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87-486: The Yamaha NS-10 is a loudspeaker that became a standard nearfield studio monitor in the music industry among rock and pop recording engineers. Launched in 1978, the NS-10 started life as a bookshelf speaker destined for the domestic environment. It was poorly received but eventually became a valuable tool with which to mix rock recordings. The speaker has a characteristic white-coloured mid–bass drive unit. Technically, it

174-454: A spectral model of the signal. In this method, peaks are identified in frames using the STFT of the signal, and sinusoidal "tracks" are created by connecting peaks in adjacent frames. The tracks are then re-synthesized at a new time scale. This method can yield good results on both polyphonic and percussive material, especially when the signal is separated into sub-bands. However, this method

261-456: A 305mm bass cone made with new thermoplastics led to development and deployment of the LS5/5 and LS5/6 monitors that occupied only 60% volume of its predecessor. As recording became less and less "live" and multi-tracking and overdubbing became the norm, the studio monitor became far more crucial to the recording process. When there was no original performance outside what existed on the tape,

348-500: A BBC white paper published in January 1963, the authors explored two-channel stereophony, and remarked that it was at a disadvantage compared with multi-channel stereophony that was already available in cinemas in that "the full intended effects is apparent only to observers located within a restricted area in front of the loudspeakers". The authors expressed reservations about dispersion and directionality in 2-channel systems, noting that

435-455: A domestic hi-fi speaker, the NS-10 was designed by Akira Nakamura and launched in 1978. While the speaker was poorly received, recording engineers came to rely on the NS-10 as a benchmark. The model was discontinued in 2001. The NS-10 was recognised for its ability to reveal shortcomings in recordings. It probably first reached American shores through a recording engineer's visit to Japan. The engineer, likely to have been Greg Ladanyi , monitored

522-737: A few high-end studios, but with increasing costs of manufacture, they became rare. The once dominant JBL fell gradually into disfavour. One of the most striking trends was the growth of soft-dome monitors. These operated without horn-loaded drivers. Horns, while having advantages in transient response and efficiency, tend to be hard to listen to over long periods. The lack of distortion of high-end dome midrange & tweeters made them easy to work with all day (and night). Typical soft-dome systems were made by Roger Quested, ATC, Neil Grant and PMC and were actively driven by racks of active crossovers and amplifiers. Other monitor and studio designers like Tom Hidley, Phil Newall and Sam Toyoshima continued research into

609-422: A fixed frequency offset to the frequency of every note. (In theory one could perform a literal pitch scaling in which the musical pitch space location is scaled [a higher note would be shifted at a greater interval in linear pitch space than a lower note], but that is highly unusual, and not musical. ) Time domain processing works much better here, as smearing is less noticeable, but scaling vocal samples distorts

696-482: A linear phase response helps impulse response remain true to source without encountering "smearing". An unqualified reference to a monitor often refers to a near-field (compact or close-field) design. This is a speaker small enough to sit on a stand or desk in proximity to the listener, so that most of the sound that the listener hears is coming directly from the speaker, rather than reflecting off walls and ceilings (and thus picking up coloration and reverberation from

783-454: A modification of the signal's duration by a stretching factor of α = H s / H a {\displaystyle \alpha =H_{s}/H_{a}} . However, simply superimposing the unmodified analysis frames typically results in undesired artifacts such as phase discontinuities or amplitude fluctuations. To prevent these kinds of artifacts, the analysis frames are adapted to form synthesis frames , prior to

870-559: A number of technical advantages. The interface between speaker and amplifier can be optimized, possibly offering greater control and precision, and advances in amplifier design have reduced the size and weight of the electronics significantly. The result has been that passive monitors have become far less common than powered monitors in project and home studios. In the 2000s, there was a trend to focus on "translation". Engineers tended to choose monitors less for their accuracy than for their ability to "translate" – to make recordings sound good on

957-469: A piano keyboard, or adding a fixed amount on the Mel scale , or adding a fixed amount in linear pitch space . One can view the same transposition as "frequency scaling", "scaling" (multiplying) the frequency of every note by 3/2. Musical transposition preserves the ratios of the harmonic frequencies that determine the sound's timbre , unlike the frequency shift performed by amplitude modulation , which adds

