If the name Yorkville doesn't mean a lot to you, don't worry, you're in good company — I'd never heard of them before the review items showed up. The company, it turns out, is Canadian, and they claim to have over 30 years' experience in designing speaker cabinets, though they don't actually say how long they've been working on drivers and crossovers! The YSM1 reviewed here is a relatively low‑cost 2‑way speaker based around a 6.5‑inch roll‑surround woofer and a one inch soft‑dome, Ferrofluid‑cooled tweeter mounted in a front‑ported cabinet.
Cost savings have been made on the cabinet cosmetics, though the use of internal bracing means that the enclosure functions quite adequately. The box is made from black ash finish, three‑quarter inch particle board, and all the corners are square. A spacer behind the tweeter places it noticeably proud of the front panel, which you'd expect to cause some edge‑diffraction effects. However, the removable grille also includes a baffle with driver cutouts, so when this is in place, the drivers are nominally flush with the front of the baffle.
The passive crossover operates at 2.5kHz and has a 12dB/octave low‑pass filter combined with a 6dB/octave high‑pass filter, giving a nominal input impedance of 6Ω. The overall frequency response is quoted at 40Hz to 20kHz (within +/‑3dB) and the power requirement is around 70 Watts per channel. Connection is via gold‑plated rear panel terminals, which can accept banana plugs, spade terminals or bare wires.
Considering their low cost, these speakers perform pretty well, although they do suffer from a slightly aggressive high end that makes drums and percussion seem a little splashy. Other than this little vice, they present a clear, detailed sound with good stereo imaging and a creditably solid bass end. Voices sound clear and natural and the sweet spot is wide enough to let you wander well off‑axis without the sound of the mix changing too much. If you like your monitors to be slightly on the bright side of neutral and you seek quality on a tight budget, these speakers are well worth looking at. Paul White