For some people, yes. Other people have said what they want in a system is what they call good "translation." That means if you mix a record on the speakers, can you pretty reliably know that the mix will sound good on most other systems. For people who earn a living that way, I suppose their criteria could be thought of as some type professional requirement, perhaps not exactly the same as what you are calling high-end. In fact, as an old and rather extreme example, Bob Clearmountain, who mixed quite a few very successful records only mixed on Yamaha NS-10s, which sound awful, with very weak bass and screechy highs. He said his mixes only translated well if he used those speakers. In more recent years, other much better sounding speakers have gained a reputation as being good for translation as well. But not all speakers with impressive specs seem to work equally well for that application. It also varies from person to person for what speakers seem to work best. For people who don't mix, but like listening, I suppose a question may arise as to what experience you want to have. What the mix engineer heard? What sounds good to you? Of course, if you have a mastering quality system and room, then you can experience what the mastering engineer heard. That would be nice, but it sure is costly.
I like accuracy and low distortion. I like music to sound like real music. I choose recordings which reflect that as much as possible. Plus I can record live music also and play it back as well. Yes, it IS nice. But you have to try to GO For IT.... DIY will save a lot of money and then there is the Credit Card and time payments. 🙂
THx-RNMarsh
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This is the result of proper room acoustics selection/treatment. And speaker selection. The response does not vary much at all around the general area. There is no speaker bump... acoustics, some cancellation effects etc. EQ will just be used to flatten and smooth it out even more. No, with it this good to begin with, a smoothing is all that will occure... some more fine details will be found in the music, too.
High Resolution/definition systems are very revealing of flaws in minute amounts. It isnt that my hearing is getting better... just the system is getting better.
THx-RNMarsh
It's not unusual for people to dislike EQing and DSP results. It seems like there's a limit before something seems wrong.
BTW, I use "inferior" or incorrect equipment to make differences in what I'm adjusting in an amplifier or such more apparent. For example it's a lot easier to tell if you've got a problem with inadequate power on inefficient speakers and a low power amp, than on high sensitivity speakers. It allows me to milk it till I get the most. So I suspect that guy using the dumpy Yamaha NS-10's had the same situation. Basically if he could make those bad speakers sound their best, then the music would sound really good on other speakers. If he were to use better speakers he may not be able to easily discern the smaller differences on them, that might be reflected in a much bigger way on the NS-10's.
High resolution, low distortion, can be wonderful. But then again there's things that somehow do it wrong, like the Oppo's as a source and not a transport, as many have reported here and elsewhere.
BTW, I use "inferior" or incorrect equipment to make differences in what I'm adjusting in an amplifier or such more apparent. For example it's a lot easier to tell if you've got a problem with inadequate power on inefficient speakers and a low power amp, than on high sensitivity speakers. It allows me to milk it till I get the most. So I suspect that guy using the dumpy Yamaha NS-10's had the same situation. Basically if he could make those bad speakers sound their best, then the music would sound really good on other speakers. If he were to use better speakers he may not be able to easily discern the smaller differences on them, that might be reflected in a much bigger way on the NS-10's.
High resolution, low distortion, can be wonderful. But then again there's things that somehow do it wrong, like the Oppo's as a source and not a transport, as many have reported here and elsewhere.
Okay. Somehow for me it is different. I have worked with orchestras, jazz bands, acoustic acts, etc. Been right up close and heard how the instruments sound. And also heard how they sound at various locations in a good 2,000 - 3,000 seat halls (a pretty good size range for natural acoustics). Also, bigger and smaller venues. To me, I am never stunned by hearing real music sounds. Performances, yes, on occasion, but not due to perfect frequency response or sonic accuracy. A lot of records are made to sound better than real. Judicious EQ, a touch of compression, a little touch very subtle distortion, panning for clarity and separation of sounds more than for reproduction of stage location during the performance, maybe magnetic tape on the master to "glue" individual instruments into something with a little more collective cohesiveness and texture, etc. Done carefully, you can end up with something that you can imagine sounds like the pure documentation of a great performance, but really, it may sound better than that. If you can make it seem more "natural" and "organic" sounding than if you had been standing there in person, why wouldn't you? And usually the artists like it better if you can make it sound a little better than real in a way that is appropriate to the genre. And, if the artist endorses the product as a statement of what they want their music to sound like, why couldn't that be a valid part of their artistic expression that they want the listener to experience?
