YG Acoustics Carmel 2 loudspeaker

YG Acoustics introduced the second edition of their original 2-way Carmel loudspeaker, the Carmel 2. It is said to bring the sound of the more expensive $72,800/pair Sonja 1.2 at a more reasonable price, $24,500/pair.

The Carmel 2 uses fully CNC-machined construction and proprietary toroidal, air-cored crossover inductors. The mid-woofer cone is machined out of a billet of aluminum, and the tweeter incorporates the in-house CNC-cutting used in the more expensive YG line. The drivers are crossed over at 1.75kHz, and the resulting speaker has a standard voltage sensitivity of 87dB/2.83V/m. The speaker's nominal impedance is 4 ohms and was driven at CES by D'Agostino Momentum monoblock amplifiers, with the source a dCS Vivaldi.

As the Sonja 1.2 was being shown in the Boulder Amplifiers exhibit, driven by a $53,000 Boulder 2163 amplifier, I was able to listen to both speakers. I can affirm that the Carmel 2 shares most of the characteristics of the three-times as expensive Sonja, lacking only some of its deep bass response. Playing Reference Recording's Rutter Requiem, the YG Acoustics Carmel 2 resolved the voices of the individual members of the chorus and generated a deep, wide soundstage.

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