Letter from NYC 2011 (19): Thanksgiving YL Acoustics

Letter from NYC 2011 (19): Thanksgiving
Reorganization and Consolidation
My Corner: My Listening Stations (III) Day-to-Day
YL Acoustics 4-way Horn Part I

This article is dedicated to my friend Gingers, who recently suffered the devastating loss of one of his sons. As one who had lost his sister to an accident and watched his mother gravely grieve, I can comprehend the pain. May closure arrive for him in due course.

Thanksgiving
First of all, it is again time for Thanksgiving. Whatever our beliefs, it is essential to give thanks for our wondrous existence. My mother, a devout buddhist who lives simply, frequently remarks on how lucky we are. Incidentally, she is a strict vegetarian, and during this time of year a turkey sympathizer!

Any audiophile who is reading this belongs to the lucky ones, not only because he has the time and spare change but also because he is not heavily weighted down by life. While we do not exist just for hifi (though we may appear so to others, especially significant others), we do exist for all manners of good things and with them come obligations and duty. May we all happily discharge them and still have some time left for our hobby.

This time I returned to find that my mother has hung a little buddhist pendant on my storage rack. On it is a saying:

需要的不多，想要的太多；
需要的才要，想要的不重要；
能要的才要，不能要不該要的絕對不該要。

Needs are basic but desires know no boundary;
Acquire only necessities, everything else being unimportant;
Acquire only what you have a right to, never what you could not or should not have.

Great advice for sick audiophiles, don't you think! Me? Well, I deeply understand but it is not yet time - to apply to audio, that is...

May you have time to sneak in a couple of sessions after turkey and ham. And now for some hifi...

click pic to enlarge. Today's Day-to Day Station and YL Acoustics 4-way Horns

Gearing Up - Reorganization and Consolidation
Some of you may wonder why there has not been new articles in a while. Well, no news is good news. Besides having acquired some interesting stuff, I have been hard at work re-organizing my various stations to make things easier, to be more "play" than "work", easier said than done. I have decided to cut the stations down to three for versatility. Please refer to the side bar for my updated equipment list.

More importatntly, I have spent quite a bit of time tuning up my YL horns, and I have been duly rewarded by some of the best sounds I have gotten, but that is for another article. Horns are finicky, and improvements come only in fits, amid much work, frustration, even cursing! But once you get it is a life-long passion.

My Day-to-Day Station This station is housed on 2 racks and has the most frequent permutations, and is the one I operate the most. It currently has 3 preamps. This station can be fully balanced and is also unique in having a dedicated mono vinyl playback.

Turntables:
-Clearaudio Concept/Koetsu Black
-Linn LP-12 Lingo/Ittok LV-II/Airtight PC-1
-Technics SL-1200 MkII/Denon DL-102

Preamplifiers:
-Manley Neo-Classic 300B
-Shindo Monbrison (built-in MM and MC)
-BAT VK-3i

Phono preamps and Step-Up's:
-AQVOX 2CI MkII used only for MC
-BAT P5 (MM/MC)

Digital front-end:
-Theta Data or Data basic II
-Sonic Frontier SFD-2; Audio Research DAC2
-Sony XA5400ES for SACD

Amplifiers:
-Wavac MD-811
-Elekit 8300
-Almarro 318B, Yamamoto A-08S, AES SE-1

Loudspeakers:
-YL Acoustics 4-way Horn Speakers

Click to enlarge. Before stuffing the room.

Getting Horny
My acquisition of the horns happily coincided with our moving to a bigger apartment in the same building. After a quick refurbishment, the first thing I did in the empty apartment was to set up the horns. Unpacking took a long time. Then, with the help of my strong friends Mark and Edward, we installed the heavy metal horns and drivers into the cabinet.

The speakers are in-room because I configured the area to the rear of both speakers as storage space (while keeping the center for equipment), where I installed heavy Home Depot racks. From the front wall, the speakers were placed roughly 2/5 of the way into the room. Using a simple audio system, I decided on the final spot, where there was the least bass anomaly (fortunately the Altec woofer is very clean). Later, heavy cinder blocks were used to raise the speakers.

The 4-way speaker has a well-built original YL 4-way crossover in a bulky wood block. The mammoth wood YL low-midrange horn (with its own driver) that resembles WE or Klangfilm is not currently in use as I don't have the proper crossover and am not about to go with equalization. My plan is to whip into shape the as-is 4-way horn before tackling the fifth element (conceivably as either 4-way or 5-way). We did briefly hook it up by simply adding it to the midrange horn; suffice to say the sound was BIG and promising.

Here are some pics before the curtains were raised:

L: Arrival of all the drivers and horns; R: the cabinets.