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1044-511: A recording session through the speaker in a Japanese studio and brought a pair back on his return to the US. Ladanyi then began using the speakers in a Los Angeles studio. Other engineers heard the NS-10 for the first time and were impressed by its sound. Its use spread to New York where the NS-10 was adopted at The Power Station and other studios. Early use of the NS-10 among engineers include Bob Clearmountain , Rhett Davies , and Bill Scheniman in

1131-470: A twelve-inch mid-bass driver. Most studios, however, also used more modest monitoring devices to check how recordings would sound through car speakers and cheap home systems. A favourite "grot-box" monitor employed in this way was the Auratone 5C, a crude single-driver device that gave a reasonable facsimile of typical lo-fi sound. However, a backlash against the behemoth monitor was soon to take place. With

1218-431: A variety of playback systems, from stock car radios and standard boom boxes to esoteric audiophile systems. As the mix engineer Chris Lord-Alge has noted: But it is uncertain just what tools aid translation. Some producers argue that accuracy is still the best guarantee. If a producer or audio engineer is listening to recorded tracks and mixing tracks using a "flattering" monitor speaker, they may miss subtle problems in

1305-460: A wood veneer skin with seven black finishing layers. The domestic version of the speaker was vertically oriented, and came factory fitted with a grille. Its two drivers are a 180 mm paper woofer and a 35 mm soft-domed tweeter . The woofer's diaphragm, weighing 3.7 g, is manufactured from a flat sheet of pressed pulp paper. Unconventionally, it is formed into conical shape not through moulding or pressure, but by curling and then gluing

1392-494: Is a "Studio" with magnetic shielding and a different tweeter. In the 1990s Yamaha introduced the NS-10MT, a bass-reflex version of the 10M X with a different tweeter and grille. Designed for home cinema, it has bass response down to 43 Hz, nominal impedance of 6 ohm and maximum power handling rated at 180 W. A miniature version named Natural Sound Surround Speaker NS10MM was launched in 1997 or 1998. The sound quality of

1479-430: Is a compact studio monitor designed for listening at close distances (3 to 5 feet (0.9 to 1.5 m)), so, in theory, the effects of poor room acoustics are greatly reduced.) The 4310 was small enough to be placed on the recording console and listened to from much closer distances than the traditional large wall-(or "soffit") mounted main monitors. As a result, studio-acoustic problems were minimized. Smaller studios found

1566-410: Is called time-domain harmonic scaling or the synchronized overlap-add method (SOLA) and performs somewhat faster than the phase vocoder on slower machines but fails when the autocorrelation mis-estimates the period of a signal with complicated harmonics (such as orchestral pieces). Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro) seems to solve this by looking for the period closest to a center period that

1653-569: Is crucial. Among audio engineers , the term monitor implies that the speaker is designed to produce relatively flat (linear) phase and frequency responses . In other words, it exhibits minimal emphasis or de-emphasis of particular frequencies, the loudspeaker gives an accurate reproduction of the tonal qualities of the source audio ("uncolored" and "transparent" are synonyms), and there will be no relative phase shift of particular frequencies—meaning no distortion in sound-stage perspective for stereo recordings. Beyond stereo sound-stage requirements,

1740-464: Is known as a speaker that easily reveals poor quality in recordings. Recording engineers sought to dull its treble response by hanging tissue paper in front of it, resulting in what became known as the "tissue paper effect" – a type of comb filtering. The NS-10 has been used to monitor a large number of successful recordings by numerous artists, leading Gizmodo to refer to it as "the most important loudspeaker you never heard of". Originally conceived as

1827-435: Is more computationally demanding than other methods. Rabiner and Schafer in 1978 put forth an alternate solution that works in the time domain : attempt to find the period (or equivalently the fundamental frequency ) of a given section of the wave using some pitch detection algorithm (commonly the peak of the signal's autocorrelation , or sometimes cepstral processing), and crossfade one period into another. This

