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Powered Speaker Approach

Last year I decided to sell my system and downsize to a system that would perform to high quality levels, whilest being of a more modest budget.

I already had a Bluesound Pulse Mini streaming speaker, so I  could stream my digital collection with reasonable quality

But i also had many albums, so I  looked around for an inexpensive turntable, and settled on  Fluance turntable and phono stage.

The sound was OK, from the perspective of frequency range timbre and tonal quality but it lacked the image I had enjoyed before.

So my options were..

  1. ditch the Pulse Mini and get some amplification + speakers
  2. Or, add some powered speakers to the Pulse Mini

I decided to go with option 2, which led me on a search for a worthy, but affordable  powered speaker.

The search led me to my local musical instrument store that stocked a variety of powered speakers specifically sold as studio monitors.

My budget was around $400 CDN for a pair, and the brand that peaked my interest was Yorkville, specifically the YSM5-2.

Yorkville is well known in the music mixing community, and their designs are geared more to near field listening, so this endeavor was going to be interesting.

The nice thing about these speaker is that I  would not have to employ speaker cables, just interconnect cables to connect the speakers to the pulse Mini.

The speakers actually have both singal ended RCA and 1/4" jack sockets and xlr inputs, making them very versatile.

So how did they perform?

  • The build quality of these speakers is exceptional and each speaker weighs in at around 12lbs, thanks to a substantial MDF cabinet
  • They are extremely quiet ( no hiss )
  • The bass from the 5" drivers sound more like a 6.5" driver, probably due to the front firing port.
  • The tweeter is exceptionally smooth, without being glaringly bright
  • The tonal quality and timbre is exceptional for a speaker in this snack bracket
  • The image from this speaker pair is detailed and 3 dimensional.

The other thing I decided on, was to use very good interconnect and power cables, which played a huge role in the final sound quality.

All in all, this has been a very worthwhile endeavor.

So if you are looking for a smaller and affordable system, give the powered speaker  approach some thought.

Hope you find this useful

Regards, Steve

 

 

 

williewonka
3 responses Add your response
williewonka OP
3,115 posts
 

@gdaddy1 , you are correct, they lack the really deep bass from about 45 hz, down to 20 hz, but everything down to 45-50hz is very detailed.

But they don’t rattle the chinasad

I played Peter Gabriel’s  So and was amazed by the bass ability of these small speakers. Much better than I was expecting

I’ve listened to many regular small high end audiophile speakers over the years and these are among the best I’ve heardyes

Yorkville also produces some very good subs that pair nicely with all of the powered speakers, so if the urge takes me I might just take the plunge.

But right now I’m very impressed.

Regards Steve

 

 

gdaddy1
220 posts
 

Congrats. Glad you're happy!

In a room of that size 40'x17' I would think the bass is lacking. Can't imagine a 5" woofer doing the job.

I did a pair of powered Swan MKII for my brother-in-law and it was incredibly good. When we added the subwoofer it took it the next level.

williewonka OP
3,115 posts
 

A couple of things I forgot to mention in my post above...

  1. while these speakers are manufactured in China (what isn't these days), they are designed, engineered and quality controlled right here in Canada
  2. as well as having a master volume control, there is also a HF and LF cut/gain switch, so oyu an tailer the design to your listening environment.

As for volume, these speakers are in a room approximately 40 x 17 feet and the master volume is set to the half way position, and I have no problem filling it with sound - at least for my ears

I had looked at other "powered speakers' but many of them had the amplification in one speaker, with an umbilical  cord to power the second speakers. While this may be convenient it really presents issues with both sound quality and imaging because the unit that has the amplification in it has very short speakers leads connecting to the actual speaker and the other speaker would have a much longer speaker cable, and depending on cable quality would almost certainly be problematic when trying to establish a good image and consistent sound between the two speakers.

The Yorkville lineup has smaller versions, YSM3-2, better suited for gaming environments and larger versions, like the YSM6-2 and YSM8-2, better suited to proffessional recording studios.

I have listened to the next yorkville YSM6-2 speaker and while being discernably better, they were larger than I was looking for, but were only another $50 per speaker.

They are currently going through a burnin period, I would estimate about 400 hours, but right out of the box the YSM5-2 are performing above my expectations

 

Regards - Steve

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