The HS80M Yamaha Speakers - Yamaha Reprises the NS10

No one ever writes about the Yamaha NS10 monitor speakers without using the terms "industry standard" and "legendary" somewhere in the sentence. They were in fact the industry standard; but not because they happened to be the best speakers on the market in their day. They just happened to be cheap speakers that everyone just had. And engineers always preferred these because they knew that they could listen to a mix in one studio on the speakers and always know that they were listening to something that could the compared to what other engineers heard in their own studios. Some say that people preferred NS 10 Yamaha speakers because they had an exaggerated high end that sound engineers with ruined hearing could finally hear well. Yamaha has followed up the NS10 with the HS80M monitor speakers. Priced at $700 a pair, these are meant to be honest speakers, unlike the NS10's.

Admirers of the NS10 will find that the legendary sound is still there. And so is the heightened high frequency response. So what exactly is the HS80M? Quite simply, it is a shielded and powered active monitor speaker with a two-way design. The 8-inch woofer is powered byh an inbuilt 75 W bass amp and the 1-inch tweeter has its own 45 W high-frequency power amplifier. The speaker weighs a hefty 25 pounds, and the inputs are in the form of balanced XLR and TRS jacks. Those who have had bad experiences with unprotected speaker cones will appreciate the grille that protects the tweeter on this one.

What do these Yamaha speakers end up sounding like? The first impression you get listening to these is of how revealing and clear the soundstage is, mixing on the speakers. The sound of course, is a little aggressively bright as it tends to be on the NS10's. A set of DIP switches at the back help you tailor the sound to your listening position too. If you want, you could easily tame the high-frequency response down a bit. You're probably interested in hearing about what the bass sounds like though. On the NS10, the bass was adequate if not really powerful. On the HS80M speakers on the other hand, the bass does have plenty of depth. The bass is definitely believable and smooth for a bass reflex cabinet. If one were forced to sum up the HS80M Yamaha speakers in one sentence, one could say that these were NS10's with a better bass response. If you are in the market for a pair of monitor speakers with considerable pedigree, you really should give the HS80M a try.