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1914-425: Is to change the playback speed. For a digital audio recording, this can be accomplished through sample rate conversion . When using this method, the frequencies in the recording are always scaled at the same ratio as the speed, transposing its perceived pitch up or down in the process. Slowing down the recording to increase duration also lowers the pitch, while speeding it up for a shorter duration respectively raises

2001-524: Is to split the signal into short analysis frames of fixed length. The analysis frames are spaced by a fixed number of samples, called the analysis hopsize H a ∈ N {\displaystyle H_{a}\in \mathbb {N} } . To achieve the actual time-scale modification, the analysis frames are then temporally relocated to have a synthesis hopsize H s ∈ N {\displaystyle H_{s}\in \mathbb {N} } . This frame relocation results in

2088-621: The Nyquist frequency (determined by the sampling rate of the audio reproduction software or device) will create usually undesired sound distortions, a phenomenon that is also known as aliasing. One way of stretching the length of a signal without affecting the pitch is to build a phase vocoder after Flanagan, Golden, and Portnoff. Basic steps: The phase vocoder handles sinusoid components well, but early implementations introduced considerable smearing on transient ("beat") waveforms at all non-integer compression/expansion rates, which renders

2175-521: The formants into a sort of Alvin and the Chipmunks -like effect, which may be desirable or undesirable. A process that preserves the formants and character of a voice involves analyzing the signal with a channel vocoder or LPC vocoder plus any of several pitch detection algorithms and then resynthesizing it at a different fundamental frequency. A detailed description of older analog recording techniques for pitch shifting can be found at Alvin and

2262-422: The "NS-10M Pro", both introduced in 1987. Technically identical to the "Studio", the "Pro" comes fitted with a speaker grille and is meant to be used in a vertical orientation. The "professional" version launched some nine years after its first introduction on the back of the popularity of the NS-10 among engineers. The revised version, with everything including the logo and connection panel orientated horizontally,

2349-438: The "face-to-face listening arrangement" was not able to give an acceptable presentation for a centrally-located observer in a domestic setting. The paper concluded: The achievement of suitable directional characteristics within the aesthetic and economic limitations applying to domestic equipment will however require a much greater research effort than either the corporation or the radio industry have so far been able to devote to

2436-730: The 100,000 pairs ballpark. Professional audio companies such as Genelec , Neumann (formerly Klein + Hummel), Quested , and M & K sell almost exclusively to recording studios and record producers , who comprise key players in the professional monitor market. Most of the consumer audio manufacturers confine themselves to supplying speakers for home hi-fi systems. Companies that straddle both worlds, like Amphion Loudspeakers , ADAM , Dynaudio , Focal/JM Labs , JBL, PMC , surrounTec and Tannoy tend to clearly differentiate their monitor and hi-fi lines. Audio timescale-pitch modification#Time domain These processes are often used to match

2523-509: The 1980s. While its sound-quality has often been derided, even by those who monitor through it, the NS-10 continues in use to this day and many more successful recordings have been produced with its aid over the past twenty five years than with any other monitor. By the mid-1980s the near-field monitor had become a permanent fixture. The larger studios still had large soffit-mounted main monitors but producers and engineers spent most of their time working with near-fields. Common large monitors of

2610-458: The 4310 ideal and that monitor and its successor, the 4311, became studio fixtures throughout the 1970s. Ironically, the 4310 had been designed to replicate the sonic idiosyncrasies of the Altec 604 but in a smaller package to cater for the technical needs of the time. The 4311 was so popular with professionals that JBL introduced a domestic version for the burgeoning home-audio market. This speaker,

2697-431: The Altec 604 but was a more accurate and powerful speaker and it quickly made inroads against the industry standard. However, it was the more compact 4310 that revolutionized monitoring by introducing the idea of close or "nearfield" monitoring. (The sound field very close to a sound source is called the "near-field." By "very close" is meant in the predominantly direct, rather than reflected, sound field. A near-field speaker

