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

[ZolaIII]

@Blumlein 88 you can work on direct driver response, on port cuff you can't. Future more port use is done pore on any HiFi speakers or studio monitors (not reinforcing what they can but pushing on it's own and in front) and loses and regain function on different SPL. Today if you would make close bufle speakers that would go to 80~90 Hz (6.5 to 8" woofer) it would be considered ridiculous from so cold experts hire and elsewhere and little do they know that's still a driver's limit. As you will use sub's anyway port is just obstacle however you look at it. If they both are close bufle and sub's not being bigger than 10" you are there, regarding speakers at least. When you have time domain and low decay times you can pretty much simulate any other speakers or rooms on them and take care it doesn't sound more horrible on them then it has to. You (hopefully) won't degrade and destroy the mix for that purpose alone but you will make a lot of small adjustments to ensure so. Kids today mostly use IEM's so they will be on pretty good full range levels (better than most HiFi systems) and dry without natural reverberation (actually similar to studio setup). No one is telling go out and buy old NS10M in the bad shape (which more than 90% are). They time has passed and CLA 10 is abomination in that regard. But I don't know single person here who would have something (at least much or objective) against let's say KH310's and a pair of KF750's. Yes every objective good speakers can be used and you will plug the port's while doing so. Reality is time space continuum and nothing will change that.

 

[dfuller]

@Blumlein 88 you can work on direct driver response, on port cuff you can't. Future more port use is done pore on any HiFi speakers or studio monitors (not reinforcing what they can but pushing on it's own and in front) and loses and regain function on different SPL. Today if you would make close bufle speakers that would go to 80~90 Hz (6.5 to 8" woofer) it would be considered ridiculous from so cold experts hire and elsewhere and little do they know that's still a driver's limit. As you will use sub's anyway port is just obstacle however you look at it. If they both are close bufle and sub's not being bigger than 10" you are there, regarding speakers at least. When you have time domain and low decay times you can pretty much simulate any other speakers or rooms on them and take care it doesn't sound more horrible on them then it has to. You (hopefully) won't degrade and destroy the mix for that purpose alone but you will make a lot of small adjustments to ensure so. Kids today mostly use IEM's so they will be on pretty good full range levels (better than most HiFi systems) and dry without natural reverberation (actually similar to studio setup). No one is telling go out and buy old NS10M in the bad shape (which more than 90% are). They time has passed and CLA 10 is abomination in that regard. But I don't know single person here who would have something (at least much or objective) against let's say KH310's and a pair of KF750's. Yes every objective good speakers can be used and you will plug the port's while doing so. Reality is time space continuum and nothing will change that.

Ports aren't the devil, they just take some designing. Chuff is hard to escape but not impossible at normal levels (harder at truly ear shattering levels, but not impossible - though this is somewhere that 1/4 wavelength TLs come into favor as they tend to be more immune to turbulence).

Group delay is a non-factor if the design is done properly.

I'll note that certain port alignments, ones that get more extension out of a smaller box, tend to be non-flat alignments and therefore are more prone to ring.

 

[ZolaIII]

Ports aren't the devil, they just take some designing. Chuff is hard to escape but not impossible at normal levels (harder at truly ear shattering levels, but not impossible - though this is somewhere that 1/4 wavelength TLs come into favor as they tend to be more immune to turbulence).

Group delay is a non-factor if the design is done properly.

I'll note that certain port alignments, ones that get more extension out of a smaller box, tend to be non-flat alignments and therefore are more prone to ring.

There is much more and I ain't against ported design if done properly to reinforce and lift woffer's direct response but this day's you will find those in; DIY, rather good PA and perhaps some cinema speakers. Physics are the factor + design limits (every design has set of their own). My approach whose always been make least problems as you can and you will have much less to cope with.

 

[TheZebraKilledDarwin]

The problem with this laundry list is vs some reference of a close to transparent speaker what is a good choice? The answer is you cannot have one. A handful of iffy speakers with various deficiencies vs listeners with thousands of sub-par speakers with thousands of deficiencies cannot be tested for this way. It always seemed to me the results could corrupt how good a mix worked on good speakers. Is there some magical sub-optimal mix that works with lesser speakers that applies to most of them? I don't see how.

