Are YG Speakers hype or the real deal?
David Matz -- Mon, 01/19/2009 - 15:57
In your latest issue Jon has awared the YG Kipods Best of Show award.
The ads in the magazines claim that these are the "best". Pretty strong claim, considering there are some killer Wilson, MBLs, and Focals in the elite price point category.
I heard them for 15 minutes, and I thought they were very good for a non-electrostat, but they were $40K. They were more 3 dimensional than the CLX that I was listening to just prior to them, but lacked the transparency, sound stage, and air that I love from electrostats. (They were driven by Manley amps and Krell Evo preamp, with simaudio and krell sources.)
Jon, you have had the good fortune to listen to some killer stuff over the last 6 months. What are your thoughts?
What does everyone else think?
Thanks!
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Mcduman, “enthusiast”, and I take it wealth, does not equal enlightenment. As far as I know, fine Swiss watches do show the actual time with some sort of accuracy and the title of this thread is ” …hype or the real deal?” I am sure none of your fine Swiss watches claims that they can do your dishes or even show the time accurately. Again, you should try and explore the difference between jewelry and audio equipments.
look at the ces reports and count the number of instances where they demonstrated usd 30k speaker cables or usd 30k mini monitors. too many? apparently the industry wants us to normalize these figures as admission prices to luxurious high end sound. i hate that as much as you do but cannot single out a certain brand for the wrongdoings of a whole industry. actually, quoting oz, to my ears and my ears only, yg anat heads sound miles ahead of the competition.
I wish you were right about the wealth issue though, having taken a year off to listen to and understand mahler symphonies and other worthwhile stuff in life.
Well, I do feel sorry for you, taking a year off and such... You know you could have understood Mahler much faster through a decent pair of speakers.
you have a point, I am stuck at 6th and the speaker refuses altogether to play wagner for the obvious reasons :-))
The reason, you may have notice, is their very limited dynamic range capabilities. Being essentially a 2 way (with or without a sub), with restricted SPL, their ability to play big orchestral music is somewhat constricted. Adding a sub to a 2-way does not mitigate the lack of power in the midbass region. That is where your Mahler resides. They are pretty good as monitors, but I would not consider them a true full range speaker.
I heard the Anat Reference II's together with Audio Research front end and amplifiers in my dealer's pretty small showroom. They sounded superb with astonishing clarity and breathtaking soundstage. I've been told they sounded even better with Krell EVO amplifiers. I currently use the spectacular D800/801 combo by Accuphase and EVO I&2 amplifiers by Krell driving Focal's Nova Utopia BE speakers. The Focals are really good speakers but sound a bit coloured compared to the Anat's though they probably have more dynamic impact. Nevertheless I am seriously considering to replace the Nova's with the Anat Reference Studio speakers. I will wait for Wes Phillips's review of them, then hear the Magico M5's and hopefully make a decision afterwards.
I would recommend before you go with the Anats or Magicos take a listen to the Scaena 3.2. The Scaean loudspeakers are extraordinary loudspeakers and represent a total new level of design and sophistication to the concept of a line source. A line source can play extremely loud with much lower distortion than a point source loudspeaker.
The Sceaen uses one of the litest and fastest midrange drivers in the industry installed in a composite cast pod which completely absorbs the back wave, as the pod structure is a complex cast hemhotz resonator. These fast midrange drivers 12 of them are almost completely full range going form 80 hz to 16,0000hz! They are crossed over to a ribbon tweeter array at 8,000hz which allows for high power handling and an effortless midrange.
The bass side of the speaker is also quite special, two 18 in pro bass drivers in a high density cylindrical enclosure being driven by a 1,000 watt amplifier with a room controllable DSP based crossover.The bass system is thuderous and extremely fast!