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2784-545: The Auratone before it, are two of the most influential nearfield monitors used in the professional mixing of sound recordings. In 2008, the NS-10 was inducted into the Mix magazine TECnology Hall of Fame. Also reflecting its influence, the speaker won a Technical Grammy for Yamaha in 2007. In 2008, the speaker was found "in almost every studio". As the NS-10 has been out of production for many years, in late 2018 Avantone with Chris Lord-Alge (world famous mix engineer and proponent of

2871-625: The BBC required monitors to sound balanced, be neutral in tone, and lack colouration. Monitor usage in the industry was highly conservative, with almost monopolistic reliance on industry "standards", in spite of the sonic failings of these aging designs. The Altec 604 had a notoriously ragged frequency response but almost all U.S. studios continued to use it because virtually every producer and engineer knew its sound intimately and were practiced at listening through its sonic limitations. Recording through unfamiliar monitors, no matter how technically advanced,

2958-537: The JBL L-100, (or "Century") was a massive success and became the biggest-selling hi-fi speaker ever within a few years. By 1975, JBL overtook Altec as the monitor of choice for most studios. The major studios continued to use huge designs mounted on the wall which were able to produce prodigious SPL's and amounts of bass. This trend reached its zenith with The Who 's use of a dozen JBL 4350 monitors, each capable of 125 dB and containing two fifteen-inch woofers and

3045-801: The L-100, was used in a large number of homes, while the Yamaha NS-10 served both domestically and professionally during the 1980s. Despite not being a "commercial product" at the outset, the BBC licensed production of the LS3/5A monitor, which it used internally. It was commercially successful in its twenty-something-year life, from 1975 until approximately 1998. The diminutive BBC speaker has amassed an "enthusiastic, focused, and ... loyal following", according to Paul Seydor in The Absolute Sound . Estimates of their sales differ, but are generally in

3132-583: The LS5/8 – a large "Grade I monitor" already in use at the time – and with live sources, the BBC Research Department developed the LS3/5, which became the famous LS3/5A that was used from 1975 to much of the 1990s and beyond by the BBC and audiophiles alike. In the late 1960s JBL introduced two monitors which helped secure them pre-eminence in the industry. The 4320 was a direct competitor to

3219-466: The NS-10 has polarised opinions, characterised as "love them or hate them". Many professionals find it indispensable, even though they may not particularly enjoy listening to it; others refuse to give it space in their studio but will happily admit that it is an effective professional tool. The reliance on the NS-10 by top independent producers became a viral phenomenon; thousands of studios equipped themselves with NS-10s to attract big named producers, making

3306-410: The NS-10 is heavily boosted in the upper midrange, and like other sealed-box speakers of similar size its bass extension is limited. It has a +5 dB boost in the midrange at around 2 kHz, and the bottom end starts rolling off at 200 Hz. The midrange response is so open that it exposes the frequencies that are the most problematic and worst-sounding to the human ear. On a practical level for

3393-426: The NS-10 possesses sonic characteristics that allow record producers to assume that if a recording sounds good on these monitors, then it should sound good on most playback systems. Whilst it can reveal any shortcomings in the recording mix as well as the monitoring chain, it may lead to listener fatigue with prolonged use in the domestic setting. The NS-10 does not have a perfectly flat frequency response. The sound of

3480-571: The NS-10) released the CLA-10. Although they were careful not to mention it in any of the company's materials, many have speculated that the CLA-10 is an NS-10 clone, to fill the market gap left by Yamaha when they stopped production of the original NS-10. In January 2019, Minneapolis Speaker Company launched a new brand of speakers called Bold North Audio. Their first product, the MS-10W, is stated to be

3567-500: The US, and Nigel Jopson in the UK. Clearmountain, then a rising star in record production, is often credited for the popularity of the NS-10; Phil Ward, writing in Sound on Sound , suggested that Clearmountain was probably not the earliest, but was certainly the most influential early adopter. It became a legend that Clearmountain had chosen it because it was the worst speaker he could find. He

