good looking

no bass

Ideal for pop music monitoring. However let the detail be revealed by B&W matrix and nautilus 800 series!!!!!!!!!!!

Similar Products Used:

jbl control 1

This product is garbage

Everything

I have a little Sony boom box and some real monitors. I eq them nice and flat, and they are high end to begin with. I mix audio relatively - comparing the mix to other commercial mixes. The Yamaha NS10 are just crap and anyone who owns them does so out of pose factor. They are utterly unlistenable and totally useless and a complete joke, but speak volumes about the marketing talent of Yamaha and Bose type companies :-) I give them a minus 10 stars rating for all the damage they have done to the music community and all the terrible mixes they have fostered.

Similar Products Used:

Use a cheap boom box, they sound better :-)

The NSM-10 are exactly as advertised, a studio nearfield monitor. They will not sound like a dream in a music appreciation sense, but they are an industry staple. The best use of NS10's are when moving from one mixing venue to another. If you know what a mix sounds like in your studio on your NS-10's then you will hwve an idea of how the room you are mixing in will color the sound when you listen to a pair of NS-10's. Are they the best monitors on the market, absolutely not, but they are accurate, (flat response, detailed) and serve their purpose as a reference. For this purpose they are an industry standard. If listening for pleasure is your bag, then they are a less than optimum choice.

Reference monitoring in a foreign studio environment.

They can not be relied upon solely for mixing.

It seems that the NS10's are probably the most misunderstood product in any audiophile's history book. As a student who's been building a home studio for the past 2 years I spent a long time looking for the right studio monitors on a budget (this was a 12 month search). I quickly came to the conclusion that the NS10's only value is that it has been adopted as the industry standard reference monitor and can thus be found in any real studio anywhere in the world. This is a comforting fact for any musician heading into a studio with foreign equipment. It gives them a starting point in producing a successful mix.

The NS10's however are useless as the sole studio monitor in a studio. They simply don't cut it for producing successful mixes on their own. I finally settled on Tannoy's Reveals. These speakers are awesome for their price tag. In the comfort of my own studio I can produce better mixes with these than could be achieved purely with NS10's. But for any musician who spends time in multiple studio's using different monitors the NS10's are a valuable reference point that increases the ease with which a fantastic mix can be produced.

Please don't buy these speakers for HiFi use - you will be disapointed because this is not what Yamaha intended these useful little speakers for. My biggest whinge however is the price. Passive Tannoy Reveals are the same price as NS10's were when new (or near enough anyway). They are worth about half this for what they are capable of.

WARNING: These speakers will annoy you if you use them for hi fi listening!

Similar Products Used:

Tannoy Reveals

Give you the ability to dissect a dense mix.

Bass response is weak.

Just wanted to say that I am a professional recording engineer / producer and have been using NS-10M's for the better part of 10 years. I have a personal pair and I regularly use a studio's pair or bring mine if they don't have them which is very unlikely. Anyway, I know these speakers intimately and that is the point of them - they are to be used FOR REFERENCE by ENGINEERS who know what they are for. They are not hi-fi speakers and never will be. I see some comments about bad mixes on these speakers and all I can say is that it boggles my mind to think about the multitude of the greatest recordings of our time that were tracked on NS-10M's. One more thing, no engineer or studio in their right mind would depend on these or any other speaker as their SOLE reference for mixing or tracking. What it comes down to for me is that when I am in my own personal control room I know exactly what all of my speakers are telling me and the NS10-M's are a big part of that because when I am in a foreign and unfamiliar environment I know that I am going to have that reference that the NS10-M's give me and then I go from there maybe going back to the NS's every now and then for a sanity check. Hope this clears up some issues for the Audiofiles out there who are unfamiliar with the recordin/production process.

Regards,
Frank Silano
FrankenCat Productions
Tampa Bay, Florida
Rockin' for Jesus!

Similar Products Used:

Tannoy, JBL, Urei, Mackie, Gauss, etc.