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RNM,
The term constant directivity with anything but conic sections is kind of a misuse of the term but be that as it may the JBL's do a great job of matching the directivity of the cone driver at the crossover frequency. At the same time you can't call the cone driver constant directivity, that just isn't going to happen.
Bwaslo,
A compression driver is given that name as it truly makes the device act through a ratio of diaphragm to phase plug entrance size which has traditionally been a 10:1 ratio of diaphragm to slot opening ratio. There is no diffraction happening here in the true sense, what you do have is compression and rarefaction in that tiny space between the diaphragm and phase plug entrance. Saying that because the length of the sections between the slot openings and the end of the phase plug causes a flat wavefront is wishful thinking at best. Very few phase plugs actually follow the mathematics literally, they are typically not that accurate and though the original idea was to follow an exponential expansion from the beginning of the slot opening to the end of the throat of the driver this is almost never done, it is a series of conic section approximating an exponential expansion at a couple of points along the axis. The phase plug in the Tannoy coaxial driver is an outlier that does follow the correct expansion rate throughout the phase plug. I don't know that the old Altec tangerine driver actually was anymore accurate than earlier designs, I never took one apart to look at the accuracy of the design.
Many of the earlier horns by Altec, the MantaRay and the JBL's Bi-Radial and the EV horns of the late 70's early 80's relied on diffraction inside the horn to create a wide polar response. The steps in the horn where the edges were caused diffraction and a spreading of the waveform from the shape changes. All horns with a discrete sharp end to the horn will have diffraction below specific frequencies, that is the nature of horns without infinite length.
The term constant directivity with anything but conic sections is kind of a misuse of the term but be that as it may the JBL's do a great job of matching the directivity of the cone driver at the crossover frequency. At the same time you can't call the cone driver constant directivity, that just isn't going to happen.
Bwaslo,
A compression driver is given that name as it truly makes the device act through a ratio of diaphragm to phase plug entrance size which has traditionally been a 10:1 ratio of diaphragm to slot opening ratio. There is no diffraction happening here in the true sense, what you do have is compression and rarefaction in that tiny space between the diaphragm and phase plug entrance. Saying that because the length of the sections between the slot openings and the end of the phase plug causes a flat wavefront is wishful thinking at best. Very few phase plugs actually follow the mathematics literally, they are typically not that accurate and though the original idea was to follow an exponential expansion from the beginning of the slot opening to the end of the throat of the driver this is almost never done, it is a series of conic section approximating an exponential expansion at a couple of points along the axis. The phase plug in the Tannoy coaxial driver is an outlier that does follow the correct expansion rate throughout the phase plug. I don't know that the old Altec tangerine driver actually was anymore accurate than earlier designs, I never took one apart to look at the accuracy of the design.
Many of the earlier horns by Altec, the MantaRay and the JBL's Bi-Radial and the EV horns of the late 70's early 80's relied on diffraction inside the horn to create a wide polar response. The steps in the horn where the edges were caused diffraction and a spreading of the waveform from the shape changes. All horns with a discrete sharp end to the horn will have diffraction below specific frequencies, that is the nature of horns without infinite length.
"make it sound a little better than real"
That is artistic license, that isn't making anything more real than real. Augmented reality isn't more real than real, just different.
Anyone using a pair of NS10's as a reference sure doesn't get my vote for accuracy and I surely don't see how using a poorly sounding speaker can show more than a high efficiency accurate speaker when looking at anything. If you want to use a low efficiency speaker to push an amplifier into distortion that is one thing, but to say that is any kind of accurate test I just don't understand.
That is artistic license, that isn't making anything more real than real. Augmented reality isn't more real than real, just different.
Anyone using a pair of NS10's as a reference sure doesn't get my vote for accuracy and I surely don't see how using a poorly sounding speaker can show more than a high efficiency accurate speaker when looking at anything. If you want to use a low efficiency speaker to push an amplifier into distortion that is one thing, but to say that is any kind of accurate test I just don't understand.
