The Yamaha NS-10 is a loudspeaker that became a standard nearfield studio monitor in the music industry among rock and pop recording engineers. Launched in 1978, the NS-10 started life as a bookshelf speaker destined for the domestic environment. It was poorly received but eventually became a valuable tool with which to mix rock recordings. The speaker has a characteristic white-coloured mid–bass drive unit.
Technically, it is known as a speaker that easily reveals poor quality in recordings. Recording engineers sought to dull its treble response by hanging tissue paper in front of it, resulting in what became known as the "tissue paper effect" – a type of comb filtering. The NS-10 has been used to monitor a large number of successful recordings by numerous artists, leading Gizmodo to refer to it as "the most important loudspeaker you never heard of". [1]
Originally conceived as a domestic hi-fi speaker, the NS-10 was designed by Akira Nakamura and launched in 1978. [2] [3] While the speaker was poorly received, recording engineers came to rely on the NS-10 as a benchmark. The model was discontinued in 2001. [2]
The NS-10 was recognised for its ability to reveal shortcomings in recordings. [4] It probably first reached American shores through a recording engineer's visit to Japan. The engineer, likely to have been Greg Ladanyi, monitored a recording session through the speaker in a Japanese studio and brought a pair back on his return to the US. Ladanyi then began using the speakers in a Los Angeles studio. Other engineers heard the NS-10 for the first time and were impressed by its sound. Its use spread to New York where the NS-10 was adopted at The Power Station and other studios. [5]
Early use of the NS-10 among engineers include Bob Clearmountain, Rhett Davies, and Bill Scheniman in the US, and Nigel Jopson in the UK. [5] Clearmountain, then a rising star in record production, is often credited for the popularity of the NS-10; [6] Phil Ward, writing in Sound on Sound, suggested that Clearmountain was probably not the earliest, but was certainly the most influential early adopter. [5] It became a legend that Clearmountain had chosen it because it was the worst speaker he could find. [5] He was one of a new breed of creative freelance recording engineers and producers who would travel from studio to studio equipped with their own gear that included microphones, and a pair of Yamaha NS-10, as a reference. [5]
Recording studios around the world, particularly those specialising in rock and pop music, adopted the speaker as the standard. [5] [7] [4] In excess of 200,000 pairs were sold throughout the world. [8] Gizmodo referred to it as "the most important loudspeaker you never heard of". [6]
Yamaha stopped manufacturing the speaker in 2001, citing problems sourcing the wood pulp for the drivers. [5] [9] [10] Even years after it was discontinued, the speaker continued to be found in studios everywhere. [5] Mix reported in 2008 that variants of the NS-10 were still commercially available in the Japanese consumer market. [7]
The NS-10 is an 8-ohm two-way loudspeaker with a 10.4-litre sealed cabinet measuring 382 × 215 × 199 millimetres (15.0 × 8.5 × 7.8 in) and weighing 6 kilograms (13.2 lb). [5] [4] Its 2.5 cm (0.98 in) particle-board cabinet has a wood veneer skin with seven black finishing layers. The domestic version of the speaker was vertically oriented, and came factory fitted with a grille. [6] [5]
Its two drivers are a 180 mm paper woofer and a 35 mm soft-domed tweeter. [5] [4] The woofer's diaphragm, weighing 3.7 g, is manufactured from a flat sheet of pressed pulp paper. Unconventionally, it is formed into conical shape not through moulding or pressure, but by curling and then gluing the two ends together. [5] Against the black finish of the cabinet, the white bass/mid driver cone is a distinctive and iconic feature of the product. [6] [5]
The network is second-order passive, crossing over at 2 kHz. The frequency range is quoted from 60 Hz to 20 kHz, and rated power handling is 25–50 W. [5] [4] The early version of the speaker has press-down type input terminals; later models had screw terminals.
