Yg carmel 2 owners

I bought a pair around a year ago and just love them. Very detailed, great soundstage, refined etc... As far as deep bass goes, there is none. If you look at Stereophile's measurements, they are flat down to 50hz, down 5db @ 40hz and down 10db @ 30hz.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/yg-acoustics-carmel-2-loudspeaker-measurements

Around 5 months ago I purchased a REL Carbon Limited sub and liked what it did so much I just bought another one. With the 2 REL's paired with the YG C 2's the sound is unbelievably good. I run the subs in stereo via the 'Speakon' connection system and cross them over @ 45hz and use very little volume. For me in my room I found it works better to have speakers that are not quite full range and use subs to dial in the deep bass. With speakers that play deeper I found it more difficult to get the right mix of deep bass with the rest of the frequency (in my room).

The Carmel 2's are very sensitive to everything upstream....Don't try to use cheap electronics with these speakers. If you have a small room and listen to small scale music you might be ok with no sub but if you like larger scale material a high quality sub would be a must.....Hope this helps.

Well, I just saw the Stereophile measurements. The impedance chart was particularly curious. Is there a high pass filter there on the woofer? The rising impedance at 20 Hz, plus the phase angle would suggest so. Perhaps YG is worried about the driver displacement?

It also does look like an ideal candidate for a sub.

Would be interesting to hear it, especially side by side with the Magico S1, which is not perfect. It is incredibly inefficient, and to my ears, sounds a little chesty in the lower piano, lower female voices, but it did have a natural sounding bass roll off for a 2 way.

Surprisingly, JA seems to have picked up on this as well:

"Note the increasingly capacitive phase angle below the sealed-box woofer-tuning frequency of 60Hz, which suggests there is a high-value series capacitor in the woofer feed. "

He usually misses or omits issues like this in the past. This cap is helping maintain a rather consistent slope, with none of the usual lower bass bump speakers often had for toe-tapping. Looks like YG’s choice of driver had some limitations, and he has designed the woofer crossover like a midrange, with filters above and below.

Why? I don’t know, of course, but it could be two things. 1, there was a bass bump he wanted to tame, 2 he’s genuinely worried about the excursion and distortion lower frequencies will cause that driver. Interesting set of compromises, lots of 7" ish over the shelf drivers wouldn’t need this.

Definitely a speaker begging to pair with subs.

What about vs the magico a3 and talis s300 Eric? 

Hi @smodtactical

I have always felt the A3 has the potential to be a much better value than the S1 Mk II and far easier to own, but I have not actually heard it, and I was using the S1 Mk II as a foil for the YG Carmel because both are floor standing 2 way speakers.

With all things, use your own ears. :)

Best,

E