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3654-1053: The United States, a position it maintained in its various incarnations (the 604 went through eleven model-changes) over the next 25 years. It was common in US studios throughout the 1950s and 60s and remained in continuous production until 1998. In the UK, Tannoy introduced its own coaxial design, the Dual Concentric, and this assumed the same reference role in Europe as the Altec 604 held in the US. The British Broadcasting Corporation researchers conducted evaluations on as many speakers as they could obtain in around 1948, but found commercial loudspeaker makers had little to offer that met their requirements. The BBC needed speakers that worked well with program material within real professional and domestic settings environments, and not just fulfil technical measurements such as frequency-response, distortion, monitors in anechoic chambers. Above all,

3741-467: The advent of punk , new wave , indie , and lo-fi , a reaction to high-tech recording and large corporate-style studios set in and do-it-yourself recording methods became the vogue. Smaller, less expensive, recording studios needed smaller, less expensive monitors and the Yamaha NS-10 , a design introduced in 1978 ironically for the home audio market, became the monitor of choice for many studios in

3828-503: The brain works most efficiently if the information rate through the ears—via speech—is the 'average' reading rate, which is about 200–300 wpm (words per minute), yet the average rate of speech is in the neighborhood of 100–150 wpm." Listening to time-compressed speech is seen as the equivalent of speed reading . These techniques can also be used to transpose an audio sample while holding speed or duration constant. This may be accomplished by time stretching and then resampling back to

3915-418: The characteristics of every type of system available; technical faults must not be apparent to even a minority of listeners while remaining undetected by the operating staff. It is further argued that, because of technical progress in the science of sound transmission, equipment in the studio originating the programme should have a higher standard of performance than the equipment employed in reproducing it, since

4002-407: The design principle or cost, has a completely flat frequency response; all speakers color the sound to some degree. Monitor speakers are assumed to be as free as possible from coloration . While no rigid distinction exists between consumer speakers and studio monitors, manufacturers usually accent the difference in their marketing material. Generally, studio monitors are physically robust, to cope with

4089-455: The early years of the recording industry in the 1920s and 1930s, studio monitors were used primarily to check for noise interference and obvious technical problems rather than for making artistic evaluations of the performance and recording. Musicians were recorded live and the producer judged the performance on this basis, relying on simple tried-and-true microphone techniques to ensure that it had been adequately captured; playback through monitors

4176-582: The former has a longer life. In fact, most professional audio production studios have several sets of monitors spanning the range of playback systems in the market. This may include a sampling of large, expensive speakers as may be used in movie theatres, hi-fi style speakers, car speakers, portable music systems, PC speakers and consumer-grade headphones. Amplification: Studio monitors may be " active " (including one or more internal power amplifier(s)), or passive (requiring an external power amplifier ). Active models are usually bi-amplified , which means that

4263-463: The high frequencies are reflected back into the tweeter instead of being absorbed. Hodas derided the tissue practice as "aberrant behaviour", saying that engineers usually fear comb filtering and its associated cancellation effects. He also suggested that more controllable and less random electronic filtering would be preferable. Newell et al. noted that had the speakers' grilles been used in studios, where they are routinely removed, they would have had

4350-415: The high volumes and physical knocks that may happen in the studio, and are used for listening at shorter distances (e.g., near field) than hi-fi speakers, though nothing precludes them from being used in a home-sized environment. In one prominent recording magazine, Sound on Sound , the number of self-amplified (active) studio monitor reviews significantly outweighs the number of passive monitor reviews over

4437-448: The high volumes and sudden sound bursts that may happen in the studio when playing back unmastered mixes. Broadcasting and recording organisations employ audio engineers who use loudspeakers to assess the aesthetic merits of the programme and to tailor the balance by audio mixing and mastering to achieve the desired result. Loudspeakers are also required at various points in the audio processing chain to enable engineers to ensure that

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4524-499: The ideal replacement woofer for the NS-10M. The website includes copious amounts of engineering data showing driver and in-system comparisons. Studio monitor Studio monitors are loudspeakers in speaker enclosures specifically designed for professional audio production applications, such as recording studios , filmmaking , television studios , radio studios and project or home studios, where accurate audio reproduction

