I have two creative passions in life - code and producing music. First, I'm surprised to see this on hackernews.
The love/hate of the speaker are really irrelevant factors for the product produced by an audio engineer. There are a couple things that really matter in terms of their 'efficiency': 1) the flat frequency response; and 2) Knowing the qualities of the monitor. If you have a decently treated room and you are somewhat accustomed to working with the NS10s, any engineer worth their salt could produce decent sounds on them.
The article is old so it foregoes the fact that Yamaha have actually tried to profit from the legacy of the NS10 - they produce new more expensive variants with similar design in the crowded studio monitor market. They fit into the space with the typical 5, 6 and 8 inch woofer-standard market with the HS7s for example. https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-hs7-hs8s
The end result is more important than the gear. These will do alright even if they aren't as "pleasing" as something like the Adam series'.
Just got the HS7's. Really solid speaker for the price. Not quite in the realm of Adams or Genelec but perfect for mixing tracks that will sound good anywhere.
Yes knowing the speakers and the room is a very important aspect. Everyone I have worked with that uses NS10s is because they say they are very forward in the lower mids, not that they are good speakers, but I believe that they just get used to them.
The NS1000, which I used, on the other hand - amazing.
Personally, I can find better monitors that are even more revealing.
It's funny: when I read monitors I thought about display monitors.
And the same applies there: you can buy monitors that can be calibrated but surrounding light makes each monitor and each setup different.
So graphic designers do the same: they know the display monitor in the room. And each end user will see the designed colors a little different, but it doesn't matter.
As a working sound engineer in the 80s, I depended on the NS 10 to give me a sense of the room, as a standard reference or metric. I would play something like Steely Dan's Babylon sisters, which I knew intimately, and how it sounded on the NS10 would tell me something about the accoustics of the studio I was in.
It probably could have been any other speaker of the time, what was critical was the fact that it was in every single studio without fail. It was a constant variable in an equation where every other variable was in flux.
For folks who like this kind of stuff but aren't audiophiles, may I suggest the history of the LS3/5a loudspeaker as a fun read. The LS3/5a was chosen as the reference small monitor by the BBC then the design was licensed out to various OEMs over the course of its time as the standard. Modern high-end clones are still available.
I'm a big fan of ATC loudspeakers (a UK firm, btw), which are quite popular in studios and performance halls¹. Example: The Walt Disney Concert Hall — that wavy, stainless Frank Gehry building here in LA — is outfitted with custom ATC cabinets as the house PA (last I know of, at least).
ATC's powered monitors are freakishly overbuilt and can play to stupendous SPLs. I've got dreams of someday having my own set of the active SCM20, which are the perfect size for small living spaces, but they make powered units as big as 150 litres per cabinet². Whoa.
My last set of high-end speakers is their SCM11, about the same size. Key house feature: they design(make?) their own bass/mid drivers which are rugged af, and feature monster magnets for their size.
Back to TFA; I've never heard the NS-10, but I have always heard they kind of suck. And the reasoning never held water IMHO; it stands to reason that you'd end up EQing the mix to make it sound good on the NS-10, but that would in turn make the mix all out of whack on proper equipment.
It's like trying to design the next Corvette with the prototypes running on 175/70R13 tires; how you could tune the system under test (here: the music being mastered/mixed) with such a floppy foundation is beyond me.
NS10s aren't quite as bad as their reputation, but they are rather "forward-sounding", a noticeable mid/high peak in response. In turn, this is very handy for picking out distortion and noise in recordings, they tend to beat you over the head if you have too much sibilance going on.
I wouldn't want to use them as my only speakers for listening to music, but I can definitely see how they come in handy as a reference tool. Same reason as why many studios have Avantone ("Horrortone") MixCubes and various other less-than-HiFi loudspeakers in addition to their nice monitors, and why they check their mixes on car stereos, bluetooth speakers and clock radios. They want it to sound good on the gear normal people use, not just high-end studio monitors.
I've caught up a bit on the thread and admit that excellence in the time domain is highly correlated to what audio-wonks call 'inner detail'. And if it sounds lively at low volumes, that helps even more.