It doesn’t surprise me that you don’t know this: most people on hi-fi forums don’t know any better. They’re just repeating what they’ve read on forums, which often double as sales platforms with salespeople masquerading as neutral experts.
There are two reasons why I believe NS-10s—or why I know Auratones—are still used:

• NS-10s and Auratones aren’t poorly measuring speakers: They have a very good transient response. This might be hard to grasp in a forum that misinterprets Toole’s work and claims the time domain doesn’t matter, but the fact is, transient response directly affects your ability to hear transients in sound. Transients in a mix determine whether something sounds pleasant and smooth or harsh and ugly. You only need to listen to one second of a mix to immediately tell if it sounds professional or amateurish—because of the quality of the transients.
  This is especially important for amateurs and young producers (and should dominate discussions instead of unhelpful topics). They often lack mentorship or the budget to buy adequate mics and expensive preamps, or they’re simply trying to save money. Inexperienced mixers are often steered toward bass-heavy speakers that don’t have the best transient response.

• The excellent transient response also ties directly to the quality of stereo imaging. Less optimal monitors in suboptimal rooms tend to trick you into turning up a chorus or widener, making it sound better and better—while Auratones quickly reveal if the side channel is too loud or doesn’t sound good. Auratones also expose reverb quality like nothing else. On Auratones, I can hear the antiphase of the snare room in Billie Jean. Show me any speaker three times the price that can do that. A guitar panned to the side and fattened with a chorus? Auratones will call out if the chorus is overdone or doesn’t sound good long before other speakers do.

These key attributes of these “horrible speakers” connect to another critical factor, which is often dismissed as unimportant—or even the worst thing:

• The shy bass response of these speakers, though objectively not measuring well, is a godsend and incredibly helpful:
  Sound quality lives in the midrange. Customers and hi-fi forums are obsessed with the extremes, which are the least important. But if you work in professional audio, the midrange is where the sound is defined. It may sound counterintuitive if you lack experience, but bass problems can be heard in the midrange. Harshness issues also occur in the midrange, not at the extremes.

With these speakers, you can tell if the bass sounds good or has problems. Every good mix sounds good on them, while flat speakers with strong bass reproduction make some mixes or keys sound better or worse, depending on which room modes are triggered. The louder the bass, the more room modes affect what you hear.
When the bass is shy, the overtones become relatively louder, and room modes have less impact on your judgment. Of course, other tools are used for further inspection, but you can hear a problem—which is exactly what monitors should do.
Also very important:

• Most playback systems don’t have the best bass response (or they’re uneven due to room modes or overly long decay times). To make kicks and bass instruments sound full across all systems, these sounds need presence in the midrange, which requires subtle additional distortion. But on flat speakers with powerful bass, saturation in the low mids is very hard to detect. If you have a headache and someone hits your finger with a hammer, do you still feel the headache? Probably not. Similarly, if the kick or bass is powerful, you won’t notice a lack of saturation on a system that plays flat. But on these bass-shy speakers (with their excellent transient response), it’s much easier to hear.

 

[Purité Audio]

Speakers with no bass ideal for evaluating bass, yes of course makes sense.
Keith

 

[dfuller]

Speakers with no bass ideal for evaluating bass, yes of course makes sense.
Keith

I mean, you can make the argument that bass will cloud out midrange, so having a 100-200hz hpf is not a terrible idea to switch on and off, but...

 

[Blumlein 88]

It doesn’t surprise me that you don’t know this: most people on hi-fi forums don’t know any better. They’re just repeating what they’ve read on forums, which often double as sales platforms with salespeople masquerading as neutral experts.
There are two reasons why I believe NS-10s—or why I know Auratones—are still used:

• NS-10s and Auratones aren’t poorly measuring speakers: They have a very good transient response. This might be hard to grasp in a forum that misinterprets Toole’s work and claims the time domain doesn’t matter, but the fact is, transient response directly affects your ability to hear transients in sound. Transients in a mix determine whether something sounds pleasant and smooth or harsh and ugly. You only need to listen to one second of a mix to immediately tell if it sounds professional or amateurish—because of the quality of the transients.
  This is especially important for amateurs and young producers (and should dominate discussions instead of unhelpful topics). They often lack mentorship or the budget to buy adequate mics and expensive preamps, or they’re simply trying to save money. Inexperienced mixers are often steered toward bass-heavy speakers that don’t have the best transient response.