The Scaena replaced HP Alon Grand Exotica which is one of the worlds best speakers, check them out a pair of the 3.2 are not much more expensive than the Kipods, and the largest version are still less expensive than the Anat references. A line source speaker system creates very realistic images which are life sized, and the dynamics of this speaker system are incredible!
Hmm, Dave, where have I seen these kinds of unsolicited plugs before? If you're a dealer for the product you ought to divulge that. I'm a dealer for speakers that aren't "almost completely full range," they are full range. But unless someone mentions or asks about something I sell, it's not my place to change the topic and interject something about it.
Brian Walsh
Essential Audio ~ Chicago area ~ 773-809-HIFI (4434)
I have heard the YG speakers only under odd conditions(in a huge room, not representative of anything like a home environment) so I am disinclined to make any listening comments. However, it has come to my attention that they have (or at least one version has) a strange burst of distortion in the midrange, with distortion products not much over 25 dB down from signal with the speaker playing loudly(95 dB) but not super loudly. You can find a measurement (from the Canadian NRC, an impartial and accurate measuring facility) here
http://www.soundstagenetwork.com/measurements/speakers/yg_anat_ref_main_module/
Whether this has any substantial impact on what one hears is another question. But it is a bit odd compared to most modern speakers where midrange distortion is usually on the order of 40 dB down from signal(or better).
It is the sound that counts but the YG designer has declared in public that the YG speakers have the best measurements of any speaker and that ,too, he designed the speaker by measurements primarily.So it might make some sense to check out the measurement situation. Well, it is indeed admirably flat on-axis. But in a speaker that cost $100,000+, I would find that distortion peculiarity a little disturbing. (25 dB down is 6 % distortion, to convert this to more ordinary ways of thinking about distortion. Ten percent distortion is 20 dB down, one percent is 40 dB down ,etc. is the way the scale runs. )
Anyway, just a thought. Maybe it is not seriously audible and 95 dB is pretty loud all right. On the other hand, at 90 dB , you can already see some kind of odd behavior at the same mid frequencies. For $100,000+(including subwoofers), ...one might wonder.
REG being techno-nerdy
The only odd behavior is a TAS reviewer going out of his way to post a comment on a speaker he's only heard under "odd conditions."
Have you contacted YG's designer for his take on the soundstagenetwork measurements?
BTW- The YG speakers soundstagenetwork tested do not cost $100K. Read the review:
http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/ygacoustics_anat_main_module.htm
My blog on my visit to the YG Acoustics factory is now posted here:
http://www.avguide.com/blog/inside-the-yg-acoustics-factory
From the standpoint I view it with a profound technical background and also have been designing loudspeakers since over 20 years back I would like to give my point of view regarding YG.
It's clear Yaov is a real marketing guy with quite a bold attitude, someone else seem to have dug up some history about Yaov and why not wouldn't that interest audiophiles as a matter of fact. http://blog.stereophile.com/wesphillips/accuracy/
I did my own research on the internet and found out Yaov has been a member on audioassylum for quite some time, here is the whole log dating back to 2001 where he asks trivial things revealing his thin technical background, moreover every post is logged with the IP number from where he was located when he made his postings: http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/search.mpl?author=Yoav&user_id=8062&forum=...
A further look where these IP number leads to by using Who Is services shows he has spent most of his time in Israel and that supports one posters comments on the first link above.
Ok so let's have some look at the YG speakers good and bad sides including the "designer".
It's obvious Yaov has adopted a high quality thinking by choosing very good materials to begin with like aluminium enclosures, Scanspeak elements, high quality capacitors in the passive filter and so on and one is much better of already to begin with.