Case in point: folks love Low there design speakers (full range single driver cone) for excellence in both those aspects, plus they are super efficient which allows pairing with exotic low-power triode valve amps — also known for fantastic detail. However, Lowthers are usually 1/4 wave transmission line enclosures, IIRC, and IME studio requirements are best suited to acoustic suspension designs.
Long story short, it sounds like the NS-10 is better than I have always been told.
Actually, the base model Corvette does come with some very mediocre tires. I’ve heard that’s done because owners will end up replacing them with the cheapest option at their local tire dealer, and this way there’s not much of a performance downgrade.
Huh? Pilot Super Sports (standard on MY2014 Vettes) are some of the best street tires that you can buy. They’re basically the standard for high-performance street cars. The Ferrari 458 comes with them. They’re stock on the BMW M3, M5, and M6. You can get optional Sport Cup 2s on some Corvette models, but they wear out a lot faster.
“””
Standard Brembo® brakes provide ample stopping power at a variety of speeds. Standard 19" front and 20" wheels come wrapped in Michelin® Pilot® Super Sport ZP summer-only tires† for incredible grip and precision control.
“””
ATCs are great: they make you work hard (indeed, many classic records don't sound that crash hot on them). If it sounds good on them, though, it'll often translate really well.
When I used to develop console games (old ones) I would always demo the game to the team on a bad TV in a well lit room. Our artists would want great monitors and dim light. The points was.. this is how our audience will experience our product.
A lot of games still seem to expect high-quality TVs in darkened rooms. In a normally lit room, you basically lose all detail in the dark parts of the image.
Games used to let you tweak everything (Half-Life was particularly good about it), but today we're lucky to get a brightness/gamma slider.
> Love or hate the Yamaha NS10, this unassuming little speaker has found a place in the studios of many of the world's top producers. We trace its history, and investigate why a monitor whose sound has been described as "horrible" became an industry standard.
I see people use this all the time as their main speaker? I usually ask why and if they say because it is a standard I stop talking music production. If they say they use them because they use it to hear the sound distorted then I am 100% in the conversation. These are used to hear what the "real world" crappy speaker system would sound like. Problem is EVERY speaker made the last 20 years is better than these speakers. The main response to why they use a NS-10 is "If it sounds good on NS10s then it'll sound good on anything."
I HATE HATE HATE the NS10 speaker. It was used because it was such a BAD speaker. In front of me I have Genelec speakers. They sound so good and clear. NS 10 sound like a brown paper bag with foam is covering the speaker and all low end and high end sounds were scooped out and I have my hands covering my ears!
You clearly haven't read the article. The NS10 is an exceptionally good speaker in certain respects that are not immediately obvious and that convey vital information about a mix. It has superlative time-domain performance due to the sealed box design and the extremely stiff and well-damped woofer. This time-domain accuracy reveals immense amounts of detail that are lost on a conventional reflex-ported nearfield monitor. Crucial decisions about phase and balance in the bass and midrange frequencies are far easier on an NS10 than almost any other monitor. They're not pleasant to listen to, but they produce good mixes, which is entirely the point of studio monitors.
A speaker with similar performance and a similar role is the Auratone 5C, or the more modern Avantone MixCube. In hi-fi terms they are absolutely atrocious, but few other speakers are so revealing of mixing errors.
It is only relatively recently that full-range nearfield monitors have managed to approach the time-domain performance of the NS10 - the Neumann KH310, the Unity Audio Boulder and the Barefoot Sound Micromain achieve that feat, but at vastly greater cost than the faithful old NS10.
If you do not understand why the NS10 is such an iconic and useful piece of equipment, you fundamentally do not understand mixing.
> You clearly haven't read the article. The NS10 is an exceptionally good speaker in certain respects that are not immediately obvious and that convey vital information about a mix.
How so? They were "GOOD?" Where did I miss that?
At the conclusion:
"And the practical? Well, it's certainly true that the NS10s have a mid-heavy balance and little bass extension. This is especially so if they are not mounted close to a suitable boundary — such as a big desk or a rear wall — to provide low mid-range reinforcement. They're also just as revealing of any shortcomings in the monitoring chain as they are of the mix, and they don't take very kindly to being driven loud. While Newells and Holland showed they have very low levels of distortion, they do suffer from thermal compression, which will not only cause wide-band dynamic attenuation in response to high levels of drive, but will upset the characteristics of the crossover filters as the voice-coil resistance of the drivers increases. As temperature rises, the bass/mid low-pass filter frequency will increase significantly (and the tweeter high-pass filter frequency will reduce), and begin to give prominence to the resonances at the top end of the bass/mid driver's response. When NS10s are driven too hard by a poor amplifier, fed by a sub-standard monitor output, and mounted without any boundary reinforcement, you might well find that they sound horrible to the point of being unusable."
