Comment by brunorsini | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brunorsini | Hacker News Reader

For anyone who is not into music production, these are the most ubiquitous audio monitors on the planet, for two basic reasons:

a) They are not very expensive

b) Given how popular they are, there's no other pair of monitors any given user is more likely to have used before... Meaning they are a "familiar reproduction baseline" for musicians, producers and engineers who are often working outside of their own studios and have to make critical decisions on the spot.

In recent decades, as audio monitoring fidelity dramatically improved, NS10s also became increasingly useful as secondary monitoring devices. "My mix sounds great on these hi-fi speakers — let me see if it also translates well to my ("crappier") NS10s!"

Finally, for anyone looking to get serious about audio monitoring for an arguably reasonable price (compared to other pro options), I highly recommend monitors by HEDD, a Berlin-based company founded by physicist Heinz Klaus (formerly R&D lead at ADAM, another solid audio monitor manufacturer whose products I also used for years). Here's Sound on Sound's review of the pair I currently own: https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/hedd-type-20

The time/frequency response graph ("waterfall") is incredibly good on the NS10; in layman's terms, it stops sounding as soon as the input stops, right across the frequency spectrum. Some much more expensive monitors are terrible at this by comparison and it makes a big difference to the perceived "accuracy" of the speaker. Partly this is inherent to the sealed box design but there's also something about the paper woofer in the NS10 that's inherently good. It also has really low harmonic distortion. Rather bright, though...

The problem with this theory is that in any listening environment, except for something like an anechoic chamber, the decay time will be dominated by the room. So if this is the explanation, some pieces of the explanation are missing.

yes, but for the same room, you can still improve group delay / 'latency' by getting a better loudspeaker.

The air in a sealed box acts as a resistance to the woofer. It will stop earlier than in a ported design, after being moved by the amp.

This is not correct. How a woofer stops depends on its damping factor. The damping factor depends on the design of the driver and enclosure. You can find sealed speakers with poor damping and ported speakers with excellent damping.

TIL, Thank you!

There's also a widespread urban-myth style idea that they are "crappy" and inferior. In fact they have very good audio properties as monitors given their specifications and price range. They're not used because "if it sounds good on this crappy set it will sound good elsewhere". They're used because they're actually revealing and good monitors. The SoS article touches on that.

> In fact they have very good audio properties as monitors given their specifications

They're "good" for mixing engineers because they enable them to make better decisions about their mixes. That does not mean they are "good" for listening to music.

> They're used because they're actually revealing and good monitors.

I'll point out that if you're actually trying to enjoy your music, "revealing" isn't a good quality. You want flattering speakers, or at the very least flat ones.

There's also different models of the NS-10. The original NS-10m was a much worse speaker than any other iteration after it. That's the one that earned notoriety. The other models aren't nearly as offputting.

They are popular and "crappy" in the same way as Sony MDR-7506 headphones are, i.e not pleasant to listen to, but get the job done

I had a friend who did post-production psychoacoustics for many big-name acts and labels. He had incredible ears, and could call frequencies by hearing them. His studio was a gear-nerds wet-dream, and had all sorts of high end stuff. He also had NS10s, because they "provide the baseline". It was kinda funny, all these high end monitors, and on the some wall, 6 NS10s.

NS10s are known to sound like crap. They have very poor low bass frequency representation and mids and highs don't sound great on them either. As mentioned elsewhere, their transient response is exceptional -- due to hvaing no ports. This makes mid frequencies in the 1k-4k range super clear and identify any mix issues you have in that range.

The other reason NS10s are used is because if your track sounds good on them, the track will sound good on anything -- the worst walkman, crappiest radio, cheapest car stereo...

They're for getting a good mix, not a good sound.

If there is one thing the article disproves, it's the myth that the NS10s sound "like crap".

I'm an AES member and have a good few dozen other audio engineers as friends and we universally agree that the NS10 sounds like shit. It's literally a feature.

Its whole purpose is to put a microscope to a specific range of frequencies.

Listening to music with it is not something you would ever do for fun. Anything bass-heavy or just mixed loud in general (most music since the 90s) will be incredibly fatiguing to the point of painful on them.

Shoutout for another offshoot of ADAM: Eve(!) Audio. I had the pleasure to work on their SC307 monitors in a well treated room, and they are so good. Solid, clear, and accurate, the best speakers I've used.

I understand the they use internal DSP to handle the crossover and do high resolution frequency correction.

These are not for the same purpose as NS10s, which are like the "if it sounds good on these, it'll sound good anywhere" monitors. They are more like a microscope for hearing all the details of your mix in hi-res.

I know NS-10 boxes from my first studio experiences in the 80s. You somehow internalize the frequency response and you know that there are NS-10 in every studio, even semi-professionell ones. That makes it easy to compare the sound of your mix in several different studios.

Nowadays there are many monitors available with a much better frequency response for less money, e.g. KRK or Behringer. But still many studios have NS-10 just for compatibility.

JBL also has the LSR line of monitor speakers that are quite inexpensive for their bang-for-buck ratio.

> "My mix sounds great on these hi-fi speakers — let me see if it also translates well to my ("crappier") NS10s!"

The NS10 have an excellent transient response according to some paper I read. Probably the one linked in the article.

I just had to look up the price (in the review): £2998 per pair including VAT, or roughly $3667. Wow! I'm glad I'm not into music hardware. :)

As a friend who produced award-winning albums used to say, "I hope my kid gets into drugs — music studios are too dangerous!"

lol those are 2300 each! audio gear is nuts. there’s no way they’re 10 times better than my adam t5vs

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