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Submitted by
VegasSound
a Audio Enthusiast
from Date Reviewed: November 1, 2005
Strengths: - Extended high end from either titanium or beryllium drivers
- Surgically precise, revealing midrange that equals that of much more expensive loudspeakers.
- Enough bass extension to forgoe a subwoofer for most listening.
- Relatively efficient, sealed box floor standers.Weaknesses: - Low frequency performance not quite at level of MF and HF drivers (age of speakers?)
- size and weight (especially for non-appreciative housemates)
- Difficult to locate replacement drivers or parts.
- Rare, very hard to find vintage Yamaha speakers.Bottom Line: This review is for the hard to find vintage NS-70T Floor Standing speakers. These are a 10" three way design believed to be late 70's or early 80's vintage.
These speakers are very rare, and so I decided to put the review where it doesn't really fit as anyone looking for info on these will likely stumble across this.
The NS-70T is by all appearances a consumer oriented sibling to the peerless NS1000T studio monitors. While I won't claim these to be the equal of the NS1000 family, they do stand on their own quite well.
Configuration - 10" paper cone woofer with cloth surround in about a 2cubft sealed box. Aprox. 4" metal dome midrange and a 1" metal dome HF driver. The material of these drivers is unknown. I believe after taking one of the midranges apart (these are field servicable drivers!) that they are of titanium (i.e. the T designation). The HF driver is either titanium or beryllium, I can't tell. These are fed by a robust passive crossover network. There appears to be no driver protection circuitry. There are L pads for both mids and highs on each front speaker panel. They allow about -12 db of pad each.
Performance - specs are unavailable. These have been driven by up to 85watts continuous with no problem beyond some mild LF distortion and some MF harshness with the pads at zero. They were likely rated at around 100watts RMS. Frequency response should be around a solid 40hz to 20khz. HF extension my be higher than that.
Listening - These are amazing speakers. When I first got them I was unsure, but after cleaning them up and auditioning a wide variety of music they started to really impress. I now have hundreds of hours of listening on this pair with a variety of electronics in various rooms, and they are among my favorite speakers that I've ever owned.
First is the high end. These have an open, almost bright response above 4k that really opens up modern source material. They remind me a lot of the newer ceramic-on-metal high frequency drivers as found in the Infinity Primus family. I typically keep the pads at around -2db to smooth out the high end just a bit.
Midrange response defines these 3-way speakers though. With metal dome midrange drivers you might expect harshness, at indeed at very high levels (100db plus, as in -loud-) they can be harsh. But at normal listening levels they are surgically precise and revealing. Vocals, especially female, and strings really, really sound nice on these speakers. Even my best 2-way studio monitors struggle to match the mid-band of these 25 year old speakers.
Low end response is where these show the most compromise. They are very placement sensitive, needing to be as far as possible from rear boundaries, and odd trait for sealed boxes. Low end response is then relatively smooth and extends easily down to below 50hz. At high levels these drivers can to distort a bit, but we have to consider the age of these fiber coned drivers in a sealed box configuration. In all the bass behavior is pleasing but never quite matches the precision of the mids and highs.
Conclusion - These remain one of my favorite loudspeaker finds of all time. The precision of the metal MF and HF section, and the presence of big-box speakers never fails to please my ears. These 10", 3-way floor standers are a garage sale treasure should you find a pair in servicable condition. Be warned though that parts are near impossible to find. Pay special attention to the condition of the metal domes and paper woofer cones. You would be hard pressed to find a modern loudspeaker of comparable performance today for less then $500-600 a pair.
Price Paid:
$35.00
Purchased At: Thrift Store
Similar Products Used: Pioneer CS-99a, Cerwin-Vega D5, JBL Voice-of-Theater cabinets with modern drivers.
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Submitted by
Jason Waters
a Casual Listener
from Perth, WA, AustraliaDate Reviewed: December 14, 2000
Strengths: They sound great!Weaknesses: None that are obvious.Bottom Line: Coupled to my Denon AVR-1801 these just sound awesome. I can certainly recommend them.
Price Paid:
$350.00
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Submitted by
Bob
a Audio Enthusiast
from Cedar RapidsDate Reviewed: May 29, 2000
Strengths: Durable, attractive set of speakers. A pleasure to listen too.Weaknesses: none as far as I can seeBottom Line: I also have 2 sets of these speakers set up to my RX-V2095 Yamaha Amp. The sound you get from having front and rear speakers of this calibre is amazing. I am extremely happy with my purchase as I know I will have both the speakers and amp for a long time to come and they will provide the best sound quality as always.
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Submitted by
Foe
a Audio Enthusiast
from AustraliaDate Reviewed: April 25, 2000
Strengths: Sounds GoodWeaknesses: None (as far as I know)Bottom Line: I came in here and saw that no-one had written a review on these excellent speakers (whats the deal there, anyone else buy these??) so I thought someone ought to do somthing about it. I bought 2 sets of these two for the front and two for the rear speakers and as far as I can tell they sound excellent, both plugged into my RX-V2095 Yamaha amp. I highly recomend them.. Did it again Yamaha.
Similar Products Used: ----
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Submitted by
mohd
a an Audio Enthusiast
from Date Reviewed: September 22, 1999
Bottom Line: any one have got verdit or review for these speakers please send to me the sound is ok it is 280w
my av is yamaha rxv 995,i have solid c-100 for centre,yamaha ns-e105 surround
next week i will buy sw-300 sub.
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