ALSO???? If you do not understand why the NS10 is such an iconic and useful piece of equipment, you fundamentally do not understand mixing.
Okay your super off putting. I owned my own studio and small record label with successful bands. I don't know how in the world anything you just said is fundamental to mixing? NS10 are a bad sounding mixer that is a displeasure to listen to. Not one modern near field attempts to be a NS10. Some people think that it is a bonus but NO ONE is saying these were a technical work of greatness. This articles point was that it is odd that they were successful and that they are Hate or Love. They list out some interesting points but nothing is saying they are "Too Good." Quote me some text.
"Thanks to its time-domain accuracy and mid-heavy balance, the NS10 is an extremely revealing speaker that takes no prisoners. In other words, if the recording is poor, the NS10 will tell you in no uncertain terms. You have to work harder to make things sound good on the NS10 not because it sounds bad but because recorded music, even today, is often a poor approximation of the real thing, and the NS10 reveals it. I found a familiar comment on the SOS Forum that reads: "If it sounds good on NS10s then it'll sound good on anything." Again, that's not because the NS10 is inherently poor, but because it is effective at revealing the fundamental compromises inherent in recorded music. If you've worked hard on NS10s at a mix and overcome those compromises, or perhaps cleverly disguised them, the mix will translate well to other systems because it is a good mix. Put another way, the NS10 better enables you to get to the nub of a mix by more accurately reproducing its fundamental time-domain information — and it is this which can make the task of mixing seem more challenging."
To my mind, that is a very strong justification for the NS10. The NS10 is not without flaws, but it remains a perfectly viable professional tool that can be used to produce excellent mixes. Although it has been superseded by many modern high-end monitors, it retains some distinct advantages over the inexpensive ported monitors that are used in the vast majority of small studios.
But that isn't saying that they were clear. It was because they were skewed in a way that would show ONE place that was also unique to older audio technology. That is not the issue with 20 year old speakers or the way people listen to music.
What it is saying is that the NS10 = What people were listening to. That is no longer the case.
Mate, I gotta say your responses make me dismiss your comment. You misinterpret "good in certain respects", to shout "GOOD?" to an empty room. Caps with a lot of punctuation is a red flag for me, seems very CNN.com political. Finally, you criticize the core argument ("why does the NS10 have such a reputation") without giving me, an ignorant third party, any evidence.
Even if you owned your own studio, aren't there lots of people with that same resume line who were terrible at mixing?
You may be 100% correct, but it was not communicated in a style that would let someone to that conclusion.
I was trying to understand where the remark of me not understanding what I read. The article was not about them being "good" technically besides that if they sound good on a NS10 they will sound good on anything?
I HATE my friend's vintage Porsche. It doesn't even have Bluetooth like my Yaris! And the exhaust sound is so obnoxious. Who even needs to drive fast on the way to Olive Garden? Every car made in the past 10 years is better than that old Porsche.
"I see people use this all the time as their main speaker?"
What are you talking about? Nobody uses the NS10 as their main speaker today. It's been a decade since they were in common use and nearly two decades since they were even manufactured.
Sure, every old piece of equipment has somebody that loves it. But, the number of high-end studios (the kind working on records any of us may have heard on the radio) with NS10 speakers, even in a secondary role, is vanishingly small these days. I used to know engineers who kept a set in the trunk of their car, "just in case" the studio didn't have any when they got there (it was their "source of truth", that allowed them to get their bearings in a room even if they used the regular speakers in the studio for most of the work), but even they weren't doing that as far back as ten years ago.
These speakers still have a small cult following based on the strength of the brand during their reign, but it makes little sense to pay "vintage" equipment prices for them when you can buy better new speakers for a similar or lower price. Speakers don't get better with age.
