Munich 2024

On the final day of High End Munich, a couple of hours before closing time, I sent the visiting Stereophile crew a message about the new speakers in the YG Acoustics room: “Should you have time and you haven’t visited yet, go listen. Both the passive and active systems there sound phenomenal.”

It’s true: the YG space was electrifying, even in an environment where the world’s high-end audio brands strut their finest stuff (and where it’s easy to get jaded). I’d traveled to the Munich expo on my own dime, intending to wander where my ears and my curiosity took me … no writing, no deadlines. But I felt a tinge of evangelical fervor when I heard the active YG XX 3 Live towers and the externally amplified XV 3 Signatures that flanked them. So I should tell you about this room. To my ears, it took Best of Show.

At prices like these, YG products should impress. The four-way XX 3s, fed by built-in Bel Canto DACs and amplifiers that provide 700W to each of the eight drivers per channel, cost a whopping $258,600/pair. For almost twice that amount of whop—$498,000—you can instead choose YG’s nearly-six-foot-tall XV 3 Signatures, in which case you’ll get four towers, two being essentially vertical subs.

Not included in that half-million dollar price tag are amplifiers and other electronics. If you bristle at audio systems whose prices can make oil sheiks and oligarchs hesitate, you’ll feel extra vinegary after the next sentence. The Colorado-based company had paired the XV 3 Signatures with Boulder 3050 monoblocks ($306,000/pair), a Boulder 3010 preamplifier ($164,000), a Boulder 2108 phono preamp ($62,000), an Aurender N30SA music server ($25,000), a Technics SL-1000-RE-S turntable ($19,999) with an Ortofon Xpression cartridge ($6199), a Weiss Engineering Helios DAC ($21,995), an Innuos PhoenixNET network switch ($4349), almost $57,000 worth of Hifistay rackage, and a full loom of Siltech cables—bringing the total system price to about $1.2 million.

Told you.

It would be hard to dub a pair of quarter-million-dollar speakers an exceptional value, and I won’t. But I’ll say this: During about 25 minutes of listening, in a room that wasn’t acoustically perfect and where people were talking, the XX 3s sounded very nearly as gobsmackingly good to me as the seven-figure XV 3 Signature system.

YG’s Duncan Taylor cued up “Marimba Funk" by Šimun Matišić, “Part of Me” by Arny Margret & Ásgeir, and “Little Blue” by Jacob Collier. On these tracks and several more, bass depth and authority, midrange purity, and detail retrieval were so close between the two rigs that at times I was unsure which one I was hearing. It seemed clear that they were developed and voiced by the same team. Dynamics were certainly among the best I’ve heard. As in, ever.

The YG/Boulder system wasn't alone in its excellence. Elsewhere at High End Munich, there was more to rave about. Vying for top honors were the incredibly lifelike Kii Seven active monitors ($8000/pair); the Linkwitz LX521.4 open-baffle speakers ($26,700/pair) whose lucidity had wowed me at AXPONA last year; and the brand new, crossoverless, horn-loaded Voxativ Andagios, which cost $69,900/pair when outfitted with the company’s hyper-musical hybrid field coil drivers.

At admittedly eye-watering prices, and without breaking a sweat, the YGs elevated themselves above all. Should you get a chance to hear them, you may find the experience unforgettable…as did I.