Hey Russell,
I'll elaborate in a more detailed fashion so that you might understand better where I am coming from.
The point of the links in my last post was to establish the credibility of those whom you accused of having 'just enough information to form assumptions'.
You posted links to studios that may still use these speakers to some degree. That does not mean they are loudspeaker designers or have any idea of what is involved in creating the tools they need for their work.
What gifts do you imagine you possess that override the thoughtful analysis of credentialed and respected engineers who have made it their life's work to design spaces and systems specifically for the processes of tracking, mixing and mastering recordings?
Again, they don't design the tools they use. And those engineers have no idea how to improve their playback monitors to help reveal the information they just recorded. And my comments were not directed at those engineers but rather the guys that wrote the article that you linked to.
By the way, The studio's that are now using the upgraded version of these speakers are singing their praises as they now have speakers that will reveal details that they never heard before. And they are now producing a higher quality product.
There are also a lot of studio's using our N2X speakers for the same reasons. And there are about six or seven studio's using speakers that I designed for Tyler Acoustics. And I have heard a lot of feedback from those studios. And I have assisted several of them in performing upgrades to those speakers (that I designed) so that even they get taken to another level.
Yes, any one of a number of crossover designers could flatten that response curve, including me, probably, but do you really think Yamaha is incapable of doing that if that were the goal?
It really isn't just about having an accurate frequency response. There are a LOT of other factors involved in accurate playback.
This speaker is valuable only as a tool for mixing music, not for listening for pleasure. I don't know anyone who is inclined to kick back and listen to music through NS-10s in the living room, even if they were actually mounted in bookshelves as apparently was the serious original intention. People actually did mount speakers in bookshelves in their living rooms then, when more people actually had bookshelves in their living rooms.
Well, I didn't redesign it for listening pleasure. I redesigned it to make it a better tool for mixing with. And it my opinion it was horrible for that application.
Did you catch the comments in section 5, para 3, page 3 of the pdf you found comical regarding how the reflections off the console surface tend to flatten the response—and no, not just by lifting the bass but also by introducing a dip which goes some way toward flattening the peak around 1.5k?
Yep, that is comical. To flatten out a peak you have to introduce a reflection right at the wavelength of the peak so that the distance to the reflection source and back will cause an out of phase cancellation at that wavelength. That's about 7" in this case, by the way. So even if you did find a position in the room that would give you an out of phase reflection at that wavelength (1700Hz) you'd then miss it by moving a few inches in either direction. You couldn't even get both ears to hear it if you could create it in one point in space. Good grief.
Please let me give you some more comical examples.
Form page 4 "During the mixing process, there is a tendency for recordists to want to hear a clear mid-range, because that is where more instruments are often fighting for the same space. Once things are balanced in this region, the basis of a mix is often established. This process may be helped by the raised mid-frequency response of the NS10M."
The peak in the response at 1700Hz isn't even in the mid-range. It's almost two octaves above the mid-range. The heart of the mid-range is in the 300Hz to 500Hz region.
Maybe this illustration will help:
And did you catch this part on page 1? "The original NS10s were often used with toilet paper over the tweeters, because early experience found them to lead to mixes which lacked high frequencies compared to what was considered to be normal in people's homes."
Engineers were covering the tweeters with toilet paper to try to soften the hot peak in the response. That hot peak caused engineers to mix the hot region down resulting it reduced high frequency ranges in the mix. The funny part (or sad part) is that the hotness they were trying to correct in the Yamaha's response was not a result of a hot top end but the result of a peak that is in the upper range of the woofers response. Knocking the tweeters response down some will help, but the tweeter was not the problem.
And studio's that were using them, and did complain of brightness and fatigue, now tell me that with the upgrade there is no more listening fatigue.
And it is comical to me for someone evaluating the speakers to make assumptions that in order to get a desired result in the mix then maybe a speaker is needed with a response that will fool the engineer into thinking that it sounds different than it really does and in such a way that it will trick the engineer into making adjustments that in the end will be better. Give me a break.
And evaluating and comparing speakers by distortion measurements and trying to draw sound quality conclusions based on that is as I stated earlier. They have just enough information to form some assumptions, but not enough information or comprehension to understand what is necessary for accurate playback. Distortion levels as measured are 40 to 50db down in level and difficult to hear or even identify comparing any speakers. Go ahead and listen to any speaker and try to draw out what the distortion curves look like.
Now, let me explain to you what does make a real difference and where and why this speaker really shines.
The strength of this speaker is in the woofer. It is a paper cone woofer with good internal damping and a pretty smooth response. It is free of any break up and shows very little stored energy. Stored energy or lack of stored energy is the key. Speakers with woofer break up or ringing will carry that on over time and often at a high level. It is VERY easy to hear.
Now while the woofer is very good, and it makes the spectral decay look really good on paper, there are still several other factors resulting in stored energy that are very important and they are not looked at or considered by the guys that wrote the the paper on the NS10M. First of all have a look at the capacitors used in this speaker. Capacitors are energy storage devises. They store and release energy. That's a fact. And discharge rates vary greatly. And it is commonly known that electrolytic caps are a slow discharge cap that has the effect of smearing the signal. And in the case of this little speaker that was a big issue. There was a lot of smearing going on.
And they not only got a cap upgrade, they got a big cap upgrade.
So it really isn't just about playing a note as seen in the frequency response. It is about letting go of that note that is important and that is not seen in the measurements. It is the space between those notes and that black space that is key.
And no engineer running a mixing board thinks that smearing the signal and running everything together into a mush will make it easier for them to adjust the mix. No one ever thinks taking away detail and resolution levels are going to make things better.
Secondly, there is stored energy in the unbraced cabinet. Bass notes buzz the little box and smear the lower ranges and lower vocal region. It is a source of coloration not even considered by the writers of the paper on this speaker. And some of the speakers on their list suffer greatly from it. Simply lining it with No Rez solved that problem.
Then there is the quality of the connectors, wiring, etc and the effect it has on the signal. Half of those engineers out there don't even believe that stuff could matter, let alone have any experience with comparisons of that stuff.
The writers do acknowledge and understand stored energy though. From the second page: "The waterfall plot in Figure 3(36) shows a very rapid decay over the entire frequency range and also an absence of the mid-range ringing evident in many of the other plots in Figure 3."
They are right. It does look good in the spectral decay. But they ignore other important causes of stored energy. And again they do not have enough information or comprehension to understand what is necessary for accurate playback. In other words, they are not loudspeaker designers and they do not know how to do what I did.
Funny thing though, the hobbyist that come here completely understand what I just said and know it to be 100% true.
What you have turned the NS-10 into is a speaker that will certainly sound better on a stand in free space, but does anyone want to do that?
No, I made these speakers a LOT better specifically for what they are designed for. The engineers now hear a LOT more accurately what they are working with. And the studios love them now.
