NS-10's

[ad0lescnts]

i got a chance to mix on some NS-10's the other day. I've heard so many bad things about them and i tried not to let that affect my personal opinion on them.

well.. these things suck. THey just osund like a pair of shitty speakers that you'd find on a cheap home stereo or something of the like. the bass on them is terrible... it sounds weak and it's just hard to mix on them.

I didn't notice any harshness in the high end that i had heard about.

it seems like the stereo-ness or something on them is just weird... maybe it's my inexperience, but it sempt weird. it was hard to listen to the stereo difference in the speakers. I'm not quite sure but all i do know is these things suck.

T

[memriloc]

If they didn't have the 'harshness', mabey they had the mod done to them...Can't remember what it's about, but I know alot of people do it....

[stonepiano]

hey adol,

what are you used to using? I have NS-10's and they sound a dumptruck better than my aiwa mini system.

That sounds like a joke but it's not. I don't think I'll be dumping the ns-10's but I'm growing aware of the fact that I might have to go out for the Mackies as well. kind of an a-b thing.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally posted by memriloc
If they didn't have the 'harshness', mabey they had the mod done to them...Can't remember what it's about, but I know alot of people do it....

The "mod" is folded tissue taped over the tweeters.... says a lot right there!

[ad0lescnts]

i'm used to using my tannoy proto-j's which arent that good either, but they're tons better than the ns-10's

T

[darrin_h2000]

NS10s rule the roost out there...If you cant mix on them deal with it. they force you to get it right. Theres a reason that they are in all the real studios out there.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally posted by darrin_h2000
Theres a reason that they are in all the real studios out there.

Yes... someone saw Clearmountain checking a mix on 'em and myths spread like wildfire.... eventually, keeping up with the Jones' made many studios also-haves... sure you can make 'em work - you can make ANY speaker work if you learn their characteristics, but why hurt yourself in the process!?

We haven't argued about this in a while - I miss this one, Darrin!!!

[Light]

Originally posted by Blue Bear Sound
Yes... someone saw Clearmountain checking a mix on 'em and myths spread like wildfire.... eventually, keeping up with the Jones' made many studios also-haves... sure you can make 'em work - you can make ANY speaker work if you learn their characteristics, but why hurt yourself in the process!?

We haven't argued about this in a while - I miss this one, Darrin!!!

And these days Bob is using Genelecs. Imagine that.

NS-10s suck.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

[littledog]

Hey, Light!

I just saw Dave Moulton give a demo of these active 4-way speakers that he helped design for B&O. His contribution was an elliptical acoustic lens that disperses the highs and mids 180 degrees horizontally, but keeps vertical dispersion fairly narrow(to minimize floor and ceiling reflections).

The B&O engineers came up this cool "intelligent" bass management - you put the speakers in a given space, and then using little moving microphones built into the speaker, each speaker reproduces a set of low frequency test tones, and then using internal DSP, they create a matched response in the low end - even if one is in a corner and the other is in the middle of the room! You had to hear it to believe it.

The tweeters and drivers are, if i remember correctly, 3/4", 3", 6" and 15". (The 15" is downward firing.) There are seperate power amps for each driver, including two 1000 watt ones for the 6" and 15". There is also an RS232 port so you can actually get diagnostical information or software updates directly from the factory via your computer.

The downside? Each weighs about 140 pounds and they cost $16,000 per pair. And, oh yeah, they look like some sort of alien space probe!

[CyanJaguar]

Originally posted by ad0lescnts
i'm used to using my tannoy proto-j's which arent that good either, but they're tons better than the ns-10's

T

You are kidding me. Your frame of reference is Tannoy protoJs and you hate the ns10s? I bet that you did not have someone critique the mixes from both of them. Its the final output, not the experience.

Now, if you had been using some ADAMs, or some Questeds , I would understand why you would hate the ns10s.

[chessrock]

I wish people would just hit the submit button . . . once.


That's all it needs is one click, guys.


Really.

[stonepiano]

and here I thought I was going crazy...

[CyanJaguar]

Originally posted by chessrock
I wish people would just hit the submit button . . . once.


That's all it needs is one click, guys.


Really.

it aint my fault that hr.com takes.. like... 15 minutes to submit a post

[ad0lescnts]

i think it is the experience if you cant put a good mix out on them.. i could barely hear the low end and it was hard to distinguish a lot of things panned left and right.

i was basing my feelings on them from personal experience...

we gave out some copies to the band members and when we played them on our own stereos the mix was terrible. you'd think it was a joke. The experience on any specific set of monitors (sorry, i guess only in my opinion) definitely effects the final product.

T

[littledog]

You definitely have to learn how to mix on NS10m's, so if you want to bother mixing on a speaker that is no longer manufactured, feel free. Among other skills, you have to learn how to supply the missing bass in your mind. Sure, many thousands of records were mixed on them, and they were an industry standard. But they were an industry standard originally because they were the first successful portable monitor - mix engineers would toss them in their trunk and drag them from room to room along with their racks of outboard. Eventually, studio owners who saw mix engineers always setting up NS-10's figured maybe they should just have a pair of their own. So soon everybody had them.

You're still going to hear some well-respected engineers swear by them. You will also hear a bunch of equally well-respected engineers say they sound like crap, and thank God they're finally out of production.

