$500 speakers in $100 box
Written: Sep 17 '04
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Pros: Low price, clean sound.
Cons: Large-ish enclosure, lighweight construction.
The Bottom Line: The Yamaha NS-6390s are a cheap way to provide yourself with a high-quality listening experience.
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| fummer2001's Full Review: Yamaha NS-6390 Main / Stereo Speaker |
These Yamaha three-ways deliver remarkable performance for the super-low price tag. While none of the drivers is exactly perfect, the overall speaker architecture is well conceived and delivers a surprisingly good sound in such a cheap, mass market speaker. Unlike most speaker builders in the consumer range, Yamaha built these speakers with relatively high crossover frequencies of 2.5khz and 8hz. As a result, the bulk of the audio signal is routed through the 8" and 4" drivers, with only the truly high frequencies spreading to the tweater. Tweeter distortion is virtually inaudible as compared to consumer range competitors such as Sony, JBL, and Cerwin Vega. Yamaha also chose a non-reflex enclosure. With those two characteristics combined, these speakers are infinitely more transparent than their Sony counterparts and noticeably superior in that respect to competitive JBL and Cerwin Vega products.
The 8" driver does leave something to be desired in terms of lower frequency response, but the 4" is a gem. While a bit bright, the 4" beautifully renders treble strings and guitar in classical and rock recordings. Vocals seem almost too silvery at times, but so-called "period" classical recordings benefit from the cool tonality. With that tonality in mind, mid-range on rock recordings suffers some depth and space when running DSP; I recommend turning off amplifier or processor effects in general and even using your tone control bypass circuit if your consumer grade receiver offers it.
Since these are best suited to be general purpose speakers, you probably will require an accurate sub to obtain full-sounding bass. Without porting, which often sounds unnatural anyway, the 8" does not muster enough low-range gusto to be fully convincing on movie soundtracks or even large-scale symphonic works, much less at lower power. An inaccurate sub, however, will not match the largely, but not flawlessly accurate 8". The mismatch will be readily obvious, but most especially if you fail to bypass tone controls and DSP.
If these speakers mimic anything, it is the LothX Ion BS1. True, the LothXs have a slightly warmer sound overall. Yet the crossover/tweeter story is similar. Ion BS1s employ a single capacitor, triggered only at very high frequencies, in lieu of a crossover network. As a result, Ion BS1s show very little tweeter distortion and push nearly all the incoming signal through the single 6" driver. The Yamaha design splits that same signal between two drivers, but the effect is similar. Of course, the $600/pair Ions, with much higher quality components, sound much better. Nevertheless, Yamaha does an admirable job of creating a low cost speaker based on a truly vintage audio concept.
I really have to wonder about the wisdom of creating increasingly expensive tweeters with low-frequency handling capacity when it is so much simpler not to engage much lower cost, old fashioned tweeters until they are truly required.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100
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Epinions.com ID:
fummer2001
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Reviews written: 5
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