"The NS10 started life as a (not very successful) hi-fi speaker: and the original NS10M shipped with cloth grilles, hence the grille-mounting sockets you find in the corners of this model (absent from the NS10M Studio that followed).")](https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/styles/news_large/s3/imagelibrary/y/yamahans1004-K5.9NSZGK_1_3sBXs3YhTZ65LAvI_6zZ.jpg "The NS10 started life as a (not very successful) hi-fi speaker: and the original NS10M shipped with cloth grilles, hence the grille-mounting sockets you find in the corners of this model (absent from the NS10M Studio that followed).")**NS10M:**
The original domestic hi-fi speaker designed for vertical orientation
(its front panel logo reads correctly with the speaker mounted with
tweeter above woofer). This is the speaker that was too bright for Bob
Clearmountain, leading him to resort to tissue paper over the tweeters —
although, of course, it had to be the right kind of tissue paper.
**NS10M Studio:** Some time after Yamaha got wind of the NS10M's
popularity as a nearfield monitor (and around nine years after the
original product launch) a version badged 'NS10M Studio' was produced.
This version was designed for horizontal orientation (the logo and
connection panel text were turned through 90 degrees), incorporated a
redesigned tweeter and crossover to address the HF tonal balance issues,
featured a more rugged cabinet design without grille-mounting sockets,
and had improved connection terminals.
**Others:** Web searches on NS-10 or NS10 will reveal some variants.
There are versions badged NS10M Pro, NS10MX, NS10MC, NS10MT, and a
miniature version that was sold in a 5.1 home-theatre package called the
NS10MM. I've been unable to establish whether the NS10M Pro and NS10MX
offer anything different (my guess is that they don't, but if anybody
out there knows anything about them I'd love to hear it), but the NS10MC
appears to be an NS10M Studio with a front grille, and the NS10MT
appears to be a magnetically shielded and vertically oriented NS10M
Studio with symmetrically arranged drivers and, wait for it... a reflex
port. Aaaargh\!
There are also obviously NS10-inspired products out there, by which I
mean nearfield monitors with black cabinets and white cones. In the
absence of any independent technical appraisal I'd be very wary of
purchasing one on the assumption that it will offer anything like the
performance of the genuine article. If you really want a pair of NS10s,
eBay is probably your only real option, and you should expect to pay
anything up to £350 for a pair in good condition.
Before we get into the electro-mechanical and psychoacoustic nitty
gritty that I know you're gagging for, let me take you through a little
NS10 history. The Yamaha NS10 was designed by Akira Nakamura and
launched in 1978, and it was as technically unremarkable then as it is
now. At that time Yamaha were also producing the more extraordinary
NS1000 (also designed by Nakamura). With its beryllium mid-range and
tweeter domes this speaker is technically advanced even now, and if you
ever come across a pair in good condition, worth selling your own mother
for. The NS10 began life as a domestic hi-fi speaker, but it was
relatively poorly received and quickly faded towards obscurity. How the
NS10 was rescued from hi-fi death and resurrected as a nearfield
monitor, single-handedly inventing a product sector as it did so, is a
story that has probably been told slightly differently almost as many
times as it's been told, but the version I'll tell here is, I believe,
as close to the truth as makes no difference.
To understand the history you first have to appreciate its context. The
late '70s, when NS10s began to appear perched on meter bridges
worldwide, was a transitional time in music recording. The divide
between the engineer and the artist was blurring, as if the glass
between the control room and the studio was melting. Desks were getting
bigger as track count increased on tape. Outboard gear, driven by the
possibilities offered by the mix and editing potential of that higher
track count, became more sophisticated and ambitious, and the
possibilities for recording engineers to become more creatively involved
in the process of producing a record multiplied.
[
This new-found creativity in the control room meant that those recording
engineers who embraced and learned to deploy the rapidly increasing
capabilities of recording technology discovered they could call the
shots with the record companies. Suddenly they held the power and some
of them, initially in the US but pretty quickly in the UK also, became
minor stars in their own right. The freelance life beckoned as a result,
but a freelancer needs their own tools, and the new breed of 'name'
recording engineer/producer travelled reasonably light from studio to
studio, with a few items of favourite outboard, a few microphones —and,
after a while, a pair of Yamaha NS10s.
Actually, it might not have been the NS10. On both sides of the Atlantic
it might have been the Acoustic Research AR18, and in the UK it might
have been the Mordaunt-Short MS20: hi-fi speakers that offered similar
technical characteristics and were occasionally to be found in studios
(I was working at Mordaunt-Short in the early '80s and developed a 'pro'
version of the MS20, but a lack of effective distribution scuppered its
launch). But it was the NS10, thanks in part to its cool white cone and,
it is often said, to Bob Clearmountain...
