This is a review and detailed measurements of the Yamaha HS5 Powered Monitor (speaker). I purchased it this afternoon for US $200 which is the price that it goes for everywhere. This is for a single unit by the way.
The industrial design of the HS5 is fantastic:
Get the larger ones and I am sure you can charge another $10/hour for your mix. 
Fit and finish seems nice with a solid single enclosure encompassing the baffle (front and surround).
Here is a shot of the back:
I have not read the manual but while I was setting it up, turned itself off, ruining my first measurement. Don't know why there is no auto-on-off switch anymore on monitors.
Note that there is no RCA jack. For my listening tests I just used a TRS to RCA and it worked fine. The acoustic measurements were made by driving the XLR connection from the Klippel KA3 analyzer balanced output.
Temperature during the test was a "balmy" 57 degrees F. Testing is 10 foot above sea level.
As noted, the unit is brand new. I thought of breaking it first but figure it would then not make any sound so decided against it.
Speaker Acoustic Measurements
Measurements were performed using Klippel Near-field Scanner which eliminates the effects of reflections and noise in my measurement room. So the results are comparable to "anachoic chamber."
As usual, we start with our CEA/CTA-2034 spinorama graph:
The Klippen NFS nicely gets rid of room modes and gives us ruler flat bass response all the way to nearly 400 Hz. But there is some unfortunate peaking that lasts quite a while until 2 kHz or so. There is some unevenness above that as well.
Fortunately our early window directivity (dashed blue) shows a rather smooth curve so some amount of EQ may be effective in killing some of that peaking.
Taking into account reflections in a "typical room" we get a predicted in-room response of:
We yet again see the excess energy in mid-frequencies. But also a graph that averages to a straight line. Ideally we see one that is sloping down. Otherwise the speaker is going to sound "bright."
Story is told then. On-axis is not flat as it should be. And we have too much high frequency energy. If you are doing your mix using this with no EQ, you will be creating a dull mix with mid-range sucked out.
For advanced readers, we have more measurements.
Advanced Speaker Measurements
A member post this little graph saying Harman has measured this speaker and showed this for its spinorama:
We have excellent agreement until we get to > 10 kHz. It is possible our microphones differ a bit in that region or the speaker samples are different. The important aspects are identical though from flat bass to peak around 1 kHz.
Horizontal reflections are not that bad:
Vertical though as is often the case is much rougher;
If you need more absorption in your room floor and ceiling would make good candidates as noted.
If you are a fan of the step function that stereophile published, today is your happy day:
Finally the pretty contour shots:
Distortion Measurements
Got tired of you all asking for this so here is the first draft:
The top-graph shows the in-room (in-lab) measurement including reflections. We see that the peaking mid-range is still there.
My measurement mic does not have much travel so I have standardized on 1/3 meter distance from tweeter. To compute 90 dB at 2 meter SPL, I shoot for 106 dB given the shorter distance.
We see that the distortion products are all from the woofer. Shown as a percentage we see this more clearly:
Thankfully the distortion is low where our hearing is astonishingly more sensitive (2 to 5 kHz).
During the sweeps, the port, pardon my language, farted like nobody's business. It didn't seem like port noise but some kind of nasty high rate brrrrrrrrrrr noise. Stuffed some cotton in the port but then I could hear it from the front. This at the start of the sweep which makes me think is responsible for those large peaks below 100 Hz. It would have been worse if the port had been in the front. You sure as heck don't want to experience that "fart" facing you....
I was going to post the CSD waterfall but I cannot make any sense out of it so I am not.
Informal Listening Test
Told my wife to turn off the TV sound so I could get ready to listen to the speakers, not realizing it was in the middle of something she was doing. She shut down the TV but I sensed this was not the time to ask her to participate in another listening test. So this is me alone, sighted and all. If you don't like it, skip to conclusions.
I level matched the JBL LSR 305P Mark II against the Yamaha HS5 although it didn't seem to be necessary. The Yamaha HS5 came closest to give the JBL a competition from the few I have tested. It had a clean and rather flat sound. Alas, it has no bass or low end. The JBL sounded like it had a little subwoofer in it by comparison. In that regard, it may be considered a bit "boomy" but I am saying that with the slightest hint of being so relative to Yamaha. If I were to give the JBL a score of 8, then Yamaha would get 5 or 6.
Conclusions
It is a relief to not find the Yamaha HS5 a piece of garbage. Could not imagine 2000 people who bought it on Amazon descending on me to complain. It is a "good" speaker. Just not ideal or excellent as it should be. The excess mid-range and lack of any oomph in 200 to 400 Hz makes it very bass shy sounding.
Yamaha nails the looks though for such a budget product. Overall, the HS5 powered monitor is "fine."
