One of the best midranges ever produced, if not the definitive midrange in my humble but experienced opinion. The tweeter is very, very good but it doesn't extend high, and can sound rough on the stock crossover, and outside of a highly treated room it may not make much bass. I don't find them musical, ie I don't find them colored, warm, soft, inspiring or polite. They have a job to do, and they do it really well.
Stereophile listed it in the top 100 audio products of the past 100 years, and Stereophile's list of "Best top 25 speakers of past 40 years" which included others like the Quad ESL-63, MBL 101D, Avantgarde Uno & Sonus Faber Guarneri Homage, Apogee Scintilla, B&W 801 Matrix Series 2, Acoustat 2+2, Infinity IRS, Wilson Audio WAMM, AR3a, and others.
David Price from Hi Fi World, Martin Colloms of of High Performance Loudspeakers, the Audio Engineering Society, Innerworld Audio's Vaughan Warren, and a host of others have used it for years and some still use it as a reference speaker. Some studios still use them, well the ones that didn't blow the drivers.
Troels Gravesen: "
They present a level of transparency rarely heard, and by a comfortable margin supersedes many modern speakers. It's hard to believe they're not still in production as they do so many things so right...The middome provides a phenomenal dispersion that requires a recessed on-axis response in the midrange to present an overall balanced sound...
Beryllium has recently been reintroduced by Focal and ScanSpeak for dome tweeters, but I think this Yamaha is the one-and-only when it comes to mid-domes. It displays an excellent frequency response and the cumulative spectral decay leaves little to be desired. In this construction it covers the 500-4500 Hz region, hence handles the troublesome upper mid/lower treble region with no 2-3 kHz point of crossover. Much like my ScanSpeak SP44 construction, only this 3½" dome goes almost an octave lower compared to the Accuton C50.
Thanks to Sven for pointing out some measurements presented in Martin Colloms' High Performance Loudspeakers. Here we see an unusual low distortion profile for the NS1000 compared to a contemporary 3-way...
NS-1000M is a special speaker by today's standard. The use of a 12" bass driver in a small closed box, the use of the beryllium domes, the unusual dispersion all through the midrange and up to its upper limit and it's ability to reveal detail and transparency like few speakers can do. It is somewhat demanding on associated equipment and it doesn't play rubbish recordings without telling you so. For those who take the time sourcing the right equipment and experiment with placement and mid/tweeter attenuation, it may be a lasting love affair. I'm not sure there's a plug'n play speaker, but this is not one of them. "
He's the second person to redesign the crossover for these speakers and correct the driver frequency integration and phase that caused the biting harsh in the upper mid-treble.
0o, 10o, 20o, 30o, 40o and 45o dispersion respectively (red to blue)
Should you buy these? It depends on many factors and what you enjoy and seek in your listening.