The usual story goes that Bob Clearmountain, one of the first of that
new breed of 'name' engineers wanted a pair of monitors to carry with
him from studio to studio so that he had a consistent reference, and he
wanted something that he felt was representative of typical domestic
hi-fi speakers. It is sometimes also said, usually by those for whom the
abilities of the NS10 are a closed book, that he chose the NS10 because
it was the worst-sounding speaker he could find. That, as I say, is the
usual story. The trouble is, it's not true: the real story, recounted by
engineer Nigel Jopson in a letter published in Resolution magazine in
2007, does involve Bob Clearmountain (see Note 1), but is different in
almost every other respect.
## [Bob Clearmountain's Tissue](#top)
Bob Clearmountain's other significant claim to fame is probably that he
was the first to use tissue paper over NS10 tweeters in an attempt to
dull their over-bright balance. He resorted to tissue paper after the
maintenance staff at The Power Station had refused to modify the
speakers by wiring resistors in series with the tweeters (why he didn't
simply put an HF shelf EQ in the monitor chain is a question for which I
don't have an answer). Yamaha's second-generation NS10, the NS10M
Studio, had a less bright balance, so removing the need for tissue
paper. There's a technical analysis by Bob Hodas examining the effect of
covering the NS10 tweeter with various types of tissue paper here:
"The curl-and-join construction of the NS10's paper cone (look closely and you can see the glued seam) is not typical of most speaker designs — and is a factor in the NS10's success in the studio.")](https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/styles/news_large/s3/imagelibrary/y/yamahans1002dark-OWlksRMXb5jWpv_TwCkTgGuioEotFWfB.jpg "The curl-and-join construction of the NS10's paper cone (look closely and you can see the glued seam) is not typical of most speaker designs — and is a factor in the NS10's success in the studio.")
The NS10's bass/mid cone was not pressed but 'curled-up' from flat paper
sheet and then glued (look closely at the picture and you can see the
join). The cone is straight-sided as a result, and the curl-and-join
technique had two consequences for the performance of the NS10 bass/mid
driver. First, the straight-sided form generally results in a driver
with a rising frequency response, and second, while straight sides
maximise rigidity, which would normally result in a cone with a strong
'bell-mode' resonance, the glued join acts as a damper (imagine a bell
with a glued sawcut down the side: it won't ring much).
The characteristic rising response of a straight-sided cone is clearly
apparent in Figure 4, which illustrates the NS10's frequency response
measured at one metre on an axis halfway between the bass/mid unit and
tweeter. Figure 4 is correctly calibrated so the NS10's sensitivity for
a 2.83V (nominally 1W into 8Ω) input can be read from the vertical axis
— somewhere between 87dB and 92dB. The NS10's relatively restricted
low-frequency bandwidth, and the low-frequency roll-off slope of 12dB
per octave, can also be seen. The 15kHz 'suck-out' in the response is
most likely caused by diffraction from the tweeter's wire grille and, as
it makes only a fleeting appearance in the waterfall plot is probably of
little significance (it fades away in off-axis measurements too, which
suggests its root cause is one of geometric symmetry).
[
## [Love 'Em Or Hate 'Em?](#top)
This selection of opinions that I've pillaged from the SOS Forum
([www.soundonsound.com/forum](/forum)) gives you an impression of the
strength of feeling both for and against the Yamaha NS10 — and it is
very rare to find anyone's comments keeping to the middle ground\!
"I don't find the NS10s fatiguing to listen to at all, quite the
opposite. The more I use them the more I love them\!"
"They're brutally unflattering to mixes, but that's their job. But
never, ever use them as a sole pair of monitors. Just a cross check."
"...their forte is to exaggerate low-mid ugliness in your mix. If you
monitor on NS10s and your low-mids sound clean, then they are."
"NS10s were bloody brilliant, I can't believe Yamaha stopped making
them."
"I keep NS10s in the studio, because it gives bands and producers a warm
feeling. Ten minutes into the session I switch them off and not once has
anyone questioned it. I track and mix on better monitors and get better
results."
"The NS10 phenomenon may have more to do with the 'Emperor's New
Clothes'. In my opinion they sound nasty and I don't feel that I can
trust them."
"Nobody in their right minds likes the sound of the NS10s for enjoyable
listening\!\!\! They do not do that very well\!\!\!"
"The old cliché is that if it sounds good on NS10s then it'll sound good
on anything. I think it's precisely because they sound so bad that they
are used so widely."
"NS10s are totally incapable of reproducing a double bass or the bottom
octaves of a grand piano with any sort of accuracy, and have a harsh
high-end that can really numb your ears after a while."
"I've never really got on with them and can gladly live without them in
the studio. However, I've seen experienced visiting engineers produce
good mixes on them and I've seen inexperienced people produce terrible
bass-heaving mixes on them."
"They may sound horrible but they do highlight problems with your
mixing."
"I totally hated the NS10s initially and wondered why they were industry
standard, until I checked back some mixes on a pair. All the problems
instantly jumped out."
"They really are somewhat unique in their ability to let you hear the
mids in a relatively uncoloured way, and I can tell you that they have
improved my mixes greatly, and I'm able to get a mix to translate better
in a much shorter period of time, especially with busy mixes."
"Run out and buy a pair of NS10s... like the sound or not, that is not
the point."
