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Old 2007-11-08, 11:12 AM
VonOben VonOben is offline
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Re: Your Favorite Equipment & Software

Quote:
Originally Posted by Five
if you feel like it, tell me all about it. almost every pro studio photo I see at the mixer, there's those NS-10s sitting there. Seems strange that you're saying you can only hear 100Hz and nothing above or below
Well ok, I'll keep it short. No need to get into very long arguments about the NS-10.

First of all, it has a very, very non-linear response. For some measurements see page 2, on the right, here: http://www.lts.a.se/artiklar/YamahaNS10.pdf

Worse, the response vary extremly with the angle. What sounds right sitting one way sounds very different if you move your head a couple of inches. (Lack of integration between the tweeter and woofer makes this happen, as well as a very bad cross-over.)

Even worser, the non-linear response is very different from almost any other speaker. Some argue that these reflects what most people use at home, but it's the other way around, really. They sound like nothing else.

There are other cons as well, but these will do.

The most common way to tweak these bastards are by letting a napkin hang in front of the tweeter, that should speak for itself.

Now, one thing that is (or,really, were) good about these boxes are that most studios have (had) them, that way you worked with familiar equipment.

So, how did these become popular? Party it's the swedish public service radio's fault! They, SR, had (have?) a very good reputation in the world for creating top notch quality program material. SR were about to replace all of their studio monitors (that's alot) in the late 70s, and arranged a sort of competition for loudspeaker manufacturers. The NS-10 won this, and were placed in all of SRs studios. Now, you might wonder, why did SR choose them if they aren't any good?

Well, Yamaha knew about SRs reputation, and gave SR all the speakers _for free_! Something they haven't regret.

PS. On page 3 in that linked PDF, on the left, is the schematics on how to build a NS-10 "simulator" if you want your ordinary, reasonable flat, speakers to sound like the NS-10. It can, unfortunately, do miracles with alot of 80s material since it corrects for the mistakes* that were made in the mix due to the use of the NS-10. Eurytmics is a good example.

Anyhow, the bottom line here... if you like them, use them. Be happy! But keep in mind that there are nothing "transparent" about them.

* = the simulator can ofcourse not simulate the bad integration between the elements.
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