Rather than attempt to write up something about why use NS10s, other people have already written a lot about it. A couple of resources, if anyone is interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_NS-10
https://tektondesign.wordpress.com/...atest-loudspeaker-in-history-the-yamaha-ns10/
If you take an ordinary consumer speaker and set the tweeter or mid driver forward by say 5mm, how much of an audible difference will it make?
I have listened to Yamahas NS-10MS at a friends home studio several times. The first word that comes to mind is hard. Never soft or sweet. Amplification was far from optimal though (Yamaha A100a).
I would say these speakers strongly emphasize the frequencies where our hearing is most sensitive. That´s probably why they work well in the studio. As they say, they help the mix translate. Maybe this is obvious
They do have a very clean spectrum decay according to this paper:
http://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/assetlibrary/n/ns10m.pdf
I would say these speakers strongly emphasize the frequencies where our hearing is most sensitive. That´s probably why they work well in the studio. As they say, they help the mix translate. Maybe this is obvious
They do have a very clean spectrum decay according to this paper:
http://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/assetlibrary/n/ns10m.pdf
Attachments
Alexandre,
the color graph shown earlier a few pages back is the decay plot of the JBL's in a different format than what you just posted. I prefer what you just posted myself for a decay plot , much easier to see what I'm looking for.
the color graph shown earlier a few pages back is the decay plot of the JBL's in a different format than what you just posted. I prefer what you just posted myself for a decay plot , much easier to see what I'm looking for.
I'm not arguing that using the NS-10 makes it more accurate. Given that recordings and masterings are basically exclusively not trying to go for accuracy, it hardly matters. They're just trying to make it sound good. So if they can make it sound good on the NS-10, it sounds good on other speakers, presumably.
But then again what sounds good may be much more related to what a live experience is like. They're likely tweaking things to correct some deficiencies in the process of taking a live-ish thing and turning it into a media. If you talk to someone that does work with recording and mastering, I'd be willing to bet they would never tell you there job is to just be accurate by making sure all the dials and such are set to 0 or balanced. Given that there's even now magazines published on mastering, I'd say it's a little more complicated. Now are they going for a produced album sound, or a live sound? Matters of taste...
Oh and my intention is not to be driving my amplifier into distortion/clipping earlier. The goal is to see how far I can push not getting there
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Destroyer,
My opinion has always been that you want to master on the best sounding speakers, in a great room and with the best electronics you can find.
There is also a big difference between recording chamber music or orchestral music and what you would do with a rock and roll band. Those are going to be mixed very differently and then yes in the studio a R&R band is using all the effects and equipment to create a idealized sound, not typically what they can do in a live show. That is the art of production.
My opinion has always been that you want to master on the best sounding speakers, in a great room and with the best electronics you can find.
There is also a big difference between recording chamber music or orchestral music and what you would do with a rock and roll band. Those are going to be mixed very differently and then yes in the studio a R&R band is using all the effects and equipment to create a idealized sound, not typically what they can do in a live show. That is the art of production.
That might be the best way, for some people, or have the most potential. But maybe the guy using the NS-10's just doesn't have that potential. I don't know... it's just a possibility.
A lot of people like Steve Hoffman. I listen to his Waylon Jennings done album somewhat regularly. It's really nice, but it does literally sound mastered in order to make harsh stereo's sound friendlier. It's a little too soft on mine, a touch soft in the car, but I'm sure it sounds great on some Pioneer special from Best Buy. I wouldn't deny that some of it is much nicer to listen to than other offerings, but they aren't part of the soft part. His work does make you think a bit more of an intimate experience in a living room or such.
A lot of people like Steve Hoffman. I listen to his Waylon Jennings done album somewhat regularly. It's really nice, but it does literally sound mastered in order to make harsh stereo's sound friendlier. It's a little too soft on mine, a touch soft in the car, but I'm sure it sounds great on some Pioneer special from Best Buy. I wouldn't deny that some of it is much nicer to listen to than other offerings, but they aren't part of the soft part. His work does make you think a bit more of an intimate experience in a living room or such.
Of course the circle is confused! You would think analog source recording does not exist by reading this.
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