4611-534: The input sound signal is divided into two parts by an active crossover for low and high frequency components. Both parts are amplified using separate low- and high-frequency amplifiers, and then the low-frequency part is routed to a woofer and the high-frequency part is routed to a tweeter or horn . Bi-amplification is done so that a cleaner overall sound reproduction can be obtained, since signals are easier to process before power amplification. Consumer loudspeakers may or may not have these various design goals. In

4698-414: The mic'ing or recording quality that a more precise monitor would expose. Other producers feel that monitors should mimic home audio and car speakers, as this is what most consumers listen to music on. Still more believe that monitors need to be relentlessly unflattering, so that the producer and engineer must work hard to make recordings sound good. No speaker, monitor or hi-fi sound system, regardless of

4785-445: The mistake of replacing the 604 with the 605A Duplex, a design widely regarded as inferior to its predecessor. There was a backlash from some record companies and studios and this allowed Altec's competitor, JBL (a company originally started by 604 designer James B. Lansing), to make inroads into the pro monitor market. Capitol Records replaced their Altecs with JBL D50 Monitors and a few years later their UK affiliate, EMI , also made

4872-465: The monitor became the touchstone of all engineering and production decisions. As a result, accuracy and transparency became paramount and the conservatism evident in the retention of the 604 as the standard for over twenty years began to give way to fresh technological development. Despite this, the 604 continued to be widely used - mainly because many engineers and producers were so familiar with their sonic signature that they were reluctant to change. In

4959-601: The move to JBL's. Although Altec re-introduced the 604 as the "E" version Super Duplex in response to the criticism, they now had a major industry rival to contend with. Over the next decade most of the developments in studio monitor design originated from JBL. As the public broadcaster in the UK, the BBC had the determinant role in defining industry standards. Its renowned research departments invested considerable resources in determining studio monitor suited to their different broadcasting needs, and also created their own models from first principles. A 1958 research paper identified

5046-501: The music professional, the speaker is analytic and clinical-sounding. Gizmodo likened the NS-10 to music editors who reveal the weaknesses of recordings, so that engineers would be forced to either make necessary compensation in the mix or otherwise rework them. A 2001 report by Newell et al. at Southampton University undertaken for Studio Sound in 2001 found that the NS-10 had excellent time-domain response at low frequencies – its ability to start and stop in response to signal input

5133-446: The normal condition and avoidable departures from this state, while justified upon occasion, should not be allowed to become a permanent feature of the system. In designing a loudspeaker, the BBC established the compromise that had to be established between size, weight and cost considerations. Two-way designs were preferred due to the inherently simpler crossover network, but were subject to the limitations of speaker driver technology at

5220-467: The original length. Alternatively, the frequency of the sinusoids in a sinusoidal model may be altered directly, and the signal reconstructed at the appropriate time scale. Transposing can be called frequency scaling or pitch shifting , depending on perspective. For example, one could move the pitch of every note up by a perfect fifth, keeping the tempo the same. One can view this transposition as "pitch shifting", "shifting" each note up 7 keys on

5307-457: The past two decades indicating that studio monitors are predominantly self-amplified, although not exclusively so. Hi-fi speakers usually require external amplification. Monitors are used by almost all professional producers and audio engineers. The claimed advantage of studio monitors is that the production translates better to other sound systems. In the 1970s, the JBL 4311's domestic equivalent,

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5394-469: The pitch, creating the so-called Chipmunk effect . When resampling audio to a notably lower pitch, it may be preferred that the source audio is of a higher sample rate, as slowing down the playback rate will reproduce an audio signal of a lower resolution, and therefore reduce the perceived clarity of the sound. On the contrary, when resampling audio to a notably higher pitch, it may be preferred to incorporate an interpolation filter, as frequencies that surpass

5481-440: The pitches and tempos of two pre-recorded clips for mixing when the clips cannot be reperformed or resampled. Time stretching is often used to adjust radio commercials and the audio of television advertisements to fit exactly into the 30 or 60 seconds available. It can be used to conform longer material to a designated time slot, such as a 1-hour broadcast. The simplest way to change the duration or pitch of an audio recording

