[ Outline ] · Standard · Linear+ wanting new speakers..., audiophiles? suggestions?

[Boss429]

Yorkville
YSM-1 (passive)

175$(CAD) eac. 350$ pair.

150watt Eac.

Just wondering what you guys think.

[Audiyoda]

You guys and your high performance cables -- always good for a laugh. Part of my thesis at MSU involved proving there is no preceived difference between the highest end cables and basic zip line.

We ran 8 pairs of cables (ranging from zip line to Monster Sigma Retro Gold cable wich Monster send to us 18 months before they hit the market) from my McIntosh amp to my B&W speakers. Had a panel of 8 listeners (including a producer friend for Nashville that was on my thesis committee). We played the same song using each cable and asked the listeners what they thought. Everyone thought the Sigma Retro Gold's were the best (at $5000 suggested retail, they better be). But there was one problem - everytime we told the listeners we were switching to cable X, we actually just kept the zip line plugged it. We never changed the speaker cable.

Now in the labs, the quality of cabling made a huge difference. But in real world applications, there are too many variables that negate the quality of high-end cables.

Now, as for those speakers. The Yorkville YSM-1's are reference monitors - not what I would consider 'home theater' style speakers. They will be very flat and uncolored. They will sound 'deader' than home speakers and for a good reason. They're used in studio's for mixdown and the last thing you want is a colored sound. They do handle 150Watts but that's at a 2ohm load. That is a nice aspect of many reference monitors - they will run at various load inputs from 2ohm to 32ohm depending on how the mixdown speakers are configured (our 7.1 configuration is 16ohm for the fronts and rears, 16 ohms for the center and sub and 32 ohm for the mid and rear surrounds). But for home speakers, these are not what I would want to listen to for the pure enjoyment of listening to music or watching your favorite DVD.