The objections are the many technically flawed statements which puts Yaov in the right light, for instance his ideas that there are less resonances with very stiff enclosure material is a wrong assumption, well it's perhaps correct in that sence the enclousure itself isn't resonating but that is a minor part of the story, the thing is that there are air also inside the enclousure (which we should perhaps not forget) and air has a springy effect and that in combination with the elements Thiel Small parameters will decide the resonance frequency (and a stiff enclosure will in fact even drive up the resonance a little bit too as it isn't so lossy!). Another thing as was understood YG doesn't use any damping material inside the boxes(?), which is another mistake, resonances can only be taken away with damping materials and partially with "multi resonating" enclosures, the PDF on YGs site speaking about enclosures where the eöement resonance peaks goes up because of "lower friction" is hilarious, ok to be politically correct here, that is absolutely incorrect. Moreover it's enough for a trained loudspeaker designers eye to inspect only on the outside there are some design flaws and which has been pointed out elsewhere. The list can go on over the flawed statements and design concepts but the good part is as already partially mentioned their choices incorporated in the design, and while having that in mind for me it feels they want to accomplish something "little bit more" at least... Some mentioned the Wilson speakers and some mentioned how "bad" Focal is, actually Wilson used in the past a version of the inverted dome that would ring (if I recall my memory correct) tremendously around 17 kHz, that's totally unbelievable it passed Wilsons QC considering the hefty price tag for Watt Puppy.
Considering Wilson has been so long time on the market and not introduced more value for the money I consider them as a joke and a hoax, their designs from electrically and acoustically point of view for the major part is a shot from the hip, in that aspect I must say I am very glad to see YG as an alternative.
Well, that's all folks!
have to correct myself a bit:
"Another thing as was understood YG doesn't use any damping material inside the boxes(?), which is another mistake, resonances can only be taken away with damping materials and partially with "multi resonating" enclosures, the PDF on YGs site speaking about enclosures where the eöement resonance peaks goes up because of "lower friction" is hilarious, ok to be politically correct here, that is absolutely incorrect."
what was ment with "absolutely incorrect" is that is not the way one should design a loudspeaker, increase the Q (Q stand for quality and relates to resonating circuits, a higher Q means the will be a peakier ringing) and that is very bad.
have to correct myself a bit:
"Another thing as was understood YG doesn't use any damping material inside the boxes(?), which is another mistake, resonances can only be taken away with damping materials and partially with "multi resonating" enclosures, the PDF on YGs site speaking about enclosures where the eöement resonance peaks goes up because of "lower friction" is hilarious, ok to be politically correct here, that is absolutely incorrect."
what was ment with "absolutely incorrect" is that is not the way one should design a loudspeaker, increase the Q (Q stand for quality and relates to resonating circuits, a higher Q means there will be a "peakier" ringing) and that is very bad.
What is really disturbing is that not even one reviewer, including the well informed JA of Stereophile and RH of TAS, had the journalism ethics, to expose nonsense like the one you just mentioned above. On top of it, the tantrum YG threw on the Magico Q5 blog was hilarious yet somewhat disturbing. Again, total silence from reviewers. Looks like 2 page ads do buy you some slack...
tantrum YG threw on the Magico Q5 blog was hilarious
Where's that?
http://www.avguide.com/blog/quo-vadis-magico-introduces-new-line-loudspe...
TO MATT K.
REALLY!! You just show how ignorant you are-just scan-speak speakers in an aluminum box? PLEASE!
Did you even read one single review or visIt the Yg website? NO IF YOU DID YOU KNOW THEIR IS WHOLE LOT MORE TO YG SPEAKERS.
PLEASE BEFORE YOU BASH A PRODUCT AT LEAST TAKE FIVE MINUTES & DO A LITTLE RESEARCH!
KODG
TO MICHEAL
THERE IS ALWAYS ONE BLOGGER WHO THINKS IS HEADS & TAILS SMARTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE! YG ACOUSTIC ANAT REFERENCE II MEASURED AS THE MOST RESONANT FREE CABINET EVERY TESTED TO DATE (BY INDEPENDENT LABS!)
There is no stuffing in the Yg speakers & they don't require any, or it would be added. the internal geometry of the cabinet eliminates the resonance inside the air-tight enclosure.
Kodg