The Yamaha NSM-10 is an interesting product. First off, they are designed for "near-field" monitoring. They have also become the "reference" monitor of many studios. You can usually see them on the covers of many recording publicatons. They sure look good. But do they SOUND good? Well first off, they seem a little pricey for what you get: a box with two average drivers in it. But again, I will stress that they look good. The whole range of fequencies seem quite "dry" at times, making the involvment of the music seem quit dull. Nothing fancy here. Imaging? Nil. Soundstage? Nil. Listening excitement? Nil. Can you call this pure un-doctored sound? Maybe, but it sure is boring. Not recommended for "Hi-Fi" use. You are better off with a set of Technics speakers! Well, maybe not since we all know that Technics is being sold at Radio Shack. Enough said. Other speakers come to mind: The Super Signet SL-260 bookshelf or the Tannoy Mercury M2. Maybe the Mission 731i? The Yamaha's are very "electronic" sounding units. And besides, no where on the speakers does the words "Digital Ready" appear, making these speakers entirely usless for any digital sources like CD,DAT etc. When I shell out muchos bucks for a speaker, it should be at least "Digital Ready!" On that note, all I can say is "To each his own Technics."

I've been selling esoteric audio for 25 years and pro audio for 14 years. In near field monitors, I have listened to Tannoy, Alesis, Yamaha, Audix, Genelec, Event, HD Meyer, Auratones, Fostex, JBL, Rogers, B&W's, Celestion, Visonik, KRK and Yorkville.
First of all, I think the term near-field is a joke. Most pop musicians (not all) have no brains and no ears. That is demonstrated by the audio equipment they own and the inablity to recognise quality audio even when they are exposed to the equipment. The first thing they generally want to do is "eq" the sound.

The Yamaha NSM 10 speakers do not sound good. Even people in the audio business know this, but because this speaker is primarily purchased by musicians, it has become the "standard of the industry".

If you are impressed with Bose speakers, you will probably love this speaker. I however, do not like this speaker and have never sold a pair, though customers have purchased them from me.

My friend just recently built a home studio. He invited me over to audition some "near-field" monitors, one being the YAMAHA NSM-10. (We set them up "correctly" on top of the console by the way.) These "monitors" are simply horrible! I wouldnt recommend these things to my worst enemy. No wonder there are a lot of awful sounding cd's out there! "Industry Standard?" What a joke!! MY recommendation is that one tries a pair of TANNOY REVEALS first or even use a decent pair of home audio speakers before these!! NOT RECOMMENDED!

In the course of studio engineering and production, I've been exposed to a multitude of great monitor speakers. And let's face it, NSM-10's are crappy sounding speakers. They are very harsh and will tire your ears. However, I cannot do a recording without them. For the purpose of providing a standard reference to translate studio signals to the drivers of the outside world, the NSM-10's do this better than nothing else can. Go ahead, try to get a guitar to scream out of a Genelec and then see if still screams once you hear it in your car or audiophile home system. It likely will be very weak. When one mixes on the NSM-10's, one can be confident that the relationships in volume between the tracks is preserved from system to system. Don't ask me why, it just works. Recording is all about balance and dynamics. Your mics, pre-amps and the quality of your signal paths are the largest factor in the quality of the signals reaching your recording medium. So what if you can't hear every freaking detail and nuance out of these speakers. If you don't have top-notch signals going into them, you will end up with crap anyways. Let the detail be revealed by the audiophile with his B&W's. And of course, a properly recorded song will dance out of a cheap radio. Of course, the bass on these small speakers isn't there. One should use these monitors in conjunction with properly designed bass monitors, such as those manufactured by JBL professional. Also the little Auratone monitors will help you of course with balance. Even if your control-room isn't up to professional specs, placement of course, does matter. Follow the manufactures' recommendations. And make sure that you face the speakers so that the tweeters are on the far side from the listener! Audio engineers and the like know what these speakers are for and know their strengths and weaknesses. There is no such thing as a perfect speaker. We all need a point of reference that we can be comfortable with.

What the engineer heard and wanted you to hear.

Lacks the clarity and detail that other speakers can reveal and that no one knew was there until this moment..

This speaker poses an interesting truth. Its widespread recording studio use means that its output is what the engineer heard in the studio, and that is what he wanted your to hear in the home during playback of the recording. It thus yields the true sound in the chain of fidelity from performance to playback. Recognizing this, I purchased a. pair of NS 10MT, speakers derived from the NSM 10 design, but modified slightly for use as home theater front speakers. They are magnetically sheilded and a bass reflex design instead of acoustic suspension. Listening to them, I can say that the sound is not bad, indeed ii is pretty good, and must have considerable fidelity to what hsppened in the recording session However my preferred sound comes from speakerws that go beyond what the engineer heard and wanted me to hear. Thus my preferred sound would seemingly transend that which the engineer heard as well,as what he did not hear.This would seem to mean that the engineer did better than he knew and only I am privy to the truth, but how can the truth be something revealed only to the final auditioner? Is this some kind of quantum miasma?

Similar Products Used:

a/d/s/, RALabs, Mission, NEAR