Floorstanding loudspeakers — YG Acoustics XV 3

The XV 3 from YG Acoustics, a company founded in 2002, is a four-tower floorstanding loudspeaker in its Reference series. A stereo pair occupies four aluminium towers in total, and the whole system is hand-built by specialist staff in the brand's workshops in Colorado and Cambridge. YG lists the XV Studio 3 and the XV 3 Signature as related models in the same XV family, while the wider floorstanding catalogue also covers the Carmel 3, Vesper 3, Vantage 3, Hailey 3, Sonja 3.2 and Sonja 3.3 and the Invincible 21.1 and 21.2.

Key specs that matter

Ten drivers serve each channel. An entirely new 26 mm Lattice hybrid tweeter sits at the top, its airframe machined by YG from a specially selected aerospace alloy. The remaining nine are BilletCore drivers with aluminium cones. Two 15 cm midrange units and three 18.5 cm midbass units use neodymium motors, and four 26 cm woofers driven by ultra-high field strength motors handle the bass. Usable output extends from below 20 Hz to 40 kHz. Sensitivity is 88 dB, and the impedance averages 4 ohm with a minimum of 3 ohm. Each speaker measures 179 x 43 x 72 cm and weighs 225 kg.

Engineering and use context

The enclosures are machined in-house from aerospace-grade aluminium and use constrained layer damping to control panel resonance. According to YG, the Reference 3 generation draws on novel theoretical modelling, simulation across several physical domains and long listening sessions. Its crossover belongs to the third Ultracoherent generation and is described by the maker as its most extreme implementation of that approach, with transitions at 90 Hz, 360 Hz and 1.85 kHz. It is built with custom capacitors, foil resistors and resonance-damped inductors, and the company states relative phase alignment within 5 degrees wherever the output of adjacent drivers stays within 20 dB of each other. Finishes offered as standard are black and silver, and the brand notes that it constantly updates its products, so all specifications and finishes are indicative.

Pairing

Because of the impedance dip, the XV 3 asks for an amplifier specified to drive low-impedance loads, and the passive crossover means a single stereo amplifier or a mono pair can power the complete four-tower system for a stereo pair.

Alternatives

Within the same range, the XX is a single-tower four-way Reference model with eight drivers per channel, 148 x 35 x 64 cm and 170 kg.