Regardless of the continuing existence of these speakers in active roles I am wildly skeptical that the person I'm responding to sees them "all the time". Unless they keep going to the same old studio that hasn't been upgraded since 1989 and having the same conversation with the owner every time. That'd be weird.
But I am talking about people in small studios. Since around 1998 or so the recording studio was revolutionized and 90% of studios are very small one bedroom or basement size spaces.
My "all the time" is going from the late 1980s to 2007. Though I still see people with only NS10. There was a studio in my city 2 blocks away. NS10 were on the wall and was the primary ears for the mixing.
Ah, you should say something along the lines of, "I used to see this all the time" to clarify that it's in the distant past.
It's pretty rare to find NS10s in active studios today, in my experience (which is much more limited than in the past, but even when I was working professionally in the field two decades ago, the NS10 was on its way out among the thought leaders in the industry).
They were a reliable workhorse that had a good run and helped make a lot of great records, but they aren't really relevant today. I worked on them a lot in the 90s, and I don't think they sounded like a brown paper bag, but I can see how one would prefer a more modern design (I've never owned or wanted to own a pair). But, they had their positive aspects.
> "If it sounds good on NS10s then it'll sound good on anything."
Spot on. I dabble in electronic music production and this is precisely why it's such a "good" speaker, because you want your music to sound good on all systems, and the NS10 is going to simulate what your music sounds like on stock Apple earbuds. If it can sound good on those, you can bet they will sound even better on virtually anything else.
But parent is making a point that technology has moved on and your Apple Earbuds made in 2017 sound way better than the NS10s, and I think after all these years that might be the case
It's not fair comparing speakers to headphones/earphones, because speakers have to move a lot more air. Cheap earphones can have excellent bass response because they're coupled directly to the eardrums. The NS10s only have 18cm (7in) woofers, so it's not surprising their -3db bass cutoff is 70Hz. As "Hoffman's Iron Law" of loudspeaker design says: deep bass, small size, high efficiency: choose two.
> It's not fair comparing speakers to headphones/earphones
True, but we are not comparing for the purpose of finding the "best value for money", we are trying to find an answer to the question: do the NS10s reflect the situation of today's average listener? My argument is that they suck so much that they are now below average... So I think they're not the right monitor choice in 2017
>Those "speakers" are not meant to be a primary sound source
What the manufacturer means doesn't matter, the real-life use does, and there they are often the primary sound source (if only by the virtue of being the only option available when one doesn't have their headphones handy, or, even more often, wants to share sound with someone).
>I have heard some phones from HTC that sounded MUCH better than NS10.
Maaaaybe. Now try something that's not a flagship, but what 98% of the people have.
There have been high quality loudspeakers available since at least the 60's, and arguably since before then. For example the quad electrostatic from 1957 or there abouts, a selection of which far exceeds the quality of apple earbuds or similar. Or Grado SR60's from 1992 or Stax SR1 headphones from 1960. Or Hartley loudspeakers evolved from an idea originating in the 1940's.
My brothers studio, where music for UK film and TV music was made, had NS10's as near fields. They sounded atrocious, I mean really bad. Leaving aside their electromechanical benefits, which are pretty well covered in the article, the accepted notion was that if you could make sounds sound ok with them with all their colourisation, then you'd get a fair result on televisions, radios and so on. In fact thinking about it, if you wanted music to sound good on Beats, then they'd still make a good reference choice.
> roblem is EVERY speaker made the last 20 years is better than these speakers.
I disagree heres.
"Real" speakers might be better, but most people listen to music on crappy laptop speakers or crappy bluetooth 1-inch mono speakers. The quality of the average sound reproduction device has been getting worse the last 20 years.
On the other hand, there are some seriously impressive bluetooth speakers out there now.
I just picked up an Audio Pro Addon T3 on sale the other day. It's obviously no match for my room corrected studio monitor setup with dual 12" subs in regards to sub bass, detail and overall SPL, but I'm absolutely astounded at how much sound (and bass!) they've managed to cram into a speaker that's smaller than a sixpack and plays for ~30 hours on battery.
They're probably doing a ton of DSP and probably some missing fundamental bass trickery, but it does sound really convincing.
I wouldn't buy any bluetooth speaker much smaller than this one, though. You can only cheat physics so far.
