There were quite a few rooms I enjoyed - the Magico room was very nice - wonderful on "Moondance" on the Kronos turntable; the little Magicos with Constellation electronics surprised and thrilled; the narrow Brodmann speakers with Electrocompaniet gear had some magic; the Tone of Music room with the Simon Yorke 'table, CAT pre, Luxman power amp and Franco Serbelin speakers; the Musical Surroundings room with Aesthetix gear and Vivid Giya G2s (a lot of thumping from the Legacy next door was annoying); the huge Wilsons in a ballroom-sized space on some of Peter McGrath's recordings.
But for me, the two rooms I enjoyed the most were the Tape Project room and the Loggie room.
In the Bob Hodas/Tape Project room, we heard the magnificent Focal Scala Utopia mounted quite high on custom Sound Anchor stands. Amplification was Luke Manley's VTL preamp and two MB 450 Series III power amps, with massive Tara Labs speaker cables to the Utopias. The tape recorder was an Otari with Bottlehead custom electronics. We were in a small room but the sound was magnificent especially on the Rimsky-Korsakov.
But what really knocked me out was the Patricia Barber "You and the Night and the Music" cut that had superb vocal presence, wonderful bass lines, precise placement of the wood blocks and other percussion, and the "distorted" guitar solo at the end was just fabulous. Each instrument had its full dynamics preserved and analogue tape combined the ease of LP but with the low noise floor of digital. Just stunning.
The Loggie room was just a knockout for me. When I first joined the room they were playing the YG Carmels connected to the Ypsilon pre and power withe the Esoteris P2/D2 combination. We listened to "Duke's Place" by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington from a Redbook rip and it was open, thrilling and the imaging was delightful.
I must have come at the right time because they decided to switch to the YG Anats (without the big subwoofer module) which took a few minutes, and then listened to the same cut.
What did not impress me was the extra bass from these much bigger (and much more expensive) speakers, although that was surely there, but an extra dimension to the music, more depth to the vocals, a wider soundstage, and a more enveloping and realistic presentation. It was simply fabulous.
Then I heard two cuts that are well-known at hifi shows and I must have heard these 50 times each over the years - "Keith Don't Go" from the Nils Lofgren live album, and "Tin Pan Alley" by SRV. These were just stunning in the dynamics and precise image placement - really just a couple of mind blowers, in particular the guitar on "Keith ..".
The YG guy asked if we had anything to play (thank you), so I gave them my SHM-SACD of "Black and Blue" to listen to the Rolling Stones doing "Memory Hotel". Oh my - this was out of this world, with huge presence and delineation - actually a very nice recording.
I've heard the YGs a few times, but I've never had a demo like this. Very hard to fault in any way - except price.
Unlike Rebbi: "YG Acoustics room.... sounded rather "hi-fi" to me, but again, I spent very little time there." I spent quite some time with the big YGs. They are the real deal.
Regards,
