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Avantone CLA-10 (Yamaha NS-10M Clone) Review

Rate this studio monitor

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 164 88.6%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 8 4.3%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 5 2.7%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 8 4.3%

  • Total voters
    185
1) Not sure if this has been posted yet to this sixty-eight page thread :rolleyes: , but it may be of some interest vis-a-vis the NS-10(m) and the tissue paper tweak.
Examining the Yamaha NS-10M “Tissue Paper Phenomenon”
An Analysis of the Industry-Wide Practice of Using a
Tissue-Paper Layer to Reduce High-Frequency Output
Recording Engineer/Producer Magazine, February 1986 – by Bob Hodas
2) Reference to the titular Avantone loudspeaker as a clone -- ahem -- stresses credulity. For example: the Avantone appears to have (??_ a cone tweeter. The NS-10(m)... well... not so much (as they say). ;)
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Never bought into the idea of a bad monitor to check how mixes translate. Why alter your sound so it sounds good on one particular crappy speaker when their are infinite varieties of not good out there.
These were more indicative of car speakers back in the day, which were truly horrid. Now, it might be a decent reference for a phone speaker... which is a surprisingly common listening medium for popular music.
 
I do declare that I always hated them, but one does adjust - and they were ubiquitous back in the day.
Not a lot of alternatives existed either, nowadays you can travel with, and bring into the studio your own pair for near-field.
I agree that the NS-10 was somewhat of a middle of the road representation of what the consumer had in the home, car and so on.
But that cross-section of home audio has fractured, and no reasonable averaging representation exists anymore, in my opinion.
Mixes are all over the place now, for better or worse.
 
What mechanism will moderate the NS-10M's 500-3000Hz peak when placed in a bookshelf?

Do you have some measurements of this effect, that you could share?
Not thre same speaker, but look in the worldradiohistory site, UK pages, HiFi Choice early 80s speaker tests. The Linn Kan is a terrible thing at the best of times (a lot of effort went into making them though), and reviewer Martin Colloms tries to show the sub 500Hz difference that close to wall siting does to them (it's audible, but they still 'squeak' on acoustic instruments).

Many active monitors as tested here, have preset eq curves for various siting arrangements. This is irrespective of the construction of different rooms obviously.
 
NS10 came out in 1978, the modern recording studio had not been around so long then.

A lot of research we take for granted now had yet to be done.

Is it impossible that a wrong idea became adopted and made to work in at least some very imperfect fashion?

afaik the main "revolution" with these things was that someone put speakers on the mixingboard to mix in the nearfield. those studios were constructed with "mains" in the far field. and nowadays it is standard to mix in the nearfield. So at least they had a confirmed reason for the decision.
we would have to analyze the market of bookshelves available back then to get a better picture of how "stupid" it was to decide on these.
 
afaik the main "revolution" with these things was that someone put speakers on the mixingboard to mix in the nearfield. those studios were constructed with "mains" in the far field. and nowadays it is standard to mix in the nearfield. So at least they had a confirmed reason for the decision.
we would have to analyze the market of bookshelves available back then to get a better picture of how "stupid" it was to decide on these.
I think KEF and B&W were both making more accurate small speakers at the time.

Probably some American brands too.

Good point about the change in how mixing was set up. 1978 is ancient history in recording terms, I'd suggest. What makes no sense today might have done then.

I still favour the origin story about them sending the tea boy out down to Tottenham Court Road with instructions to buy a small domestic speaker, and he got the Yams because he liked the white cones. :)
 
These were more indicative of car speakers back in the day, which were truly horrid. Now, it might be a decent reference for a phone speaker... which is a surprisingly common listening medium for popular music.
How many ways could a car speaker be bad? Like dozens at a minimum. So again, the premise is wrong, making all the conclusions wrong. Making the practice non-sensical no matter how common. No way we can know how many recordings were ravished based upon this goofy idea.
 
These were more indicative of car speakers back in the day, which were truly horrid. Now, it might be a decent reference for a phone speaker... which is a surprisingly common listening medium for popular music.
Even a 9 years/generations old Iphone doesn't behave like this and why would such since they have DSP and more audio labs and understanding than most companies in the 70s have, also thanks to the Harman research.
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Source and more measurements (the 45° angle is the flattest as that the typical listening angle when the phone is placed on a table)

Which also shows the problem of that argument, sure, always poor loudspeakers/setups existed and will exist, but the problem is their irregularities are usually not similar which invalides the Auratone/NS-10 assumption as a "compatible" monitor.
 
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Finally we have also a full spin of the Yamaha original which measures significantly different than the here tested Avantone clone, both not good though:
Haven't watched the video. How are we sure it is representative of the sample when new? I looked hard to get one to test but all samples were awful.
 
Haven't watched the video. How are we sure it is representative of the sample when new? I looked hard to get one to test but all samples were awful.
Thankfully Yamaha used back then also to provide measurements so in the video there is a comparison shown to the measurements of Yamaha NS-10M (non studio):
Yamaha NS-10M_ The Iconic Studio Monitor That Shaped Modern Music 7-13 screenshot.png


Also there exist more measurements of the NS-10M and some consistency is there, at least more to that clone with different drivers.
 
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That is probably just a myth inside the engineering bubble. It obviously doesn't make sense.
people used them to mix the midrange, and the midrange only. it just helped them to focus better. midrange is the biggest part of the mix. all instruments have energy there. you have to clean up the mess this creates.

The problem when discussing this on a forum like ASR where most members have never mixed music themselves, is that most of them seem to think that mixing music is entirely about getting the overall tonality balanced. But when it comes to the mixing stage of an audio production, much of the job is about finding a good balance between all the individual tracks which can often be like 20-30 of them, and that's what some mixing engineers found the Yamaha NS-10 useful for as you pointed out. I expect that most of them used a more neutral full-range speaker system when they needed to adjust the overall tonal response of the complete mix.
 