Genelecs are notoriously hard to mix on. They take a long time to learn. Probably the hardest speaker to work with out of the box. I know someone who earns 6-7 figures annually mixing some of the biggest acts around. The only speakers on his console are NS10s. The reason being is that they are the best tool for the job. They have a flat and clear response which is what you want when mixing. On the other hand I have heard enough mixes coming out of Genelec equipped studios that sounded amazing in the studio and like garbage anywhere else. I've also heard great mixes on Genelecs but only from engineers who have used them in the same room for a few years.
> The reason being is that they are the best tool for the job.... They have a flat and clear response which is what you want when mixing.
Did you not read how these things are not flat and not clear in any range besides the mids in the article and totally depended on volume, environment and positioning?
NS10 are the Vim vs EMACS arguement but it is more Vim vs ed.
> I've also heard great mixes on Genelecs but only from engineers who have used them in the same room for a few years.
Rooms don't matter on Genelec and yes you will notice that the majority of high end studios mostly use Genelec due to the fact that rooms matter much less with them and the skill can transfer anywhere. That was my whole point on why Genelec are the most popular near field monitors in high end studios.
A legendary engineer educated me about NS10s. With a great amp and a sub, they sound fantastic - especially when listening at low volume. As in... lower than the volume of a normal conversation.
They don't sound fantastic, they sound accurate, which is a vital distinction to make about monitors in a studio environment. Consumer speakers should sound good, studio monitors should sound exactly like what's on tape or disk.
NS10s sound a little harsh in the mid-range and brittle on the high end. But, you can discern all the frequency ranges (except the low end, where they roll off and need to be filled in with subs) with great precision (for the era).
The reason for their good reputation among many was their accuracy and pervasiveness. The reason for the poor reputation was their fatiguing harshness, making them less comfortable for long mixing sessions. Both can be true; we can recognize the good and the bad.
I'll correct even that. I have NS10s, somewhat modified (drivers are almost totally stock though), and I'm driving them off Channel Islands D100 monoblocs, not to terribly high levels, and I have subs to reinforce the lows.
They sound REVEALING. That's not the same as 'good' or 'accurate'. I'm not contradicting you: you can discern all the frequency ranges, and all the tones, and the things you did on other speakers that people complained about in your mix and you went 'but, but, I did a really good mix!' and then you listen on the NS10s and the complaints you got are suddenly right there staring you in the face, so you can't miss 'em.
That's largely because of the exceptional time-domain performance as the article correctly reports. These are not the only speakers that can do that, but they're really good at it. That plus the harsh mid-emphasis and brain-fryingly bright tweeters means the things are ruthlessly revealing. Accurate would be more sympathetic to good mixes and let you slide, but NS10s are merciless and you must get things exactly right: in mixes, in getting sounds, in auditioning things like plugins.
That's largely true and was a big part of their appeal, especially in a time before the widespread availability of good analysis tools and predominantly in-the-box production (which removes all manner of subtle audio problems, from mismatched impedance to phase problems, from the conversation).
That said, I think there's a temptation to exaggerate. A phrase like "brain-fryingly bright tweeters" means something completely different to someone who isn't an audio engineer than it does to someone who's worked in studios or dealt with pro gear. NS10s, while harsh by studio monitor standards, are likely indistinguishable from other mid-range speakers of the era to the average listener. The difference is small, and only really becomes an issue with extended critical listening...8 hours sitting dead center in front of these speakers does feel brain-frying. But, a casual listen wouldn't reveal that. They'd sound like punchy, bright, tight, speakers. Which is what most studio monitors sound like to untrained listeners.
Which is why I'm kinda shaking my head at the comments here saying that NS10s sound "terrible"! It's just not true. They sound like what they set out to make them sound like. And, most importantly, the resulting recordings that came out of more than a decade of market dominance speaks for itself.
They aren't terrible speakers. They were a pretty good quality professional tool used by many professionals for many years to excellent results.