5568-526: The problems of cinema sound. Stereophonic sound was in its infancy, having been pioneered in Britain by an engineer who worked for EMI . Designing monitors for recording studios was not a major priority. The first high-quality loudspeaker developed expressly as a studio monitor was the Altec Lansing Duplex 604 in 1944. This innovative driver has historically been regarded as growing out of

5655-634: The programme is reasonably free from technical defects, such as audible distortion or background noise. The engineer may mix programming that will sound pleasing on the widest range of playback systems used by regular listeners (i.e. high-end audio , low-quality radios in clock radios and " boom boxes ", in club PA systems , in a car stereo or a home stereo). While some broadcasters like the BBC generally believe in using monitors of "the highest practicable standard of performance", some audio engineers argue that monitoring should be carried out with loudspeakers of mediocre technical quality to be representative of

5742-470: The reconstruction of the time-scale modified output signal. The strategy of how to derive the synthesis frames from the analysis frames is a key difference among different TSM procedures. For the specific case of speech, time stretching can be performed using PSOLA . Time-compressed speech is the representation of verbal text in compressed time. While one might expect speeding up to reduce comprehension, Herb Friedman says that "Experiments have shown that

5829-467: The regular systems end-users are likely to be listening with; or that some technical defects are apparent only with high-grade reproducing equipment and therefore can be ignored. However, as a public broadcaster dealing with a lot of live material, the BBC holds the view that studio monitors should be "as free as possible from avoidable defects". It is argued that real life low-grade sound systems are so different that it would be impossible to compensate for

5916-412: The results phasey and diffuse. Recent improvements allow better quality results at all compression/expansion ratios but a residual smearing effect still remains. The phase vocoder technique can also be used to perform pitch shifting, chorusing, timbre manipulation, harmonizing, and other unusual modifications, all of which can be changed as a function of time. Another method for time stretching relies on

6003-413: The room). Monitor speakers may include more than one type of driver (e.g., a tweeter and a woofer ) or, for monitoring low-frequency sounds, such as bass drum , additional subwoofer cabinets may be used. There are studio monitors designed for mid-field or far-field use as well. These are larger monitors with approximately 12 inch or larger woofers, suited to the bigger studio environment. They extend

6090-534: The same effect on the treble output as the improvised tissue paper filter. The speaker came to be relied on by independent engineers, who worked in different studios and needed equipment they were familiar with as a reference point. Throughout the 1980s, engineers and producers worked widely with the speaker to monitor "[almost] any album you love from the 80s or 90s" – from Born in the U.S.A. (Bruce Springsteen), Avalon (Roxy Music) Let's Dance (David Bowie), to Big Bam Boom (Hall and Oates). The NS-10, and

6177-485: The sound goal, in a monaural system: It is assumed that the ideal to be aimed at in the design of a sound reproducing system is realism, i.e. that the listener should be able to imagine himself to be in the presence of the original source of sound. There is, of course, scope for legitimate experiment in the processing of the reproduced signals in an endeavour to improve on nature, however, realism, or as near an approach to it as may be possible, ought surely to be regarded as

6264-625: The speaker in 2001, citing problems sourcing the wood pulp for the drivers. Even years after it was discontinued, the speaker continued to be found in studios everywhere. Mix reported in 2008 that variants of the NS-10 were still commercially available in the Japanese consumer market. The NS-10 is an 8-ohm two-way loudspeaker with a 10.4-litre sealed cabinet measuring 382 × 215 × 199 millimetres (15.0 × 8.5 × 7.8 in) and weighing 6 kilograms (13.2 lb). Its 2.5 cm (0.98 in) particle-board cabinet has

6351-544: The speaker/room interface and led developments in room design, trapping, absorption and diffusion to create a consistent and neutral monitoring environment. The main post-NS-10 trend has been the almost universal acceptance of powered monitors where the speaker enclosure contains the driving amplifiers. Passive monitors require outboard power amplifiers to drive them as well as speaker wire to connect them. Powered monitors, by contrast, are comparatively more convenient and streamlined single units, which in addition, marketeers claim