Never bought into the idea of a bad monitor to check how mixes translate. Why alter your sound so it sounds good on one particular crappy speaker when their are infinite varieties of not good out there.

A good translation doesn't mean that the mix is compromised in ways that make it only sound good/okay on “bad” frequency-limited loudspeakers, it means that the mix sounds the best it can do on all speakers and that includes the “good” flat-measuring full-range loudspeakers too.

The translation goes both ways you know, otherwise, it wouldn't be a particularly good translation.
 
But when it comes to the mixing stage of an audio production, much of the job is about finding a good balance between all the individual tracks which can often be like 20-30 of them, and that's what some mixing engineers found the Yamaha NS-10 useful for as you pointed out.
And today, many use neutral speakers instead of that highly colored one. So hard to accept, other than happenstance, that there was some advantage to using the Yamaha.
 
Thankfully Yamaha used back then also to provide measurements so in the video there is a comparison shown to the measurements of Yamaha NS-10M (non studio):
What is the source of that measurement? I posted the Newell's measurements in the review:

index.php


As you see, this shows elevated treble response which the clone also has but Erin's doesn't show.

We need someone who is good at this sort of thing, scan and overlay these measurements so that we can tell what we are looking at.
 
And today, many use neutral speakers instead of that highly colored one. So hard to accept, other than happenstance, that there was some advantage to using the Yamaha.

Yes, everyone should be able to find way better monitors with all the choices available today, and with today's digital workstations, it is also really easy to limit what is heard to the important midrange if that helps someone making the mix to better translate to all types of reproduction systems.

But even if there are some mixing engineers out there who still rely on the NS-10 and get constantly good results doing that, who are we to argue against their proven track record?
 
But even if there are some mixing engineers out there who still rely on the NS-10 and get constantly good results doing that, who are we to argue against their proven track record?
They haven't proven anything. That would require having dual workflow and then comparing the results such as was done by McGill University (on acoustic products). As is, we are left to think that money was left on the table. Maybe the quality is worse than it could have been. Maybe it took longer than it should have. This is why we do research. To answer questions like that.
 
They haven't proven anything. That would require having dual workflow and then comparing the results such as was done by McGill University (on acoustic products). As is, we are left to think that money was left on the table. Maybe the quality is worse than it could have been. Maybe it took longer than it should have. This is why we do research. To answer questions like that.

They have proven it to themselves by getting fast and reliable results that they found translated well. There is very little reason for them to prove it in a sort of AB test for others to see. The loudspeaker just happens to work for them as a tool for mixing, that's all there is to it.

It's the same with your “work” making measurements of loudspeakers, do you have to prove to everyone else that the workflow you have concluded works best for you is the most effective way of getting a fast and reliable result for everyone else?
 
They have proven it to themselves by getting fast and reliable results that they found translated well.
They have very low standard of proof, much like subjectivists have with audio tweaks. That kind of proof should not be brought here.

It's the same with your “work” making measurements of loudspeakers, do you have to prove to everyone else that the workflow you have concluded works best for you is the most effective way of getting a fast and reliable result for everyone else?
If something is broken and obviously so, I would have to prove that it is not impacting the results I am producing. For speakers, there were a lot of objections when I first started with Klippel NFS as folks were not familiar with it. Objections did not go away until I showed that independent measurements such as Neumann's in their anechoic chamber matched mine. It was only then that folks started to trust my work. So until such data exist in favor using a color speaker to produce mixes, the only logical conclusion is that good work was produced despite the failure of the methodology used.
 
They haven't proven anything. That would require having dual workflow and then comparing the results such as was done by McGill University (on acoustic products). As is, we are left to think that money was left on the table. Maybe the quality is worse than it could have been. Maybe it took longer than it should have. This is why we do research. To answer questions like that.
This +10. All these people have proven it to themselves. Well wasn't it Richard Feynman who said, "one should try not to fool oneself, and you are the easiest one to fool."
 
A good translation doesn't mean that the mix is compromised in ways that make it only sound good/okay on “bad” frequency-limited loudspeakers, it means that the mix sounds the best it can do on all speakers and that includes the “good” flat-measuring full-range loudspeakers too.

The translation goes both ways you know, otherwise, it wouldn't be a particularly good translation.
I never thought it was intended to only sound good on bad speakers. The idea is something sounds good on good speakers and can still sound good on more limited speakers. You can never make a mix that is the best it can do on all speakers. Including the good speakers. It is ludicrous. Bad speakers are bad in so many ways how is it not obvious? A mix done for one bad speaker can be even worse than a clean transparent mix on another speaker because they are not bad in even similar ways. Look at ear buds. Some are bass heavy with no treble, some are bright with no bass, some have neither bass nor treble, many are a roller coaster of response. There is no mix that is optimum for all of those or one that can be averaged out not to be terrible on those and still be good or great on really good speakers/headphones. Just being blunt it is a brain damaged idea and always was no matter who did it.

Most recordings are pretty poor. Certainly not an indication this is a good idea to mix with a poor speaker. Even if sometimes the result is good or enjoyed by millions or creates a hit song. Because there are dozens more that did none of that. I wish there was a repository of mixes done on good speakers and then altered for mass consumption after being checked on car 6x9's or these NS10's or various other things. I doubt they would provide vindication. With nothing for evidence except people grading their own work, such a wrong-headed idea is not at all persuasive. What little mixing I've done, the better my monitors, the better the result, and that includes on more than just the really good speakers.
 
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