YG ACOUSTICS Vantage 3 Live
Floorstanding loudspeakers
Two rather compact 3-way loudspeakers, an elegant controller box, and power cables – it is all you need for superb music playback. From a purely sound performance view, the Vantage 3 Live aren’t the best speakers on the planet. They can’t be, and they don’t even claim to be. The thing is you can’t get a similar sound with all the same customization options for the same price, if you try to build it from individual components. In terms of value for money, these YG active speakers are simply amazing. The attractivity of this YG concept lies in its simplicity and complete integration. The Vantage 3 Live is a brilliant solution for anyone tired of the never-ending search of better amplifiers or better speakers, and who wants to listen to music without his home looking like a nuclear power plant control room. The result is one of the most elegantly and minimalistic designed audio systems ever.
Function and form
The 80kg heavy speaker enclosures and the drivers of the Vantage 3 Live does not differ from the usual YG Acoustics standards: milled all-aluminium textured enclosures, conceptually 2-way studio-grade monitors sitting atop bass modules, aluminium internal bracing, 18cm midrange and 21cm bass drivers, both milled aluminium cones 0.2mm thick, and 2,5cm soft dome tweeter stiffened by a hair-thin aluminium mesh and sitting in a shallow waveguide.
Now, each driver has a dedicated 700 watts amplifier inside, that is the Vantage 3 Live is a sort of tri-amped system with 2.1kW per channel (!), delivering up to 137dB of S/N ratio (!) at vanishingly low 0.0006% distortion levels (!). By design, it is a fully digital system, so the bandwidth is limited to 20Hz to 20 kHz, although the speaker output extends to 40kHz . YG Acoustics had the built-in amplifiers/DACs designed by Bel Canto. The communication between the speakers and the external controller happens via custom Toslink optical cables to avoid EMI and noise pickup. The controller also works as a streamer (Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify, vTuner, Dropbox, NAS, cloud, or an external drive). Should you want to use your own digital sources, the controller is Roon Ready and accepts AES/EBU (XLR), SPDIF (BNC), Toslink, USB, and Ethernet, limited to 24bits, with DSD running as DoP (DSD over PCM) with both 64 and 128 sampling protocols. Two MM/MC phono inputs have adjustable parameters. Two subwoofer ouputs are also available on RCA.
From the factory, the YG Acoustics Vantage 3 Live system is available in silver and black anodised finishes. Should you need a different colour (and YG has some really beautiful ones in their catalogue), you can order it as an upgrade option.
Bass management
The remote control is a small, heavy aluminium piece with a well-balanced center of gravity, so it fits comfortably in your hand and is easy to work with. In addition to volume control and forward/backward skipping, it also features a SOFT button (instantly reduces the volume by about half) and a MUTE button (instantly mutes the volume to 0 dB). It’s nice that YG programmed a gradual fade-in when returning to the original volume level. This protects both the speakers and your ears, and it also provides a touch of luxury. Naturally, the remote control allows you to program the entire system remotely including the behaviour of the connected subwoofers, bass equalization, phono preamp and headphone amp settings, volume control behaviour, internet connection parameters, and much more.
A TILT control, for example, allows you to tilt the otherwise flat frequency response up or down in 0.6dB steps, with a hinge point at 775Hz. This way, one can easily compensate for listening room parameters or for personal preferences. Typically, you may need to tilt the upper part spectrum slightly down (and the lower part spectrum up) to achieve the audiophile “comfort” tune. The maximum of the tilt is +/-3.0 dB. The equalization and computations are in digital domain, so one can expect the same side effect like with any other DSP engine. I tried to equalize Dire Straits and Money for Nothing to the best possible shape, and although I achieved a vary attractive frequency balance, I liked much less the subtle phasing issues that followed. Thus, I ended up preferring the default flat setting in which, to my taste, the Vantage 3 Live might have a slightly more prominent ´air´ region. It can be tackled by “analog” filters, like good old acoustic panels.
Clarity & delicacy
One of the great strengths of the YG Acoustics Vantage 3 Live is that you can play anything through them, and every time it feels as though you’re hearing the recording for the very first time: you’ll discover things that were previously hidden from you, details that were buried beneath noise before or unheard due to lack of control and coherency. For example, the Vantage 3 Live effortlessly separated the individual recording tracks in Wherever I May Roam (Metallica) in a way that’s perhaps only possible with top-of-the-line electrostatic headphones. But that’s still a well-recorded track.
