One can perhaps learn to mix on just about "anything", but it's much harder when you have to fight the monitors and room.

Filtering out parts of spectrum is a powerful mixing aid/tool. You can learn how your favourite records sound when filtered (lowpass, bandpass, hipass), how the <100hz sound, 100-200, 200-500, 500-1000... 10k-20k... but also 200-10k or 500-5000. Listen to where the sustained instruments are in terms of level, how the transients sound/look, how the vocal is present in each of the parts of the spectrum.
Less steep filters work better than steeper ones, because the corner frequency isn't as highlighted.

This way you get rid of the masking effect and it is easy to find clutter that is not that obvious when you get definition from some elements in the highend.

Use it with caution, it's just a tool and the most important is the final wideband audio, not just the midrange, or just 200-400hz .

Yeah I could see where you'd get that...I think its partly one of those "mojo" things. You know, like mics. I've used alot of mics that I didn't care for but I wouldn't have know that from looking at the frequency response. Or even 2 mics with very similar freq response sounding great and aweful. Its probly mostly in my head, but either way, it IS in my head and the ones that feel bad feel bad, so I don't use them lol. I think ns10's are half mojo, half what people learned on and therefore know, and can make good mixes. I like them, they're by no means flat, which is what we look for, but I like em none the less. Gotta love alittle mojo in all this world of charts and money .

Yeah, I'm doing that a lot this days, ear training. Isolating things to see where everything sits on commercial records as well as in my mixes.

Matucha advice is very excellent. You can load up 5 or 6 references tracks in your DAW, level match within reason, and then experiment with EQ filtering on the master bus while soloing a given track. It is effective exercise to warm up your ears at beginning of long day. 5-10 minutes of getting your bearings before making important decisions can save you a lot of time and train your ear to be more accurate and precise.

It's good to combine this "method" with some osciloscope plugin to see what's going on. Not that ears aren't important, but sometimes things can sound very similar yet lood very different. Often that's the case with phase (and asymetrical waveforms). Other thing is short loud transients versus longer/softer ones that get masked by something in other part of the spectra. You can end up with very low contrast areas without noticing it (fast enough). Filter/waveform sweep can make you aware of the problematic spots very fast.

could you simulate a ns10 by simply putting a +2dB high-shelving filter at 2kHz on the stereo-bus? just to make the highs and mids heard better?

I have both, and the HS80's.

80's sound nothing like NS10's at all...

50's are closer, the NS10's are way narrower though and roll off severely around 200hz you have to work a fair bit harder on the 10's to get the mix pumping. Age old analogy though, get it blasting on the NS10's it will sound mega everywhere.

Reviving this thread because I am pretty pissed at these monitors right now and I want any prospective buyers to beware. I totally agree with the quote above. The Yamaha HS-50, in my experience is not a monitor that translates at all. The differences between how this speaker makes your mix sound, and how it sounds anywhere else are dramatic. I use the HS-50 with all the speakers EQ settings set flat, and in this 'standard' setting, the HS-50 makes everything sound really clear and detailed and present and great, and then you go play it in your car (with your stereo EQ also set flat) and you discover that your mix is in fact, a murky, dull, muddy unprofessional sounding piece of ****. I have used these monitors mixing in five different rooms over the past four years, and the result is always the same.

Obviously, once you are aware of this, you can work to compensate for it, and can still make great mixes, but when mixing I want a speaker that at least gets me in the ball park of how it is going to sound on anything else. By this most crucial metric, the HS-50 isn't just not very good, it's absurdly bad. I simply can not believe how wrong a great sounding mix sounds on these, played back in another environment. Your mix will simply sound awful in your car and on any standard hi-fi speakers or earbuds if you mix only with the HS-50. To get anything right with it, you will absolutely have to be checking reference tracks to not make something horrible (you should be doing this anyway, but still). This is not a speaker for a beginner, IMO, despite being priced as one.

Another crap thing about these monitors: they are noisy as hell. If you mix on a laptop and plug in a charger with it, they make a very loud constant horrible buzzing sound, that makes any fine tuning of a mix impossible. For this reason, I can only use them on battery power to mix or track anything. (I am using an old Dell laptop, possibly with other brands/chargers you wouldnt have this problem). But they also make another, loud continuous interference tone whenever I have my outboard compressor (Daking FET II) plugged into my preamp, which suggests to me that they are noisy in general.

Finally, the volume knobs on the monitors are not detented, except for in a single position, which makes precise level matching between the two speakers more difficult than it should be.

Overall I would not recommend these monitors to any beginner, and I would not personally buy them again if I had the choice.

-MM

All true. Do not get HS50s. I don't want to think of the dozens of CDs I had to burn with muddy mixes to check everywhere, because those monitors just weren't accurate. They were small, noisy, and from what I read (I never worked with NS10s), the opposite of NS10s: if something sounds good on the HS50s, it will sound BAD everywhere. Apparently HS80s were closer to NS10s.

I sold them and got BM6As MkII. Night and day. I'm happy.

Why so much talk about the discontinued HS50's? Yamaha saw the short comings of them quickly based on reactions in the pro audio world and they improved them with the HS5's. I have them in my studio and find they provide great mid frequency info without the harsh highs of the NS10's.