In simplistic terms, the NS-10 possesses sonic characteristics that allow record producers to assume that if a recording sounds good on these monitors, then it should sound good on most playback systems. [6] [5] Whilst it can reveal any shortcomings in the recording mix as well as the monitoring chain, [5] it may lead to listener fatigue with prolonged use in the domestic setting. [11]
The NS-10 does not have a perfectly flat frequency response. The sound of the NS-10 is heavily boosted in the upper midrange, and like other sealed-box speakers of similar size its bass extension is limited. [5] It has a +5 dB boost in the midrange at around 2 kHz, and the bottom end starts rolling off at 200 Hz. The midrange response is so open that it exposes the frequencies that are the most problematic and worst-sounding to the human ear. [11]
On a practical level for the music professional, the speaker is analytic and clinical-sounding. [6] [11] Gizmodo likened the NS-10 to music editors who reveal the weaknesses of recordings, so that engineers would be forced to either make necessary compensation in the mix or otherwise rework them. [6] [11]
A 2001 report by Newell et al. at Southampton University undertaken for Studio Sound in 2001 found that the NS-10 had excellent time-domain response at low frequencies – its ability to start and stop in response to signal input was found to be superior to that of most other nearfield monitors. Part of this was related to its closed-box design. The researchers held that the extremely fast decay time of the speaker in the low frequencies ensures that the bass instruments (guitar and drums) are correctly balanced in the mix. [5] [4]
There were many other versions of the NS-10, the best known of which were the "NS-10M Studio" and the "NS-10M Pro", both introduced in 1987. Technically identical to the "Studio", the "Pro" comes fitted with a speaker grille and is meant to be used in a vertical orientation. [8]
The "professional" version launched some nine years after its first introduction on the back of the popularity of the NS-10 among engineers. The revised version, with everything including the logo and connection panel orientated horizontally, was badged "NS-10M Studio". Improvements included a new tweeter and crossover to address the problem in the treble, better connection terminals, and a sturdier cabinet that no longer accommodates grilles. [5] The Studio reincarnation also has improved power handling – 60–120 W. [4] In excess of 200,000 pairs of "Studio" alone were sold throughout the world. [8]
Also in the product line-up were NS-10T, NS-10M X, NS-10MC, NS-10MT. [5] The NS-10M X is a "Studio" with magnetic shielding and a different tweeter. [8] In the 1990s Yamaha introduced the NS-10MT, a bass-reflex version of the 10M X with a different tweeter and grille. Designed for home cinema, it has bass response down to 43 Hz, nominal impedance of 6 ohm and maximum power handling rated at 180 W. [8] A miniature version named Natural Sound Surround Speaker NS10MM was launched in 1997 or 1998. [12]
The sound quality of the NS-10 has polarised opinions, characterised as "love them or hate them". [6] [5] Many professionals find it indispensable, even though they may not particularly enjoy listening to it; others refuse to give it space in their studio but will happily admit that it is an effective professional tool. [5] The reliance on the NS-10 by top independent producers became a viral phenomenon; thousands of studios equipped themselves with NS-10s to attract big named producers, making the speakers an industry standard. [6] [5] [10] [13]
Clearmountain was said to have been one of the first recording engineers to hang tissue paper over the tweeters of the NS-10 to tame the over-bright treble. The phenomenon became the subject of hot debate. Recording engineer Bob Hodas investigated the alleged sonic effects of tissue paper. [7] [13] He found inconsistent results with different paper, but said that tissue paper generally demonstrated an undesirable effect known as comb filtering, caused by the high frequencies being reflected back into the tweeter instead of being absorbed. Hodas derided the tissue practice as "aberrant behaviour", saying that engineers usually fear comb filtering and its associated cancellation effects. He also suggested that more controllable and less random electronic filtering would be preferable. [13] Newell et al. noted that had the speakers' grilles been used in studios, where they are routinely removed, they would have had the same effect on the treble output as the improvised tissue paper filter. [4]
The speaker came to be relied on by independent engineers, who worked in different studios and needed equipment they were familiar with as a reference point. [14] Throughout the 1980s, engineers and producers worked widely with the speaker to monitor "[almost] any album you love from the 80s or 90s" – from Born in the U.S.A. (Bruce Springsteen), Avalon (Roxy Music) Let's Dance (David Bowie), to Big Bam Boom (Hall and Oates). [6]
The NS-10, and the Auratone before it, are two of the most influential nearfield monitors used in the professional mixing of sound recordings. [15] In 2008, the NS-10 was inducted into the Mix magazine TECnology Hall of Fame. [16] Also reflecting its influence, the speaker won a Technical Grammy for Yamaha in 2007. [6] [11] In 2008, the speaker was found "in almost every studio".