Genelec are amazing speakers. They are the definition of reference. They are clean and they can be loud. They started out about the same time as the NS10 (1978) by the early 1980s they were the definition of the reference speaker. https://www.genelec.com/genelec-story-0
Once you use them you are kind of stuck. Your ear gets use to them and you mix to them. You can go to several different studios and you can mix easily. The idea is that the sound that comes out of the speakers goes directly to your ears and not reflexive sound. I have 1030a and they are small but I can mix in bad acoustic rooms and still have a great reference. You can plug any speaker of theirs into any of their sub woofers and have the same reference sound. So the use of Genelec has been growing and have become the standard. Sadly they aren't cheap but they are worth it. Mine are almost 20 years old and they still are great.
BUT they sound different and will mess up your mix. If your use to the Genelec direct sound you get a full range reference where problems stick out like a sharp stick in your ear. That is why people stick with them and don't use the newer brands.
Genelec's are the high-end of personal listening for music enjoyment, but they're far from flat. Studios probably have them as a reference for what some critics and fans will be listening on.
I like mixing and mastering on my pair of NX-N500 and some Beyerdynamic DT 990 for the bass and mastering. Very revealing. How does the NS-10 compare to the modern incarnation like the NX?
The NX series is a spiritual sequel to the NS10. It was designed with a similar philosophy to the NS10, though most reviews I've read indicate they are less harsh and more accurate due to modern manufacturing improvements. I'd guess the NX series is just a better NS10. I have a high level of confidence in Yamaha's mid-range pro and prosumer audio gear, though I've never used that specific speaker.
Is there a speaker equivalent of Sony pro headphones like the MDR-7506? Something that produces high quality, accurate, flat response at a relatively inexpensive price point?
Yes. There are at least a dozen (just as there are at least a dozen high-quality headphone options). The worst of the mid-range products today is probably better than the best of the mid-range products in 1990, as long as you limit it to respected brands. And, the differences between the best and the worst is pretty small.
I paid $1200 for my home studio monitoring setup back in 1995. It was a set of Tannoy System 600 speakers (about $700) and a Hafler amplifier (about $500). I still own and use the speakers today, but if I were doing any real work, I'd go pick up something new in the $500-$1000 range, and it would be better than my setup from two decades ago.
My point is that there's been a revolution in the quality:price ratio for audio equipment. It's not built as reliably as it used to be, but the quality of sound you can get at a mid-range price, even in transducers like speakers and microphones (which don't follow the same innovation rules as digital tech), is astonishing.
You can safely search any major online music retailer, select your price range, sort by rating, and buy the top-rated thing in your price range, and you'll almost certainly be happy with the result. The product will sound really good for the price (no matter what that price is, though there's a law of rapidly diminishing returns on the high end).
Take your pick - so much choice for good speakers these days. Your room will be a larger factor in the sound than any difference between two decent pairs of speakers (of same size).
It’s more about understanding how the monitors room translate to different systems and being able to mix to that. Headphones mostly eliminate the room factor. Many recording artists use Beyerdynamic DT770s, Senn HD280s, or ATH-M40x . None are particularly expensive as headphones go.
For monitors, lots of Genelec, Tannoy, Mackie, JBL, and Adam stuff is out there. Focal Twin6 BEs are particularly nice. None are really cheap (they’re all >$500 / one) and go up from there. Meyer HD-1s are apparently amazing, but they’re ~$9k for a pair. Their newer, cheaper Amie is $3500 each. Their new flagship Bluehorn stuff is $xx,xxx per channel. Lots of home studios use KRK Rokits because they’re cheap ($150/channel on up).
The MDR-7506 isn't especially accurate, but it is a very practical tool for use on location. For mixing, you'd be far better off with a pair of open-back headphones like the AKG K701 or the Sennheiser HD 650.
Speakers are inherently more expensive to manufacture, so they lag well behind headphones in terms of price-to-performance. The other crucial factor is the acoustic quality of your listening room, which in most cases is a far more significant factor than the quality of your monitors. Rather than buying expensive monitors, you're usually better off buying inexpensive nearfield monitors like the Presonus Eris and spending the rest of your budget on bass traps and diffusers.
I have some fairly old paradigm floor speakers. I’d like to move to some decent bookshelf’s. I have an amp. Any suggestions? I use them for music, TV, and movies.
I worked in a studio that had both, and the Minimus did much the same job as the NS10s, namely spot checking mixes. I found the Minimus even more unpleasant to listen to (even more bandwidth limited), but I wasn't listening to them for pleasure or for extended periods of time. I just wanted to zoom in on the midrange to make sure that crucial area was actually as in balance as I thought it was, and they served that purpose well enough.
