"David Price celebrates Japan's best-kept 'speaker secret, Yamaha's NS1000M.
Why, if humankind has put vehicles on Mars and mastered open-heart surgery, can it not design an accurate loudspeaker? Even at the best of times, modern 'speakers are compromised devices, and getting one to work properly from 20Hz to 20kHz is still an uncommon occurrence.
Given that moving-coil drivers have all sorts of colorations to sully them, and that electrostatics only work effectively over a limited frequency range, engineers have to employ clever tricks to get the best from these units. Back in the early Seventies, Yamaha decided the answer was Beryllium domes, and the NS1000 was born.
Using this expensive metal, Yamaha came up with treble and midrange drivers that produced extremely low levels of distortion, excellent dispersion and phase coherence. In fact, mated together by a complex crossover network, they behaved much as an electrostatic panel but with more extended highs and better power handling. Matched with a fast, light, rigid paper-coned 300mm bass unit, the combination was dynamite.
The first NS1000s went on sale in 1975, built like the proverbial brick powder room and with HF and midrange trim pots built into the front baffles. At over £400, their price reflected their advanced engineering and superb 32kg-per-box build. They were quite unlike anything people had ever heard best described as sounding like a Quad ESL with a ribbon super-tweeter and a sub-woofer to handle the lows!
In Japan and the States they were rapturously received, with recording studios and broadcast companies throwing their money at Yamaha. Quite simply, there was no other 'speaker to touch the NS1000's combination of transparency, speed and power handling. But over here, reactions were mixed. Reviewers used to soft, bland Bextrene-coned BBC monitors found them forward and fatiguing and prone to harshness and fizz.
The problem was that the Yamahas were utterly unforgiving of the amps that drove them. With high sensitivity and a relatively easy load, most Japanese audiophiles were using them with muscular valve amps that had a warm, smooth sound. In Britain the fashion was for big, punchy transistor power amps such as Naim's NAP250, which, without soft Bextrene or polypropylene cones to hide behind, could sound yes, that's right forward, fatiguing and fizzy!"
http://www.hi-fiworld.co.uk/hfw/oldeworlde...ahans1000m.html
"the Beryllium drivers have literally no break-up and have the fastest transient response this side of an electrostat. the NS-1000/M are known as still being one of the most accurate dynamic speakers ever made. exotic drivers from scan-speak and focal, might still come up short to the Yamaha Be drivers.
NOW, you are right about the bass response but i do think it was done on purpose. the JansZen/AR1 combo never totally melded together because the AR woofer was just too slow to keep up with the ESLs (not to mention the impedaance mismatches). so, i think Yamaha overdamped the woofer to keep it tight and punchy. necessary to keep up with the Be domes. "
http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/IP.Boar...?showtopic=2219