YG’s Hailey

The baby in YG’s speaker line has been the Kipod ($38,800/pair), named after YG founder Yoav Geva’s daughter Hailey, whose nickname was “Kipod” or “Hedgehog” in Hebrew. But as Hailey is growing up fast (as daughters do), it was time to name a new speaker after her; CES saw the premier of the YG Hailey. Priced at $42,800/pair, the three-way, floorstanding Hailey uses technology trickled down from the top-of-the line Sonja that I reviewed last July. YG’s “Billet-core” drivers, where the cones are machined from solid aluminum stock, are combined with a 1" dome tweeter in a machined aluminum enclosure that eschews the Sonja’s double-cabinet construction.

With D’Agostino amplification, a Kronos turntable or dCS Vivaldi as source components (the latter is still my favorite digital player), all hooked up with Kubala-Sosna cables, the Hailey’s sounded delicious on music ranging from a Marcus Miller bass solo on digital to Count Basie’s big band and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade on LP. The lows, from the 7.25” aluminum-cone woofer, had a satisfying “purr” to the sound of double bass.

My photo, BTW, illustrates a problems in covering a show like CES. The lighting in any room is a combination of daylight through the window, a yellow-tinted light from the compact fluorescent bulbs in the room's table lamps, "white" LED lights from local spotlighters, and tungsten lights in the ceiling. Every light source has a different color temperature and if you don't use flash—I hate flash—sometimes there is no optimal color balance for the image.

Source : stereophile[dot]com