Why have I included a frequency-response curve here? I mentioned earlier
that the frequency-response curves in a sales brochure are typically
meaningless in terms of providing information that's useful to an end
user. Actually, though, I'd go further than that, and suggest that in
many respects making any judgment about the worth or likely value of a
monitor by examining its frequency-response curve is not far short of
pointless. I often read opinions on the SOS Forum arguing that to be of
any value monitors require a 'flat frequency response', but numerous
recordings made during what many would consider the golden age for
musical sound quality (the '60s and '70s) were monitored on speakers
that were all over the place in terms of frequency response — and I
don't know why recording engineers seem to believe so strongly that a
monitor should be anechoically 'flat' when so much end-product evidence
suggests that this isn't particularly important.
A frequency-response curve appears to tell you if a monitor is going to
reproduce different elements of the audible bandwidth at the same level,
which intuitively seems vitally important. But a simple
frequency-response curve tells you no such thing, and the
psychoacoustics of human hearing is more about the time domain than the
frequency domain.
When we measure a monitor's frequency response in an anechoic chamber,
the microphone 'hears' the output at just one position in space.
However, when we listen to a monitor in a room we hear a combination of
the monitor and its interaction with the room boundaries (and big items
of furniture). Reflections from the walls, floor and ceiling are
integrated over time by the brain, to create a composite tonal balance.
When I design a typical 'box speaker', I've learned through experience
(and reading Dr Floyd Toole's work on the subject) that a
frequency-response curve taken at between 20 and 30 degrees horizontally
off-axis is likely to be most representative of an appropriate target
tonal balance. For a speaker tonally voiced for domestic free-space
mounting (not up against a wall or sat on a meter bridge), this off-axis
anechoic curve should be reasonably flat up to around 2kHz and then fall
slowly at around 3dB per octave for the rest of the range. This is a
long, long way from 'flat', but it will sound neutrally balanced in a
typical domestic room at average playback levels.
And speaking of 'average playback levels', in addition to the room
effects that influence our perception of tonal balance, listening level
plays a significant part too. The brain's perception of tonal balance is
level dependent. At low levels we're far more sensitive to mid-range
than bass and treble — hence the 'loudness' button beloved of '80s
Japanese hi-fi amps. So, again, expecting a frequency-response curve
measured at one position in space and at a single arbitrary level to
reveal the full story on the worth of a monitor is to simplify reality
to the point of nonsense.
Moving swiftly on to the second assertion I made a couple of paragraphs
ago, we humans have evolved to respond more to the transient than to the
tonal elements of sound. Try a little experiment: find a sample of
something like a clarinet and a flute, each playing the same continuous
note, drop them onto two tracks in your DAW and listen to them in turn.
It's very easy to tell which is which. Chop the first, say, 500ms from
the front of each so that the characteristic beginnings of the notes are
suppressed, and listen again. They'll sound much more similar: the brain
uses the characteristic transients to differentiate the instruments, and
without them it struggles. Now, go back to the un-edited samples and
apply the same severe EQ to each and listen again: despite the EQ, you
can still differentiate them. A similar illustration of the use the
brain makes of transient rather than tonal information is that a
familiar voice remains familiar in wildly different acoustic
environments — environments that imprint different tonal characters on
the sound. So, concentrating on the 'flatness' of frequency response is
to miss a hugely important point: if a monitor handles transients
accurately, its frequency response is much less important than you
probably think.
Before I wrap up this epic (and promise never, ever to write about the
NS10 again), there's just one more issue that probably deserves to be
kicked around a little. If the NS10 is so good, why do people so often
express their dislike of listening to it? I suspect that there are both
practical and emotional answers to this conundrum.
First, the emotional. 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.
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.
Where does all that leave us? Why do we still use that old monitor? We
use it because it does a job, even if it sometimes doesn't sound very
nice while doing the job, partly because, if it's installed or driven
inappropriately, it will reveal such shortcomings without mercy, and
partly because it sometimes reproduces elements of our work that we
don't particularly want to hear. But we also use it because nearfield
monitor manufacturers seem to have suffered a 20-year blind spot and
failed to identify why the NS10 works and remains so popular. Go
figure.
Thanks to: FX Rentals for the loan of a pair of NS10s; Acoustic Energy
for permission to use their NS10 data; Phil Knight for doing the
original measuring; the SOS Forum members whose words I've borrowed; and
to Chris Binns for advice that (hopefully) ensured I've not written
anything really dumb.
## [Goodbye NS10](#top)
Yamaha discontinued the NS10 in 2001 on the grounds that they were
unable to source the pulp for the bass/mid cone, but I don't buy this.
Firstly, they still seem able to manufacture replacement bass/mid
drivers, and secondly, it was the cone shape and construction method
that were the significant factors, not the specific paper pulp. This
however begs the question why did they discontinue the NS10? I suspect
it was a case of ignorance combined with market and margin pressures.
Nakamura had moved on to pastures new in the organisation, and those
left behind perhaps didn't fully appreciate what was so special about
his speaker. It isn't difficult to imagine the sales department
reporting back that they needed monitors with more bass, and the
