Audio critic Myles Astor was playing Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells—"the LP that launched a thousand virgins," he qupped—when i walked into YG's large room. Whether it was the Dan D'Agostino Momentum amplifiers, the Veloce LS-1 battery-powered preamp, the Kubula-Sosna Elation! cables, or the Scheu Analog Das Laufwerk 1 turntable with Scheu 12" Tacco arm and Scheu Ruby 3 cartridge, but the sound in this room was stunning. Or perhaps it was YG's new flagship speaker, the Sonja 1.3 ($106,800/pair)!

As I was about to ask for a CD to be played on the 4-box dCS Scarlatti player, audio critic Paul Bolin beat me to it and played a recording of electric Renaissance music from, of all people, erstwhile Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. The sound was still stunning. Perhaps it was the Sonjas, which were stepping out of the way of even unfamiliar music like this, to let the musicians maximally communicate.

Like the earlier YG flagship speaker, the Anat, the 506 lb Sonja is a modular system, comprising the Sonja 1.1 two-way compact speaker, the Sonja 1.1, which adds a matching passive woofer section to the Sonja 1.1, and the Sonja 1.3, which adds dual matching bass modules to the 1.2.

A pair of Sonja 1.3s will be taking up residency in my listening room in February. Based on what I heard at CES, I can't wait!