• The excellent transient response also ties directly to the quality of stereo imaging. Less optimal monitors in suboptimal rooms tend to trick you into turning up a chorus or widener, making it sound better and better—while Auratones quickly reveal if the side channel is too loud or doesn’t sound good. Auratones also expose reverb quality like nothing else. On Auratones, I can hear the antiphase of the snare room in Billie Jean. Show me any speaker three times the price that can do that. A guitar panned to the side and fattened with a chorus? Auratones will call out if the chorus is overdone or doesn’t sound good long before other speakers do.

These key attributes of these “horrible speakers” connect to another critical factor, which is often dismissed as unimportant—or even the worst thing:

• The shy bass response of these speakers, though objectively not measuring well, is a godsend and incredibly helpful:
  Sound quality lives in the midrange. Customers and hi-fi forums are obsessed with the extremes, which are the least important. But if you work in professional audio, the midrange is where the sound is defined. It may sound counterintuitive if you lack experience, but bass problems can be heard in the midrange. Harshness issues also occur in the midrange, not at the extremes.

With these speakers, you can tell if the bass sounds good or has problems. Every good mix sounds good on them, while flat speakers with strong bass reproduction make some mixes or keys sound better or worse, depending on which room modes are triggered. The louder the bass, the more room modes affect what you hear.
When the bass is shy, the overtones become relatively louder, and room modes have less impact on your judgment. Of course, other tools are used for further inspection, but you can hear a problem—which is exactly what monitors should do.
Also very important:

• Most playback systems don’t have the best bass response (or they’re uneven due to room modes or overly long decay times). To make kicks and bass instruments sound full across all systems, these sounds need presence in the midrange, which requires subtle additional distortion. But on flat speakers with powerful bass, saturation in the low mids is very hard to detect. If you have a headache and someone hits your finger with a hammer, do you still feel the headache? Probably not. Similarly, if the kick or bass is powerful, you won’t notice a lack of saturation on a system that plays flat. But on these bass-shy speakers (with their excellent transient response), it’s much easier to hear.

I knew all of this. I was hoping you had something new to add. In fact all of this has been hashed out earlier in this very thread. All the things you posted are what people have been telling us about these speakers for years. I get that most of the music is in the midrange. When I mix I always try it with the FR rolled off on both ends to see if something is badly off. But I am not a pro. The idea I need to add some subtle additional distortion to make bass sound full across all systems doesn't sit well with me. Besides how much is optimum if that even works with restricted systems will vary with every different compromised system. How do you even say that with a straight face, "to make kicks and bass instruments sound full across all systems". Yeah ....right. Some translation magic from a particular broken speaker and it sounds good across ALL SYSTEMS.

So tell me this, is the NS-10 or the Auratone the most optimally broken design to get these benefits? And if neither, what monitor speaker characteristics would be optimum to ensure a mix is good across all systems? Exactly how should it be broken? If it is about transient response in the kicks, why not a clean transparent speaker with a closed box design appropriate for this?

 

[dfuller]

The idea I need to add some subtle additional distortion to make bass sound full across all systems doesn't sit well with me.

I find this occasionally useful (e.g. from Waves MaxxBass) but I think that overall it's a bit silly and the better move is to just have the attack of the kick sit correctly. Trying to get real low end out of a phone speaker is silly, there's no point in mixing for that beyond "it doesn't sound completely broken". And, yes, band limiting your speakers does help that.

