YG Acoustics Kipod Studio Loudspeaker (TAS 199)

The Best Loudspeaker On Earth?

YG Acoustics is a relatively young company (founded in 2002) that has made quite a splash in the upper end of the loudspeaker market. The firm has attracted some fervent supporters along with much controversy surrounding its key marketing slogan “The Best Loudspeaker on Earth. Period.” This statement, along with the products’ pricing and unusual build, tends to polarize audiophiles.

The Kipod Studio reviewed here is YG’s least expensive full-range loudspeaker, priced at $38,000 per pair. The Kipod Studio’s design brief was to bring the same level of performance found in YG’s $107,000 Anat Professional to a more compact design, with the only trade-offs being bass extension and maximum playback volume.

The Kipod Studio is a two-piece system: The Kipod Main Module is coupled to a woofer enclosure that also serves as a stand for the Main Module. The Main Module is a small two-way speaker in a sealed enclosure that is available on its own for $17,000 per pair. The Kipod Main Module is transformed into the Kipod Studio with the addition of the $21,000 per pair woofer, which can be ordered with or without integral power amplifiers (the price is the same). In my mind, the Kipod Studio is a single loudspeaker system that happens to be housed in two enclosures. Indeed, the Kipod Main Module bolts to the woofer enclosure to form a single structure. Nonetheless, one can buy the Kipod Main Module and later add the woofer for the same price as purchasing both together.

The sealed woofer module has a truncated pyramid shape that houses a 9" ScanSpeak woofer in the front and an amplifier panel in the rear. This panel has a variety of controls for tuning the system to a room. These include woofer level, crossover frequency, equalization frequency, and equalization level. Single-ended and balanced line-level inputs are provided. The line-level input is fed from a second output from your preamplifier. Note that your preamp needs two main stereo outputs, one to drive the woofer modules and one to drive you main power amplifiers. The integral power amplifiers, designed specifically for this particular woofer, are rated at 400W.

The enclosures are made entirely of aluminum panels, machined and finished in YG’s Colorado factory (see sidebar). The Main Module’s ScanSpeak-sourced 6" midrange driver is crossed over to the tweeter at 1.75kHz with a fourth-order slope. The crossover components are as good as they get—the ultra-expensive Raimund Mundorf capacitors and inductors. Each driver is measured and the crossover hand-tuned to a specific set of drivers. YG keeps these measurements on file so that if you need a replacement driver they can supply one of identical characteristics.

The crossovers are designed using a program YG founder Yoav Geva wrote that is based on an algorithm he developed for another field that reportedly allows simultaneous optimization of the frequency and time domains. That is, the loudspeaker’s amplitude response is flat, and its phase response is uniform. YG claims that the Kipod Studio has a phase uniformity of +/-5 degrees. This means that the disparate drivers move in unison in response to a musical signal.

A machined-aluminum waveguide around the Vifa ring-radiator tweeter controls the tweeter’s dispersion. The Main Module can be ordered with single-wire or bi-wire connection. The review samples were supplied with bi-wire connections. Incidentally, I replaced the stock jumpers with a pair from Kimber (Kimber Select KF9033 jumpers) and heard a reduction in grain and a small increase in transparency.

Although the woofer module is available in passive or active configurations, virtually every customer opts for the active version—and for good reason, in my view. An active woofer has many advantages, the main one being the removal of passive crossover parts from the high-level signal path between an amplifier and the woofer’s voice coil. A crossover’s low-pass section that feeds the woofer typically uses a large series inductor; its removal allows the amplifier to better drive and control the woofer. Second, an active woofer relieves your main power amplifier from the burden of driving the woofer. Third, a powered woofer can be equalized to deliver deeper extension than would be possible from a passively driven woofer. That’s the case with the Kipod Studio; the system is flat to 20Hz despite the small footprint and compact dimensions. Fourth, a powered woofer offers the ability to control the woofer level to best match your room. Finally, the integral amplifier can be designed specifically for the impedance curve it will be asked to drive.

Interestingly, the Main Module is run full-range. That is, there’s no high-pass filter to keep bass out of the Main Module’s 6** driver. The idea is to achieve the purity of a two-way mini-monitor with the bass extension of a floorstanding three-way. Nonetheless, the 6” driver’s excursion will be the limiting factor in the system’s macro-dynamic capabilities. It is, however, loaded in a rather small sealed enclosure which helps limit the excursion. For those who want higher sound-pressure levels, YG makes a Main Module Subsonic Filter that keeps low bass out of the Main Module, but presumably at the expense of ultimate transparency.