti is the company’s audio designer and engineer responsible for technical expertise and craftsmanship which now find their expression in Riviera products.

Marco Muzio is an expert in industrial design and rendering for mechanical applications; he brings to Riviera his outstanding skills to chassis design and manufacturing.

Silvio Delfino deals with imports and exports. He now turns his considerable expertise to Riviera.

Riviera Audio Labs Portfolio

Riviera has very logically produced a portfolio of products to suit all tastes and situations. The portfolio is not over-crowded and contains just right choice for everyone. As always with our findings, every single product stands out and wins effortlessly, often against competition priced many times higher.

The number of watts stated in the respective spec sheets doesn’t raise any eyebrows, but due to the innovative Hybrid design, all Riviera products have serious high current output drive, and because of that, even a “meagre” 10 watts of power from the entry-level amplifier can easily drive speakers which often stress 150-watt+ behemoths.

Riviera goes right back to basics, and takes great pride in having meticulously studied the literature of electro-acoustics written in the last hundred years. As a result, Riviera believed it was necessary to re-examine and re-define the electrical characteristics of an audio amplifier. Riviera’s benchmark has always been, and remains the live listening experience – Riviera’s philosophy is that a Hi-Fi system must be able to reproduce a sound event that is as close as humanly possible to what a listener would hear in a live context.

To achieve these goals Riviera has made specific choices regarding circuitry and applied technologies:

Zero Overall Feedback
Class A amplification at every stage
Hybrid circuitry, with valves (triodes) for signal processing and solid state (BJT and Mosfets) for the power stage

Electrical values chosen by listening (rather than based purely on measurements)