As the NS-10 has been out of production for many years, in late 2018 Avantone with Chris Lord-Alge (world famous mix engineer and proponent of the NS-10) released the CLA-10. Although they were careful not to mention it in any of the company's materials, many have speculated that the CLA-10 is an NS-10 clone, to fill the market gap left by Yamaha when they stopped production of the original NS-10. [17]
In January 2019, Minneapolis Speaker Company launched a new brand of speakers called Bold North Audio. Their first product, the MS-10W, is stated to be the ideal replacement woofer for the NS-10M. The website includes copious amounts of engineering data showing driver and in-system comparisons. [18]
A loudspeaker is a combination of one or more speaker drivers, an enclosure, and electrical connections. The speaker driver is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound.
Audio crossovers are a type of electronic filter circuitry that splits an audio signal into two or more frequency ranges, so that the signals can be sent to loudspeaker drivers that are designed to operate within different frequency ranges. The crossover filters can be either active or passive. They are often described as two-way or three-way, which indicate, respectively, that the crossover splits a given signal into two frequency ranges or three frequency ranges. Crossovers are used in loudspeaker cabinets, power amplifiers in consumer electronics and pro audio and musical instrument amplifier products. For the latter two markets, crossovers are used in bass amplifiers, keyboard amplifiers, bass and keyboard speaker enclosures and sound reinforcement system equipment.
A mid-range speaker is a loudspeaker driver that reproduces sound in the frequency range from 250 to 2000 Hz.
A woofer or bass speaker is a technical term for a loudspeaker driver designed to produce low frequency sounds, typically from 20 Hz up to a few hundred Hz. The name is from the onomatopoeic English word for a dog's deep bark, "woof". The most common design for a woofer is the electrodynamic driver, which typically uses a stiff paper cone, driven by a voice coil surrounded by a magnetic field.
Tissue paper, or simply tissue, is a lightweight paper or light crêpe paper. Tissue can be made from recycled paper pulp on a paper machine.
A loudspeaker enclosure or loudspeaker cabinet is an enclosure in which speaker drivers and associated electronic hardware, such as crossover circuits and, in some cases, power amplifiers, are mounted. Enclosures may range in design from simple, homemade DIY rectangular particleboard boxes to very complex, expensive computer-designed hi-fi cabinets that incorporate composite materials, internal baffles, horns, bass reflex ports and acoustic insulation. Loudspeaker enclosures range in size from small "bookshelf" speaker cabinets with 4-inch (10 cm) woofers and small tweeters designed for listening to music with a hi-fi system in a private home to huge, heavy subwoofer enclosures with multiple 18-inch (46 cm) or even 21-inch (53 cm) speakers in huge enclosures which are designed for use in stadium concert sound reinforcement systems for rock music concerts.
Studio monitors are loudspeakers in speaker enclosures specifically designed for professional audio production applications, such as recording studios, filmmaking, television studios, radio studios and project or home studios, where accurate audio reproduction is crucial. Among audio engineers, the term monitor implies that the speaker is designed to produce relatively flat (linear) phase and frequency responses. In other words, it exhibits minimal emphasis or de-emphasis of particular frequencies, the loudspeaker gives an accurate reproduction of the tonal qualities of the source audio, and there will be no relative phase shift of particular frequencies—meaning no distortion in sound-stage perspective for stereo recordings. Beyond stereo sound-stage requirements, a linear phase response helps impulse response remain true to source without encountering "smearing". An unqualified reference to a monitor often refers to a near-field design. This is a speaker small enough to sit on a stand or desk in proximity to the listener, so that most of the sound that the listener hears is coming directly from the speaker, rather than reflecting off walls and ceilings. Monitor speakers may include more than one type of driver or, for monitoring low-frequency sounds, such as bass drum, additional subwoofer cabinets may be used.
Bi-amping and tri-amping is the practice of using two or three audio amplifiers respectively to amplify different audio frequency ranges, with the amplified signals being routed to different speaker drivers, such as woofers, subwoofers and tweeters. With bi-amping and tri-amping, an audio crossover is used to divide a sound signal into different frequency ranges, each of which is then separately amplified and routed to separate speaker drivers. In powered speakers using bi-amping, multiple speaker drivers are in the same speaker enclosure. In some bi-amp set-ups, the drivers are in separate speaker enclosures, such as with home stereos that contain two speakers and a separate subwoofer.
