Mind blowing open baffle speaker system - The Yields


I never thought I would move away from horn speaker systems. They are so musical and dynamic not to mention efficient. But a funny thing happened several years ago and I now have a pair of open baffle speakers that have displaced my horns. 

This story starts when I called the guy who built my Klipsch Jubilee bass horn clones in 2012 and he announced he had a pair under construction and he wasn't going to finish them. He had just heard a pair of full range Audio Nirvana ported speakers and was blown away by the cohesive sound, wide and deep soundstage and imaging. Therefore the bass horn cabs, which are very difficult to build, were sidelined in favor of a much simpler bass reflex cabinet for a full ranger from the Common Sense audio people. I was intrigued myself and even called and spoke with David Dicks at Common Sense about Audio Nirvana. Intriguing idea as they are very efficient too like horns but as I hadn't finished dialing in my two way horn system completely, I filed the idea away in the someday - maybe category and go back to my 2 way Jubs.

As a regular on the Klipsch forum, I had made contact with and purchased wooden high frequency horns from Fastlane audio that together with new Faital drivers would eventually give me a really sweet speaker system that really only lacked some from the bottom half octave but were efficient, dynamic and very musical and . Later in 2012 a thread on the Klipsch forum appeared titled Open Baffle Project. Dave at Fastlane Audio unveiled an open baffle speaker system comprised of an Audio Nirvana full range 10 inch and two 15 inch woofers in an LBAT arrangement that corrected the cancelling from low frequency open baffle drivers. Crossed over at 200Hz the response was very even from 25Hz to 18kHz. Now I was really intrigued as I knew how many instruments appear almost entirely in the 200Hz and up range and how cohesive that would sound. But I was close to dialing in the 2 way Jubs so again I filed it away.

But then last month I began to talk with Justin Weber of ampsandsound.com and I ordered one of his built to order push pull tube amps. Then as he coached me on tube choices and I asked his opinion on several speakers, he mentioned that Dave at Fastlane was a close friend and he had a pair of his Yield open baffle speakers that he needed to sell. I bought them. Now I have a speaker that not only has the cohesiveness from the full ranger but the bass from the twin 15s has so much detail and imaging I can pick out the position of the standup bass and can hear and isolate on two or more instruments that may be playing in 100 to 500 hz range in a way I have never heard before.

Now who wants an excellent pair of Jubilee clone bass bins?