Yamaha HS5 Powered Monitor Review

[maty]

BTW, Yamaha HS series, amplified with two chipamp LM3886.

https://www.amazon.com.mx/Yamaha-HS5-Monitor-Bi-amplificado-Estudio/dp/B00CFOX420

Yamaha HS8

[Russian] https://prosound.ixbt.com/monitors/yamaha-hs8.shtml

to English: https://translate.google.es/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https://prosound.ixbt.com/monitors/yamaha-hs8.shtml

 

[thewas]

Detailed measurements of the HS7 and HS8 (including directivity, distortion, IMD and time decay) exist as said already here
https://www.soundandrecording.de/equipment/yamaha-hs7-nahfeldmonitor-im-test/
https://www.soundandrecording.de/equipment/yamaha-hs-8/
(just click sideways through the slideshow style measurements plots)

 

[MZKM]

Preference Rating
SCORE : 2.81
SCORE w/ subwoofer: 5.42

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Du623tBi7ywmuBLaqqD9mpQX7hl_sNI-pz3K8SjSTeg/edit?usp=sharing
Calculation is still in beta though.

 

[steve-z]

I owned a pair of HS5s about 4 years ago and used them in my second string hifi setup in the bedroom. The mid prominence was quite evident, as my music source was itunes I used the equaliser to provide about 3DBs of cut at 1khz which made the sound a lot better balanced, I didn’t have any real criticisms at the treble end. With regards to bass, placed on rigid stands about 8-12” from the rear wall I didn’t find the bass to be lacking in fact I thought it was extremely well extended considering the small size of the speaker, in fact with the speaker having a jack input I used to plug in my bass guitar and use it as a makeshift bass guitar amp and it sounded excellent, the low E string (41hz) was reproduced extremely well.
Putting cost into the equation I still reckon they are a good value buy.

 

[BYRTT]

Thanks review amirm and support us those lovely txt files to have fun below is a dirty quick presentation what free VituixCAD gets out of those txt files, also had myself some EQ fun because that program can do tons of fun predicted corrections in schematic tab and also it can output IR wav file of the correction so if amirm have a convolution engine upstream of speaker i can share the predicted correction wav file.

Copy of NFS data files draged into VituixCAD looks as below, in scales are a little bit different to ASR presentation i did a quality check overlay below curves into REW verse NFS txt files and they overlay nicely so looks we can trust what VituixCAD calculates out of tons stepped txt files:

In below predicted EQ fun correction is flat as a pancake on axis 100Hz to light speed, on axis smoothness cost on in room and power response curves so dont invite visitors to listen off axis :

Below predicted EQ correction was consentrated on smooth as possible in room and power response curves and think output some improved polars, on axis is now less smooth but still looks good compared to non EQed performance:

 

[kaka89]

@amirm I am wondering what other factors might affect a speaker's performance.
For example, do speakers behave the same at different SPL levels? In my experience, some speaker sounds best at high volume level, but they do not appear in the spec.
Also maybe we can test can two amplifiers sound the same.

Thank you in advance!

 

[oldsysop]

The top Yamahas are extraordinary and the toy speakers people poke around with these days make us all smile.

100% agree !

 

[aarons915]

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/

I thought people were sending in speakers to measure, is that not happening as much as you hoped? Do you happen to have a relationship with any Hifi shops in the area? They may let you take a display model of speakers to measure, they may want a deposit but it shouldn't cost you anything. It would be nice to get some measurements of some brands like KEF, Monitor Audio, Paradigm and other high end brands that are short on measurements.

 

[majingotan]

As near fields, the HS7 is IMO the most revealing speakers for the price, beating my CA Andromeda IEM in detail retrieval and resolution (not an easy feat) and of course tonality (though tonality is always superior on speakers anyways)

 

[HammerSandwich]

Seems that the bass level was designed for a boost from console or desk. IMO, that's a better decision than adding artificial bloat around 100Hz to make the speaker sound bigger.

Thankfully the distortion is low where our hearing is astonishingly more sensitive (2 to 5 kHz).

Yes, but the elevated distortion at 1.5kHz falls exactly in that window.

 

[MZKM]

@amirm I am wondering what other factors might affect a speaker's performance.
For example, do speakers behave the same at different SPL levels? In my experience, some speaker sounds best at high volume level, but they do not appear in the spec.
Also maybe we can test can two amplifiers sound the same.

Thank you in advance!

SoundStage/NRC tests for compression (linearity) between ~75dB and ~95dB if I recall. I mentioned this too, but looking at some samples shows it usually is less that 2dB difference, usually even less.

As for sounding better/worse depending on volume, that's due to the Equal Loundness Contours. A v-shaped speaker will sound better than a neutral speaker at low volumes, all else equal. That said, some amps have a loundess button to try to account for this; Audyssey has Dynamic EQ which is even better as it know the sensitivity of your speakers, and it has offsets based on the average mastering practices for a medium/genre, movies for instance have much more dynamic range than most music, so the volume on your amp needs to be turned up.