I went to college for audio engineering in the 90s, during the undisputed reign of the NS10. Literally, every studio I worked in had a pair. I've done quite a bit of recording, mixing and mastering on NS10s.
Don't believe the hype; they weren't terrible speakers. They weren't good speakers, but they weren't terrible, either.
The context that gets lost, I think, in a conversation today is that you could easily find worse speakers in the same price range, from similarly respected brands, back then. NS10 was a reliably consistent speaker available in every market at a price that was good for the time. The consumer and prosumer audio revolution was just starting to ramp up, so getting clearly better quality had a very high price back then.
Even at the time, every experienced engineer acknowledged that the NS10 had some flaws; they were a bit tiring to listen to for long hours. There were harsh especially in the upper mid-range, and brittle in the high end. But, you could hear everything in the mix pretty accurately, and you could estimate what it would sound like on the average home or car stereo system, once you'd spent some time mixing on them.
It's also worth mentioning that NS10 isn't the only cargo-culted speaker (and this article briefly mentions Aurotones, which also were in several of the studios I worked in, to provide a "car stereo" simulation) or product. The audio industry is all about cargo cults. Specific compressors, microphones, reverbs, preamps, and these days plugins, have "can do no wrong" products that everyone covets; often despite some obvious flaws.
When you have an industry that rides the line between science and art so closely, and that has extremely unpredictable trends, you'll find an almost religious zeal around the tools. NS10s were king because they were used on some famous records and showed up in some famous studios at the right time.
Sometimes the cargo cult gets attached to something that is really, demonstrably, good (Neve preamp channels or even the entire console in which they live, Neumann microphones, etc.), but at any given time there are probably several comparably good products that don't get the industry nod because they don't have the right connections at the right time, or the records they appear on have the poor luck to go unnoticed by the listening public due to shifts in taste, etc.
The cargo cult had its uses. It allowed people in a low-information, high-expense, industry to make reasonable choices just by talking to other engineers. You wouldn't kill your studio by choosing NS10s back in 1990. But, these days, the cargo cult is silly, and counter-productive. We have an embarrassment of riches in terms of high-quality low-cost equipment, test tools are available on a tiny budget so you can literally know exactly what you've got with some time and knowledge about how to use the tools. There are high-quality reviews of every product going back decades on the web so you can choose between new and used with confidence.
Nobody buys a product like an NS10 for the exact reasons people bought the NS10 in the 80s (cost+proven+available+good enough+cargo cult approved), anymore. And, there are few products exactly like the NS10, anymore. The mid-range, where the NS10 lived, is dominated by very high quality products today from a dozen different manufacturers (including Yamaha, who have produced a very good series of "sequels" to the NS10). The low-end has plenty of stinkers, still, but they're cheap as hell.
It's a different world, though the audio engineering cargo cult lives on.
> they were a bit tiring to listen to for long hours. There were harsh especially in the upper mid-range, and brittle in the high end. But, you could hear everything in the mix pretty accurately
The exact same would apply to Grado headphones. Pretty terrible to use long-term, but act like magnifiers for flaws in the mixing process.
I had an interesting experience using my Grados to play Ratchet & Clank on the Playstation. They made it easy to distinguish small details in the tornado of sounds during the big battles, enabling me to literally "play by ear", but in a good way.
I'm listening to Grado SR80's right now. I bought them after I fell in love with the SR60's, which I now keep at work. I've never found them tiring, but I probably don't listen for more than an hour at a time.
I've recently started producing music after a lifetime of playing guitar.
As I've been building out my home studio, I've been constantly surprised by how old most popular studio equipment is.
For instance, one of the most popular microphones - Shure SM58 - was originally launched in 1966 and has remained unchanged since. It is still the industry standard, especially for touring
The pro audio industry is strange in that it doesn't seem to embrace change. You could pick up a producer from the 1980s and drop him into a modern studio, and he'd still end up using a lot of the same equipment
So many places have switched over to mixing and recording "in the box".
