Via Entracte Audio, a Toronto-area dealer, numerous Angela Yeung-Gilbert Yeung products were showing at Toronto Audiofest 2022, including the C318 preamplifier seen in the accompanying photos above. It comes with an external power supply and sells for $15,800. But Yeung and Entracte Audio’s George Taylor weren’t that interested in showing me the products as much as they were in demonstrating the AG2022, a contraption of an integrated amplifier coated in multi-colored goop. It’s an experimental design piece that Yeung uses to test concepts for “real” products, so it’s not for sale.
While some might look at the AG2022 as an art piece gone wrong, I immediately identified what it really is—basically a grab bag of boards and parts that were once on Yeung’s design desk that would look rather messy and boring if Yeung hadn’t coated them with the colorful mess, which is probably silicone, since he has always had a penchant for using copious amounts in products.
The latest experiment Yeung’s been conducting has to do with figuring how much capacitance could be added to the power supply before diminishing returns set in. He not believes it’s a lot more than most people realize.
To illustrate where Yeung’s at right now, Taylor began by playing music through a pair of Fyne Audio standmounted speakers. Then, with music playing, he added more and more capacitance by simply plugging in wires. Taylor began at 1.2 farads of capacitance and, through multiple steps, ended up at 37.75 farads, which he said is about 75 times the amount of capacitance an average power amplifier has. (Note that with amplifier specs, microfarads are usually stated; 37.75 farads is the same as 37,750,000 microfarads.)
Doing the demo this way was interesting, because there was no starting and stopping of the music like in so many demos. As the music played, another cable was plugged in and you could hear a change or not. To my ears, the increases in capacitance improved the music’s smoothness. Jason Thorpe was right beside me for the whole thing and thought the decays of the notes lingered longer as the capacitance increased. What was beyond dispute was that there was a change in sound each time, with Taylor at the end saying that he and Yeung are going to push the amount of capacitance even higher, because although they believe they’re close to pushing to the point where there’s no benefit in going further, they want to experiment with more just to see what happens.
It’s good to see Yeung, who’s always been a wild and eccentric designer, back in business doing outrageously innovative things, just like with Blue Circle Audio.