Personally, I'd rather listen on speakers that are fun to mix on and don't give you a migraine after a couple of hours. My feeling is that NS-10m's don't translate from room to room inherently better than any other speaker (and maybe worse than some) except in the hands and ears of someone who REALLY knows them and knows how to mix on them. Which, i suppose, could be said about just about any studio monitor. The fact is, most studios who use NS-10m's now are not using them exclusively - they sit on the meter bridge and are used to check certain elements of a mix, as an alternative to other nearfields, or to mid or far-fields. These days, if clients are present they want to actually be able to hear some of their bass - not just imagine it or take your word for it that it's there.

There may be some truth to the oft repeated statement that "if it sounds good on an NS-10m, it will sound good on anything." That's not necessarily true for me, especially concerning bass management. (i.e.: if your bass sounds kicking on your NS-10m, be prepared to have the windows in your car blown out when you pop that CD in your car stereo.) My theory is it's one of those statements that got repeated so often that many folks now believe it to be true. Combined with the fact that it became some sort of unspoken law that any "real" studio had to have a pair. (Kind of like you had to have a few SM57's, a U87, a 414, an 1176, a high end Lexicon reverb, and a console at least the size of a mattress, etc. or you wouldn't be taken seriously.)

But as I said, far better engineers than i will disagree. (And others will agree.)

[Light]

The thing about NS-10s, at least what I always found, is that you can not use them to the exclusion of other monitors. Of course this is true of any monitor, but particularly of NS-10s. Most of the guys who made NS-10s famous where constantly changing to the rooms mains to check the bass. This is good practice any time, but with NS-10s you really have no choice. I always have a good laugh at people who use NS-10s as their only monitors for mixing, of at all for tracking (for which I would never use nearfields if I had a choice, as I want the detail of the mains). People hear that some famous engineer likes NS-10s, but they pay no attention the technique for using them. It is like the guy who stole Bob Clearmountains mix notes, as though it would help in the least.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

[Light]

The thing about NS-10s, at least what I always found, is that you can not use them to the exclusion of other monitors. Of course this is true of any monitor, but particularly of NS-10s. Most of the guys who made NS-10s famous where constantly changing to the rooms mains to check the bass. This is good practice any time, but with NS-10s you really have no choice. I always have a good laugh at people who use NS-10s as their only monitors for mixing, of at all for tracking (for which I would never use nearfields if I had a choice, as I want the detail of the mains). People hear that some famous engineer likes NS-10s, but they pay no attention the technique for using them. It is like the guy who stole Bob Clearmountains mix notes, as though it would help in the least.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

[Fishmed]

Originally posted by Light
The thing about NS-10s, at least what I always found, is that you can not use them to the exclusion of other monitors. Of course this is true of any monitor, but particularly of NS-10s. Most of the guys who made NS-10s famous where constantly changing to the rooms mains to check the bass. This is good practice any time, but with NS-10s you really have no choice. I always have a good laugh at people who use NS-10s as their only monitors for mixing, of at all for tracking (for which I would never use nearfields if I had a choice, as I want the detail of the mains). People hear that some famous engineer likes NS-10s, but they pay no attention the technique for using them. It is like the guy who stole Bob Clearmountains mix notes, as though it would help in the least.

I agree. I like using my NS-10s, but I do not trust them completely. I have a pair of JBL 4311B monitors to check for the bass and lowmids. To me, NS-10 show me trouble areas in my mixes.

[darrin_h2000]

Ill check shit sometimes on my tannoy model 600s but the NS10s get worked first...I dont do rap so a huge ammount of bass isnt nessasary to crank out of my monitors. the NS10s have been good enough for rock-n-roll for 4 decades.

[ad0lescnts]

"I like using my NS-10s, but I do not trust them completely."

i'm gonna tell thnem you sad asao!

what

T

[littledog]

Originally posted by darrin_h2000
the NS10s have been good enough for rock-n-roll for 4 decades.

Glad they work for you. After four decades, I'd say you qualify for the category of someone who "knows how to mix on them".

[Light]

Originally posted by darrin_h2000
Ill check shit sometimes on my tannoy model 600s but the NS10s get worked first...I dont do rap so a huge ammount of bass isnt nessasary to crank out of my monitors. the NS10s have been good enough for rock-n-roll for 4 decades.

Where do you get four decades? They came out in the early eighties.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

[Han]

Originally posted by Fishmed
To me, NS-10 show me trouble areas in my mixes.

Bingo! that's what NS10's are very good at.

They're very difficult to make a great sounding mix on, but when you can, it will sound killer on most home stereos.

I kind of like the NS10 very much, even a bass can sound great on them, the only problem is the lows below 80 hz.
But that's where mains are good at.

I say the NS10 is a great near field monitor.

[littledog]

Hey Han,

There are a couple of good threads from May 2002 that you may want to also revive!

[Han]

Littledog, do you have a link? There are so many threads about the NS10 all over the forums that it will take me a week to read them all.

NS10.......when I had bought them and listened for the first time, I thought, what a piece of crap this is.

But I got to know them and like them. It's a monitor you either love or hate, there's no 'in between'.

Yesterday I listened to a number of karaoke CD's (from the USA) and some of them sound really nice on the NS10's, even the bass!

A while back I was recording a jazz band, you know, with that fuzzy guitar sound and a (digital) piano.
There was something with the guitar and the piano which was a real problem, as if they were 'eating' eachother.

I solo'd the guitar and piano on the NS10's and the problem was solved by tweaking the eq with ease.

This is where the NS10's really shine, you can hear problems in the low mids very good, when there's 'mud', you will hear it on NS10's.

I know this is all subjective, but stating that the NS10 is a bad monitor, which many forumites still do, is simply untrue.

If you can't make a mix sound decent on NS10's, you can't mix!