• NS-10s and Auratones aren’t poorly measuring speakers: They have a very good transient response. This might be hard to grasp in a forum that misinterprets Toole’s work and claims the time domain doesn’t matter, but the fact is, transient response directly affects your ability to hear transients in sound. Transients in a mix determine whether something sounds pleasant and smooth or harsh and ugly. You only need to listen to one second of a mix to immediately tell if it sounds professional or amateurish—because of the quality of the transients.

Ah, but they aren't especially good in their transient behavior.

This is a burst decay plot of an NS10 (courtesy of Erin's Audio Corner). Note that the decay is measured in periods, not absolute time - this makes it a more useful measurement than a traditional CSD that artificially shows bass as having longer decay.

I see a few pretty bad resonances right around 2.5-4k.

Compare this to a ported speaker in the same size class, the Yamaha NS-800 (also courtesy of Erin's Audio Corner).

Would you look at that? The port doesn't actually cause any transient problems.

 

[ZolaIII]

I find this occasionally useful (e.g. from Waves MaxxBass) but I think that overall it's a bit silly and the better move is to just have the attack of the kick sit correctly. Trying to get real low end out of a phone speaker is silly, there's no point in mixing for that beyond "it doesn't sound completely broken". And, yes, band limiting your speakers does help that.

Ah, but they aren't especially good in their transient behavior.

This is a burst decay plot of an NS10 (courtesy of Erin's Audio Corner). Note that the decay is measured in periods, not absolute time - this makes it a more useful measurement than a traditional CSD that artificially shows bass as having longer decay.

I see a few pretty bad resonances right around 2.5-4k.

View attachment 437089


Compare this to a ported speaker in the same size class, the Yamaha NS-800 (also courtesy of Erin's Audio Corner).

View attachment 437091

Would you look at that? The port doesn't actually cause any transient problems.

Chery picking but why not. Now my turn to do the same. I picked first Genelec I found with measurements done by Erin to keep data comparation in line.

By the way this is much more typical behavior for given enclosure designs. Fun part is that even Spinorama deliberately didn't include any EQ score for NS10M's but it did for CLA 10 and NS10M's improve it.

 

[thewas]

Well, sure the much larger bass of the Avantone compresses less but it simply also doesn't make any deep bass in comparison:

Now about the group delay, on such SAM models it can be reduced where it matters by using the extended phase linearity mode:

So those "issues" aren't really ones when compared fairly, but the issues of the NS-10 like poor directivity cannot be corrected.

 

[ZolaIII]

Well, sure the much larger bass of the Avantone compresses less but it simply also doesn't make any deep bass in comparison:

View attachment 437120

Now about the group delay, on such SAM models it can be reduced where it matters by using the extended phase linearity mode:

View attachment 437121

So those "issues" aren't really ones when compared fairly, but the issues of the NS-10 like poor directivity cannot be corrected.

What can be corrected? It shows where port takes over, it also shows that particular Genelac won't be able to cope even with main bass peeks it will compress and fall apart. Phase correction to free field measurements... I mean really. Vertical directiviti of NS10M is fine in the range of ±20 degrees and I whose referring to better highs compared to CLA which would improve calculated EQ score and such with perfect sub.

 

[thewas]

What can be corrected?

The group delay, any linear phase EQ can do that by the way, while the directivity problems cannot be corrected.

it also shows that particular Genelac won't be able to cope even with main bass peeks it will compress and fall apart

The 8331 is a small monitor and not made to play 102 dB, compare the 8" woofer NS-10 to also an 8" Genelec and things will look differently.

Phase correction to free field measurements... I mean really.

What is the problem there?

Vertical directiviti of NS10M is fine in the range of ±20 degrees

But the horizontal and total is a mess:

 

[ZolaIII]

@thewas
1. obviously they can't from where port takes over.
2. NS is almost 9" and it's fair to compare 60 years old speakers to today's one with DSP?
Put the DSP on both at least.
3. Doesn't make sense and as this is raw comparation don't you think that's cheating?
4. As on most speakers. As they will sit on console table that's really, really decisive.