Badlands of AC/DC is not a well-recorded track, yet it was not less perfect through the YG. The Vantage 3 Live system didn’t strip AC/DC of any of their straightforwardness; the guitars had the energy and punch you wanted from them. The bass, through the YG, was full, melodic, controlled, and superbly defined—I had no complaints there. The clarity married to smoothness is more evident in the vocal range. Through the Vantage 3 Live, voices are beautifully rich, detailed, colorful, and crisp. Sometimes they give you goosebumps, as in the case of Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game, but other times there’s too much smoothness where you don’t want it, as in the case of hip-hop, where Eminem or Jay-Z deliver fantastically legible vocal parts (on how many systems can you can follow the lyrics?), but they lacked that anger, that spitting rap aggression. But you probably wouldn’t invest in a pair of speakers of this caliber just for hip-hop, would you? On the contrary, the real music like classical genresoften catch many ultra-high-end systems unprepared (like Boressen or Kroma, to be more specific) sound simply fantastic through the Vantage 3 Live all-digital setup.
Tonal accuracy
Vilde Frang’s violin (Britten/Korngold, Violin Concertos) sounds silky smooth, with the bow gliding across the strings with effortless flow. The Vantage 3 Live will challenge anyone who thinks Class D sounds “digital.” The emphasis here is on the melody, not on technical aspects. On the other hand, I’m used to hearing these strings slightly differently—with a clear friction of the bow against the strings; I hear the taut strings ringing and transferring their energy into the wooden body. With the Vantage 3 Live, I only hear that if I really actively seek it out in the sound. Otherwise, with YG, I perceive more of the overall picture, as if the breeze that ripples the musical surface has vanished. Also the strings of the accompanying orchestra emerge and submerge into a completely calm and deep background, as if the pond were full of mercury. The Vantage 3 Live doesn’t absorb anything from the recording; it doesn’t try to hide anything. You hear the studio’s acoustics, you hear the subtle sounds, but you hear them in a way that’s calm, smooth, inky, and effortless. That smoothness and quietness are truly exceptional.
Spatial resolution
Rabaud’s opera suite Marouf (from Exotic Dances from Operas, Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Eiji Oue) offers a foray into oriental ornamentation of the large-scale orchestra, captured here in a superb recording Reference Recordings’ fashion. At first listen, there is nothing in how the Vantage 3 Live sound that immediately grabs the ear and make you scream with delight, but there is also nothing that forces you frown. Through the YG, the recording is a beautiful example of how remarkable the use of silence can be, from which flutes, oboes, strings, and timpani rise and gradually emerge with exquisite contrast. Everything is driven as if by thought rather than the musicians having to expend any energy. As if you wanted to merely touch the strings and mouthpieces, as if you wanted to just caress and vibrate the drumheads so as not to wake the sleeping children in the concert hall. A testament to the excellent work of the composer, the orchestra, and the Vantage 3 Live, because all that delicacy and microdynamics flow into the room in a completely pure and undistorted form. And when the score roars, it roars in stunning contrast—these gradations are simply what YG Acoustics does best.
Both the YG’s own engineers and those from Bel Canto Design have done a fantastic job. To achieve a similar level of fidelity at home, you usually have to do a lot of searching and experimenting. This means finding the right preamp, power amp, power supply, combination of cables, filtering, and much more. It’s a lot of work and time, and if you make a mistake and the change doesn’t produce the desired effect, you end up selling and buying again. Today’s high-end systems have reached the point where you need at least 50 square meters—not because of acoustics, but just to have enough space to cram all those components in. With the YG Vantage 3 Live, you don’t have to worry about any of that and still have the first-rate listening experience. I love that kind of simplicity.
Recommended resellers
Dreamaudio, Bratislava, +421 907 838 806
Manufacturer's website: http://www.yg-acoustics.com
Associated components
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YG Acoustics Vantage 3 Live system (streaming controller, loudspeakers, digital cables)
and Stage III Concepts Triton and Aegir power cables
Gallery
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