P.S. Text files are enclosed for some of the measurements.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Probably spent near $1,000 buying speakers to test and so I am deeply "broke." Don't even know what I am going to have for lunch tomorrow. Don't let me stay in this funk and donate what you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The industrial design of the HS5 is fantastic:
Fit and finish seems nice with a solid single enclosure encompassing the baffle (front and surround).
Here is a shot of the back:
I have not read the manual but while I was setting it up, turned itself off, ruining my first measurement.
Don't know why there is no auto-on-off switch anymore on monitors.Note that there is no RCA jack. For my listening tests I just used a TRS to RCA and it worked fine. The acoustic measurements were made by driving the XLR connection from the Klippel KA3 analyzer balanced output.
Temperature during the test was a "balmy" 57 degrees F. Testing is 10 foot above sea level.
As noted, the unit is brand new. I thought of breaking it first but figure it would then not make any sound so decided against it.
Speaker Acoustic Measurements
Measurements were performed using Klippel Near-field Scanner which eliminates the effects of reflections and noise in my measurement room. So the results are comparable to "anachoic chamber."
As usual, we start with our CEA/CTA-2034 spinorama graph:
The Klippen NFS nicely gets rid of room modes and gives us ruler flat bass response all the way to nearly 400 Hz. But there is some unfortunate peaking that lasts quite a while until 2 kHz or so. There is some unevenness above that as well.
Fortunately our early window directivity (dashed blue) shows a rather smooth curve so some amount of EQ may be effective in killing some of that peaking.
Taking into account reflections in a "typical room" we get a predicted in-room response of:
We yet again see the excess energy in mid-frequencies. But also a graph that averages to a straight line. Ideally we see one that is sloping down. Otherwise the speaker is going to sound "bright."
Story is told then. On-axis is not flat as it should be. And we have too much high frequency energy. If you are doing your mix using this with no EQ, you will be creating a dull mix with mid-range sucked out.
For advanced readers, we have more measurements.
Advanced Speaker Measurements
A member post this little graph saying Harman has measured this speaker and showed this for its spinorama:
We have excellent agreement until we get to > 10 kHz. It is possible our microphones differ a bit in that region or the speaker samples are different. The important aspects are identical though from flat bass to peak around 1 kHz.
Horizontal reflections are not that bad:
Vertical though as is often the case is much rougher;
If you need more absorption in your room floor and ceiling would make good candidates as noted.
If you are a fan of the step function that stereophile published, today is your happy day:
Finally the pretty contour shots:
Distortion Measurements
Got tired of you all asking for this so here is the first draft:
The top-graph shows the in-room (in-lab) measurement including reflections. We see that the peaking mid-range is still there.
My measurement mic does not have much travel so I have standardized on 1/3 meter distance from tweeter. To compute 90 dB at 2 meter SPL, I shoot for 106 dB given the shorter distance.
We see that the distortion products are all from the woofer. Shown as a percentage we see this more clearly:
Thankfully the distortion is low where our hearing is astonishingly more sensitive (2 to 5 kHz).
During the sweeps, the port, pardon my language, farted like nobody's business. It didn't seem like port noise but some kind of nasty high rate brrrrrrrrrrr noise.
Stuffed some cotton in the port but then I could hear it from the front. This at the start of the sweep which makes me think is responsible for those large peaks below 100 Hz. It would have been worse if the port had been in the front. You sure as heck don't want to experience that "fart" facing you....I was going to post the CSD waterfall but I cannot make any sense out of it so I am not.
Informal Listening Test
Told my wife to turn off the TV sound so I could get ready to listen to the speakers, not realizing it was in the middle of something she was doing. She shut down the TV but I sensed this was not the time to ask her to participate in another listening test.
So this is me alone, sighted and all. If you don't like it, skip to conclusions.I level matched the JBL LSR 305P Mark II against the Yamaha HS5 although it didn't seem to be necessary. The Yamaha HS5 came closest to give the JBL a competition from the few I have tested. It had a clean and rather flat sound. Alas, it has no bass or low end. The JBL sounded like it had a little subwoofer in it by comparison. In that regard, it may be considered a bit "boomy" but I am saying that with the slightest hint of being so relative to Yamaha. If I were to give the JBL a score of 8, then Yamaha would get 5 or 6.
Conclusions
It is a relief to not find the Yamaha HS5 a piece of garbage. Could not imagine 2000 people who bought it on Amazon descending on me to complain.
It is a "good" speaker. Just not ideal or excellent as it should be. The excess mid-range and lack of any oomph in 200 to 400 Hz makes it very bass shy sounding. Yamaha nails the looks though for such a budget product. Overall, the HS5 powered monitor is "fine."
P.S. Text files are enclosed for some of the measurements.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Probably spent near $1,000 buying speakers to test and so I am deeply "broke." Don't even know what I am going to have for lunch tomorrow. Don't let me stay in this funk and donate what you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