 

[Blumlein 88]

@thewas
1. obviously they can't from where port takes over.
2. NS is almost 9" and it's fair to compare 60 years old speakers to today's one with DSP?
Put the DSP on both at least.
3. Doesn't make sense and as this is raw comparation don't you think that's cheating?
4. As on most speakers. As they will sit on console table that's really, really decisive.

What is cheating? I think it is fair to ask why 60 year old speakers are being defended? Either the 60 year old deficiencies are a bonus or it makes no sense. If the broken design is what makes it special, then you don't want DSP to correct away that aspect.

 

[ZolaIII]

What is cheating? I think it is fair to ask why 60 year old speakers are being defended? Either the 60 year old deficiencies are a bonus or it makes no sense. If the broken design is what makes it special, then you don't want DSP to correct away that aspect.

Did it fall apart? Genelec did! Why wouldn't you use DSP this day's and age? You want me to bring up big horses from Yamaha and reworked to active DSP? There is a Japanese member proud with such NS-1000.
You make layering and awareness to hot area in the back you want to work on exactly the same way today (and that's hottest that will ever be). Braking news there were no DSP's before 60 years. For that little it does good it does it with flying pass. You don't like them, that's fine. Today it doesn't make sense as with really good studio setup in both domains you can emulate almost anything (relevant things).

 

[thewas]

@thewas
1. obviously they can't from where port takes over.
2. NS is almost 9" and it's fair to compare 60 years old speakers to today's one with DSP?
Put the DSP on both at least.
3. Doesn't make sense and as this is raw comparation don't you think that's cheating?
4. As on most speakers. As they will sit on console table that's really, really decisive.

1. As said they are much smaller.

2. +3. As said DSP won't correct the directivity issues of the NS-10 while it can reduce the group delay of a ported loudspeaker.

4. No, most good loudspeakers (not only modern) offer also good horizontal and total directivity.

You want me to bring up big horses from Yamaha and reworked to active DSP? There is a Japanese member proud with such NS-1000.

The NS-1000 is good with EQ as its directivity is continuous being a 3-way with a large mid dome, so it can be corrected via EQ while the NS-10 not, these topics have been discussed endless times here:

Which speakers are the Classical Music Pros using?

The Harbeth speaker you show looks more like the old fashioned "smiley face" than anything - curious as it comes from someone who had been involved with at least some of the BBC monitor developments. One wonders what kinds of listening tests they did to end up with this . . . Starting with a...

www.audiosciencereview.com

omnidirectional loudspeakers = best design available

Makes me wonder what the "flagship speaker" in the graph is ? I'll keep wondering , you show professional courtesy by not name calling anything , suppose the designer of it can see the graph in your book and recognize it :) What the heck, it was a Yamaha. Not a Yamaha designed in Japan, where...

www.audiosciencereview.com

omnidirectional loudspeakers = best design available

Makes me wonder what the "flagship speaker" in the graph is ? I'll keep wondering , you show professional courtesy by not name calling anything , suppose the designer of it can see the graph in your book and recognize it :) What the heck, it was a Yamaha. Not a Yamaha designed in Japan, where...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[ZolaIII]

1. As said I chary picked to show physical bounderis and more typical port design dependencies.
2. Which directivity issue on ± 20° vertically?
3. A direct comparation as measured.
4. Nope, great majority of bookshelf's don't even today.
Yes we do repeat our stuff quit a lot. In that regard I am off and have a nice time.

 

[thewas]

1. As said I chary picked to show physical bounderis and more typical port design dependencies.
2. Which directivity issue on ± 20° vertically?
3. A direct comparation as measured.
4. Nope, great majority of bookshelf's don't even today.
Yes we do repeat our stuff quit a lot. In that regard I am off and have a nice time.

1. Which are known/trivial and I showed you that these are not real significant disadvantages when you compare apples to apples.
2. Again, just vertically ± 20° is not enough when there are significant horizontal and total directivity issues.
4. Good monitors and even hifi loudspeakers nowadays have good directivity (even rarely many decades ago), of course still bad exists but what is the sense of comparing to such, even more when good directivity doesn't really cost much and furthermore we are talking about studios where having good tools is even more important.
Have a nice time too.