A guitar speaker is a loudspeaker – specifically the driver (transducer) part – designed for use in a combination guitar amplifier of an electric guitar, or for use in a guitar speaker cabinet. Typically these drivers produce only the frequency range relevant to electric guitars, which is similar to a regular woofer type driver, which is approximately 75 Hz — 5 kHz, or for electric bass speakers, down to 41 Hz for regular four-string basses or down to about 30 Hz for five-string instruments.
The Air Motion Transformer (AMT) is a type of electroacoustic transducer. Invented by Oskar Heil (1908–1994), it operates on a different transduction principle from other loudspeaker designs, such as moving coil, planar magnetic or electrostatically-driven loudspeakers, and should not be confused with planar or true ribbon loudspeakers. In contrast to a planar ribbon loudspeaker, the diaphragm of the AMT is of pleated shape similar to a bellows. The AMT moves air laterally in a perpendicular motion using a metal-etched folded sheet made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film. The circuit path embossed on the PET membrane, acts as the voice coil unit. The diaphragm is then housed between 4 stacks of steel pole-plate pieces positioned at 45° within a high-intensity, quadratic, opposing magnetic field. The air motion transformer with its sheet film equally exposed at 180° behaves as a dipole speaker, exciting front and rear sonic waves simultaneously.
First produced in 1982, the Yamaha NS-2000 is an improved version of the older NS-1000 speaker that was first made in the early to mid-1970s. Like the NS-1000, it is a 3-way acoustic suspension speaker system with a beryllium-dome midrange and tweeter. However, the woofer of the NS-2000 was entirely new, made of pure carbon fiber instead of paper. The cabinet is also improved and is larger and heavier than that of the NS-1000.
A stage monitor system is a set of performer-facing loudspeakers called monitor speakers, stage monitors, floor monitors, wedges, or foldbacks on stage during live music performances in which a sound reinforcement system is used to amplify a performance for the audience. The monitor system allows musicians to hear themselves and fellow band members clearly.
A coaxial loudspeaker is a loudspeaker system in which the individual driver units radiate sound from the same point or axis. Two general types exist: one is a compact design using two or three speaker drivers, usually in car audio, and the other is a two-way high-power design for professional audio, also known as single-source or dual-concentric loudspeakers. The design is favored for its compactness and behavior as an audio point source.
Edward M. Long was an audio engineer known for introducing the first near-field studio monitors and the first Time-Aligned loudspeaker crossover.
Loudspeaker time-alignment, usually simply referred to as "time-alignment" or "Time-Align", is a term applied in loudspeaker systems which use multiple drivers to cover a wide audio range. It involves delaying the sound emanating from one or more drivers to correct the transient response, improve accuracy and, in non-coaxial drivers, improve the directivity or lobe tilting at the crossover frequencies. It employs adjusting the front-to back spacing of the individual drivers so that the sound output is truly simultaneous.
The Wharfedale MACH series of loudspeakers consists of the MACH 3, 5, 7, and 9. This is an informational page devoted to owners and users of these loudspeakers and those interested in history and construction of electronic sound reproduction.
Veritone Minimum Phase Speakers, or VMPS, was a loudspeaker manufacturer founded in 1977 by speaker designer Brian Cheney. Many VMPS speakers received favorable reviews from audio critics, such as the RM40, which was awarded Best of CES in the High-End Audio category in 2002. VMPS was in operation for over 35 years, from January 1977 to December 2012, when it closed soon after the death of company owner Brian Cheney on December 7, 2012.
A keyboard amplifier is a powered electronic amplifier and loudspeaker in a speaker cabinet used for the amplification of electronic keyboard instruments. Keyboard amplifiers are distinct from other types of amplification systems such as guitar amplifiers due to the particular challenges associated with making keyboards sound louder on stage; namely, to provide solid low-frequency sound reproduction for the deep basslines that keyboards can play and crisp high-frequency sound for the high-register notes. Another difference between keyboard amplifiers and guitar/bass amplifiers is that keyboard amps are usually designed with a relatively flat frequency response and low distortion. In contrast, many guitar and bass amp designers purposely make their amplifiers modify the frequency response, typically to "roll-off" very high frequencies, and most rock and blues guitar amps, and since the 1980s and 1990s, even many bass amps are designed to add distortion or overdrive to the instrument tone.
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The LS3/5A is a small studio monitor loudspeaker originated by the BBC for use by outside broadcast vans to ensure quality of their broadcasts. The speaker concept set out transparent and natural sound as the goal, and the achievement of the result is widely acknowledged.