I think the 80's producer would be familiar with any outboard gear, as you say, but be completely flummoxed that the computer is King, and that so much is virtualised into DAW plugins. He/she would also be baffled by the idea of "unlimited audio tracks", for starters... I remember starting with a DOS-based sequencer called Voyetra in the 80's.
When I first saw the NS10 it was in the mid-late 80s when small studio monitors usually meant a pair of nearfield Auratone cubes, so they were something new at least to me. Not a professional in the field here, but I knew some people and recall that nearly all of them said about the NS10 that they're from OK to bad, but they're the standard and you must keep them in the control room because any engineer coming from $BIG_STUDIO would want them for being a de facto reference.
I'm very happy with my pair of small KRK Rokit at home, how would you compare the two?
Interesting; made me think of the ATH-M50x headphones - they're just about everywhere! The reviews are a fair bit more favourable than for the NS10s though.
They're also horrifically bad sounding and have essentially become meme status. They're also studio monitors, they're not meant for home users, they're not meant to sound good. Sadly, they're not even good as studio monitors, but hey, when you've reached meme status, you don't HAVE to be good.
I only really discovered their popularity (meme, really?) after I bought them for my wife; I was primarily searching for a set of decent cans at a low price point. The ATH-M50x certainly did fulfill those criteria.
Interesting, thanks. I ended up with the MSR7NC at home, which I really like. The NC isn't anywhere strong enough for the office, however at home it works great. I love how detailed they are primarily.
I agree with this. Whilst I did get my wife the ATH-50xs, I find the colour not to my liking after an initial period of listening. Bass response is great if you're into that though.
I personally use the ATH-MSR7NC (music) and ATH-ADG1x (music/gaming/comms) at home, and the ATH-ANC9 at work. The ANC9s are great for the work environment, and far easier on the ears in terms of avoiding tinnitus whilst blocking distracting noise than the 50s.
I have a pair of HS8's. They have provided me with a good and cheap starting set of listening gear for my amateur music endeavours. I know there is a lot of better gear out there but for starting out, Yamaha gear is usually pretty on point.
I wish I could test a pair of NS10's against the HS8's.
It doesn't really matter which product segment you're looking at, it's really hard to go wrong with Yamaha.
They may not be the outright best value for money when it comes to features and buzzwords, and they certainly don't have the cachet of more boutique brands, but they always deliver a solid good quality product.
As an example from a completely different segment, I used to ride a Yamaha XT660X motorcycle. If you read reviews and bike forums, sports bike riders would decry it for being too slow, dual-sport riders would decry it for not being a BMW GS-series, and supermoto riders would decry it for being too heavy.
None of that mattered, because I found it to be the most enjoyable bike I've ever ridden. Just enough power to get into trouble, great handling to get you out of trouble again, extremely comfortable and not so light that every gust of wind would blow you around. It may not be the best at anything, but it absolutely excels as an all-round bike for ordinary people like me, and during the time I had it, it was completely flawless, no issues at all (some people would find that boring, I guess).
You are absolutely right about Yamaha, man! Dang, even their Flutes are great.
My HS8's are interfaced via a Yamaha AG06 sound card btw. balanced outputs perfect for the monitors, stable as fuck and also I can get pretty decent latency with it (about 2-3ms @ 44100hz on a 9 year old core i7!!)
The little USB mixer? I love those things, I just wish I could get one with more stereo inputs, a single RCA stereo in and one aux in (with no volume adjustment) isn't really enough. Though I guess an external RCA switch could take care of that.
I’ve got an old (mid 90s vintage) pair of Acoustic Research speakers. Not being an audiophile or having very good hearing, how do they rate these days?
The love/hate of the speaker are really irrelevant factors for the product produced by an audio engineer. There are a couple things that really matter in terms of their 'efficiency': 1) the flat frequency response; and 2) Knowing the qualities of the monitor. If you have a decently treated room and you are somewhat accustomed to working with the NS10s, any engineer worth their salt could produce decent sounds on them.
The article is old so it foregoes the fact that Yamaha have actually tried to profit from the legacy of the NS10 - they produce new more expensive variants with similar design in the crowded studio monitor market. They fit into the space with the typical 5, 6 and 8 inch woofer-standard market with the HS7s for example. https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-hs7-hs8s
The end result is more important than the gear. These will do alright even if they aren't as "pleasing" as something like the Adam series'.