Check out this review of the HS5's.
Yamaha HS5

Just so that someone does not believe they have anything to do with NS10s whatsoever and doesn't buy them second hand thinking they are going to get mixes that translate well in the real world. They were hyped as "if it sounds good on them, it will sound good everywhere". Exactly the opposite is true.

I sold them very cheaply to someone I know won't be making mixing decisions with them. They are useless for mixing.

Yet the all Unknown Mortal Orchestra albums were written and mixed on those

It would have been fun to see them burn one CD after another and go "no, too much bass...", "no, too muddy", "now I can't hear guitars"...When I had them, I had to mix with them. That doesn't mean they are any good.

Just wanted to say I own some good monitoring speakers, but nowaday I mix all my songs with a pair of Senheiser headphones and test my mix on Apple earbuds + a cheap Logitech speakers + my car.
I find it is the best way to do a precise job.

There are several things going on here when it comes to NS-10M's


As butterboxes said, "that's where I learned to mix on in the beginning, and that's how I 'like' my monitors to sound like".

I'm sure that if someone has had the NS-10M's long enough, hell, ANY monitor long enough, they know them so well that they could PROBABLY use them as their sole monitors.



brianaustinny never said if he wanted either the HS50's or NS-10M's as his main and ONLY monitors, or as a secondary set of monitors to cross check his mixes on.

He also never said what his needs were.

Is he a songwriter with aspirations of being one who can make a living doing so, is he a hobbyist who just wants to do this for the pure enjoyment of the process, is he someone who wants to be an engineer, someone who wants to master recordings?



As I said, there are several things going on here when someone makes a decision that they want to invest in recording gear.



IMHO, if one has never owned the NS-10M's and can only buy one set of monitors, I would go a totally different route, as there are many choices available nowadays in the price range stated.


Not to mention that one needs a really good amp (read, expensive ) to truly take advantage of them.



That being said.........


if brianaustinny wants a second set of monitors and is willing to spend around $650.00 to $800.00 for a set of NS-10M Studios (the most desirable version), and another $1000.00 plus on a great amp, why not buy them?



that being said.........



I might go the Auratone 5C route and spend the savings on other improvements for my studio

I can check problems in mids and bass with these. On smaller speakers upper bass will be important, I can hear the problem in the bass with these and use high resolution monitors, mix cube, and earbuds to see how they will perform in other environments. I am going to build some Augspurger style mains as soon as I get a house. They helped some areas of my mixes, but definitely not usable as a main monitor. 2 pairs of monitors is a minimum for me, but I only mix occasionally so a more active engineer probably could swing it on one pair of hi-res monitors. Think of this as a big computer speaker to fix harshness in cymbals and strings and tune in mid bass for smaller speakers.

In my opinion HS5 are shortcome'd versions of HS50m. They sort of neutered them by taking away the boosted upper midrange that made them so good and ability to boost it even further with switches. When used that way HS50m show midrange as openly and clearly as NS10s imo, but without sounding like a bum's dirty a-hole trying to say something.

HS5 are great monitors on their own, and are open and detailed but they're one step down from HS50m, imo.

I tested a roomful of monitors including those Dynaudios including unmixed music from myself and others. Only the HS50s and Genelecs revealed the problems in the upper bass. The rest of the monitors made the bass sound perfect, especially the Dynaudios and the JBLS, which are very HiFi. The HS50s are to compliment your High resolution monitors to and reveal problems in mids and upper bass.

I auditioned the 3 way Focal SM9 that had very tight and revealing bass. They were about $7000 a pair at the time. They could articulate even poorly mixed bass very well. In that situation you can switch to a mid boosted HS50 in mono and catch that problem.

If your upper bass and mids aren't properly balanced, HS50s with a little mid boost will make them sound bad. Shape it up here and then switch to your High resolution monitors earbuds/ and consumer headphones to check the translation. I never use them as my main monitors. All the mixes I did double checking in the HS50s came out better. Good to keep a Beats Pill around too. The ultimate and final test is the car.

I tested HS50 and NS10 putting them directly onto my Neumanns 310 as a second speaker pair, and guess which box sounds better and fuller? The HS50 (with the top end at -2dB). In my studio the NS10 do not sound good at all. I was a huge NS10 believer, but not anymore.

I guess the NS10 sound only good with the bass hyped by a console or table and luckily the "right studio acoustics", but not on their own and not in every room. In my old studio they definitly sounded better. I can't hear any transient smearing or bass compression on the HS50, they are ok. And the imaging is very good as well.

I know this an old post, but thanks for your honest and truthful opinion! Most people only want to grand stand on why their choice is the right choice while putting everyone else down for their's! You Sir, are a true gentleman and sound engineer!

A used Parasound amp from eBay does the job nicely. Powering my homemade bootleg Amphions (Seas woofers and Visaton waveguide, with Morel tweeters and passive radiators from Dayton audio with the same excursion as the seas) and my mono bootleg Visaton mix cube on the mono bridged connection. If you want come cheap cubes you can buy the drivers from Parts Express or Madisound and just build cube boxes. They sell the same speaker connectors Amphion and other manufacturers use as well, and have that great acoustistuff foam to stuff your speakers with.