For amps, the difference would be in the output impedance (damping factor) and it's ability to handle difficult loads (low impedance with high phase). I agree it would be interesting to see how the FR of a speaker may be changed based on the amp used; not sure if the Klippel allows for this though.

 

[Thomas_A]

Amirm, when you listen to speakers are they always set up the same way? Now, most of the active ones have setting options usually depending on room and or whether they are setup near wall, corner or far from boundaries. But anyway, the impression may vary depending the proximity to boundaries.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Perhaps when you guys listen to, or own a pair of NS-1000Ms, you'll understand. Until then, it's best you keep quiet. The entire Yamaha lineup form the early 70s onwards adhered to a flat response and even into the 1990s, that was their design priority. I sold them all. I own a bunch of them. They are glorious through the mid-band, an area where silly designers with their 8" or 6.5" 'woofers" and pissant domes thought they could change the world. Sadly, they never even came remotely close.

We never, ever, put a NS-1000M, letalone an NS-1000X (or a 700X) in the same room as anything else. Why? Because people would walk out without buying a speaker or system because they realized they couldn't afford what they really wanted.

Sony came close, and even exceeded Yamaha with a few key speakers, the SS-G7es and 9, but other than that, Yamaha was king in the resolution department. Then Yamaha produced the FX-3 in the late 80s and all bets were off. Even the NS-10000 wasn't as good.

Ask people who own them. People who are extreme audiophiles with multiple pairs of speakers. Guess which ones stay in their collection? The top Yamahas are extraordinary and the toy speakers people poke around with these days make us all smile.

What do you think of J. Gordon Holt's subjective description of the sound of NS-1000s from way back in 1976?

@restorer-john

Some eye candy for those who admire the speaker.
https://www.pinterest.com/yoram611/yamaha-ns-1000/

 

[Pio2001]

Thank you for this new review ! Here are some comments about the distortion.

View attachment 46456

Thankfully the distortion is low where our hearing is astonishingly more sensitive (2 to 5 kHz).

Not really. The frequency of the H2 distorsion is twice the test frequence, and the frequency of the H3 distortion is thrice the test frequency. Which means that the distorsion peak measured at 1500 Hz is heard at 2x1500 = 3000 Hz for H2, and 3x1500 = 4500 Hz for H3, which is, on the contrary, exactly where our hearing is most sensitive !

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 noise is not the port's noise, but the woofer hitting its maximum position. When this kind of noise is heard, the volume must be lowered immediately, the woofer being on the verge of destruction, usually by having the coil's mount ripped off the diaphragm inside the speaker.

 

[nicalexx]

Thanks for the review!

I have a pair of HS50m's, a previous iteration to the HS5's, which I have modified over the years.

Changed the transformer to a toroidal one, snipped the wire for the limiter, taken the grill off the tweeter (quite fatiguing with it on tbh), and put a linear phase EQ (Ikgb QRange) on my computer to compensate for its lack of low mids and bass. I have attempted acoustic filters with boxes and foam to tidy up the low end, they we're very DIY (but they worked!), however they became more of a bugbear to deal with as time went on.

 

[martijn86]

With all these active monitors, I'm curious to see how a set of Adam's would perform. I personally like their sound and I'd have a measurement that I know so I can compare things too. I think Genelec should be a good benchmark measurement.

 

[amirm]

What is the lowest cost Genelec you like to see measured?

 

[matt3421]

i know you didn't ask me, but i think the 8010 (the cheapest model they make i think) would be good. and if it measures well then people can just pair it with a subwoofer for nearfield use

 

[amirm]

Not really. The frequency of the H2 distorsion is twice the test frequence, and the frequency of the H3 distortion is thrice the test frequency. Which means that the distorsion peak measured at 1500 Hz is heard at 2x1500 = 3000 Hz for H2, and 3x1500 = 4500 Hz for H3, which is, on the contrary, exactly where our hearing is most sensitive !

This is not that kind of test (sweep of frequency versus distortion). Indeed there is no distortion measurement per se! A log swept sine (so called Farina sweep after professor Farina who invented it) is used to excite all frequencies from 20 to 20 kHz. When converted to time domain, it becomes an impulse response which is what is normally used to measure speakers/excite all frequencies. A neat thing happens in that you get a second impulse at negative time that represents distortion. Apply an FFT to it and you get the distortion present at all frequencies.

Put another way, at any point on the distortion graph that I showed, you see the sum total of distortions existing at that frequency. It is not the THD+N measurement of distortion at that single frequency tone.

 

[amirm]

i know you didn't ask me, but i think the 8010 (the cheapest model they make i think) would be good. and if it measures well then people can just pair it with a subwoofer for nearfield use

Yeh, I have heard those once. Anyone want to second this? Hate to buy it and someone saying it isn't a real Genelec.