Unsung Heroes Pt. 1 - Yamaha HS50m's

jtsuited

Alright, today it became revealed that a few of us are very fond of our HS50m's.

Yes we know it was a little bit of a cynical cash-in by yamaha on the NS10 legend gathering momentum after they stopped making them and their replacement product (the MSP)was actually too 'good' sounding to fill the role of the blessed white coned bookshelf beauties.

But, I love mine to pieces.

happened to call into my local dj shop (i know, i know) the day i was moving into a new place (i was very worried about the low end of the genelecs annoying the neighbours), was shootin the breeze with the lads there and they were wondering why they couldn't stay in stock of those odd yamahas that 'don't sound good at all'.

i brought in a few cd's of mine from the car, whacked them on, and despite the monitors being in the worst positions i've ever seen, everything sounded balanced and even. Took them down the back and had a listen and really had a 'wow' moment. Not often that happens with a 300 euro set of speakers.


Obviously they're not 'great' sounding, but from a utilitarian perspective, they are absolutely perfect.
I knew the room I was moving into was gonna need a good bit of work, but I plonked the hs50's down, tweaked some of the dips and whatnot, and have been mixing happily since. Haven't even put up one bit of foam since.

Could have been lucky, could just be a characteristic they don't advertise too much - 'these monitors will sound great in a fairly dodgy room'.

Either way let's hear it for the 'not the nicest looking/sounding/legendary but incredibly useful' hs50ms!

woodsdenis

jtsuited wrote: »

'these monitors will sound great in a fairly dodgy room'.

Its all you really want isn't it.:D

jtsuited

woodsdenis wrote: »

Its all you really want isn't it.:D

i need to come up with a snappy motto encapsulating this very idea to sell to Yamaha's marketing team.:pac::pac:

ive a set of the msp5s...cant go wrong..

jtsuited

Deleted User wrote: »

ive a set of the msp5s...cant go wrong..

how you finding them for translation to other systems?

I listened to them that day and was really impressed. very like the 8030's in their 'duty'.

jtsuited

jtsuited wrote: »

how you finding them for translation to other systems?.

Bang on..once you keep an eye to the bass, its almost difficult to get a bad mix off em..although it could be that im so used to them at this stage..

jtsuited

Deleted User wrote: »

although it could be that im so used to them at this stage..

all that matters.

seannash

got mine but havent set them up.
i was eyeing up some krks but these came up at a good price and from the reviews felt like they would be good.
i havent even got somewhere to put them yet but im excited to hear people are loving them.
must admit i was a bit worried and shocked at how bad my track sounded coming out of them when i briefly heard them once but guess this is a good thing

jimi_t

Tbh, since my secondhand M-Audios broke I've been producing solely with a pair of mid-range seinheiser headphones; in that I've been saving money towards a pair of Adam A7s as my next monitors, given that they seem to be by far the best active nearfields on offer under the grand mark.

After reading this thread and a cursory google, these HS50m's seem to be serious value for the price. Am I as well off just blowing my savings on these now or should I just hold out (till christmas or so due to the bloody recession) for the Adams?

madtheory

Nice speakers for the money alright. The Tannoys for similar money are nice too. But really, they're nothing like the NS-10, because they're ported. Anything ported has pretty poor transient response. But to get away from ported you're talking serious money, or putting up with NS-10s...

PaulBrewer

madtheory wrote: »

. Anything ported has pretty poor transient response. But to get away from ported you're talking serious money, or putting up with NS-10s...

Putting up with Ns10s? Nah, they're great!

The porting issue is critical regarding bass though.
Porting is generally used in smaller speakers to extend the frequency response - however not without significant issues.

We've all been at gigs where the bass is 'one note' sounding - this is the effect of a port.

The speaker is more or less saying - I can't actually reproduce the note I'm being sent , so I'll replace it with a note I can - that's the 'tuned port'

Poor front end transient response (the time it takes for a speaker to respond knopwn as 'rise time') is one issue the other being the effect a port has post transient - ie. the time it takes for the speaker to return to zero after a transient.

So in effect a port 'smears' the bass making it very difficult to judge.

So why just not use a port, you ask?

Well, because a sealed box speaker bass response is related to the volume of the box. In order to reproduce the low end the box must be big.

The magic of NS10s is it's transient response, if you ever see the graphical representation of that, it's 'waterfall' response . That becomes patently clear.

NS10s combat it's less than stellar bass response by the fact it's designed to be coupled - originally it was a bookshelf speaker.

So it works well on table tops or console tops.

Science is your friend, use it in helping your gear choices too.

trackmixstudio

I had hs80s and found them very fatiguing to listen to for the whole day, especially when the band wants the monitors loud for tracking guitar.
They translated fairly well but were very heavy in the mids so my mixes were a bit dull even though I knew they the monitors were mid heavy because pushing anything around 1 to 5k sounded grainy and wrong.
I haven't used the 50s so I can't comment on them.
Focal twins however:D:D:D

PaulBrewer

For anyone who wants to explore a bit more science about speakers there's a pretty understandable article at -

http://mixguides.com/studiomonitors/Basics/audio-mix-speaker-tests/

Most pros would pic their monitors on what those speakers make them do to the track as opposed to just 'liking' them.

Here's some of the quantitative analysis behind that process.