6438-487: The speakers an industry standard . Clearmountain was said to have been one of the first recording engineers to hang tissue paper over the tweeters of the NS-10 to tame the over-bright treble. The phenomenon became the subject of hot debate. Recording engineer Bob Hodas investigated the alleged sonic effects of tissue paper. He found inconsistent results with different paper, but said that tissue paper generally demonstrated an undesirable effect known as comb filtering , where

6525-434: The subject. To complement its larger two-way monitors for studio use, the BBC developed a small speaker for near-field monitoring of the frequency range from 400 Hz to about 20 kHz for its outside broadcasting monitoring. The principal constraints were space and situations where using headphones is unsatisfactory, such as in mobile broadcasting vans. Based on scaling tests done in 1968, and detailed audio work against

6612-469: The time – there were few high-frequency units available at the time that functioned down to 1.5 kHz, meaning that the woofer must operate in a predictable manner up to about 2 kHz. The BBC developed a two-way studio monitor in 1959, the LS5/1, using a 58mm Celestion tweeter and 380mm Goodmans bass unit, but continually had problems with consistency of the bass units. The successful testing of

6699-406: The time were Eastlake / Westlake monitors with twin 15" bass units, a wooden midrange horn and a horn-loaded tweeter. The UREI 813 was also popular. Based on the almost ageless Altec 604 with a Time-Align passive crossover network developed by Ed Long , it included delay circuitry to align the acoustic centers of the low and high-frequency components. Fostex "Laboratory Series" monitors were used in

6786-447: The two ends together. Against the black finish of the cabinet, the white bass/mid driver cone is a distinctive and iconic feature of the product. The network is second-order passive , crossing over at 2 kHz. The frequency range is quoted from 60 Hz to 20 kHz, and rated power handling is 25–50 W. The early version of the speaker has press-down type input terminals; later models had screw terminals. In simplistic terms,

6873-486: The two techniques (for example by separating the signal into sinusoid and transient waveforms), or use other techniques based on the wavelet transform, or artificial neural network processing , producing the highest-quality time stretching. In order to preserve an audio signal's pitch when stretching or compressing its duration, many time-scale modification (TSM) procedures follow a frame-based approach. Given an original discrete-time audio signal, this strategy's first step

6960-459: The user specifies, which should be an integer multiple of the tempo, and between 30 Hz and the lowest bass frequency. This is much more limited in scope than the phase vocoder based processing, but can be made much less processor intensive, for real-time applications. It provides the most coherent results for single-pitched sounds like voice or musically monophonic instrument recordings. High-end commercial audio processing packages either combine

7047-435: The width of the sweet spot, allowing "accurate stereo imaging for multiple persons". They tend to be used in film scoring environments, where simulation of larger sized areas like theaters is important. Also, studio monitors are made in a more physically robust manner than home hi-fi loudspeakers; whereas home hi-fi loudspeakers often only have to reproduce compressed commercial recordings, studio monitors have to cope with

7134-473: The work of James Bullough Lansing who had previously supplied the drivers for the Shearer Horn in 1936, a speaker that had rapidly become the industry standard in motion-picture sound. He had also designed the smaller Iconic and this was widely employed at the time as a motion-picture studio monitor. The 604 was a relatively compact coaxial design and within a few years it became the industry standard in

7221-435: Was badged "NS-10M Studio". Improvements included a new tweeter and crossover to address the problem in the treble, better connection terminals, and a sturdier cabinet that no longer accommodates grilles. The Studio reincarnation also has improved power handling – 60–120 W. In excess of 200,000 pairs of "Studio" alone were sold throughout the world. Also in the product line-up were NS-10T, NS-10M X, NS-10MC, NS-10MT. The NS-10M X

7308-399: Was found to be superior to that of most other nearfield monitors. Part of this was related to its closed-box design. The researchers held that the extremely fast decay time of the speaker in the low frequencies ensures that the bass instruments (guitar and drums) are correctly balanced in the mix. There were many other versions of the NS-10, the best known of which were the "NS-10M Studio" and

7395-422: Was hazardous because engineers unfamiliar with their sonic signatures could make poor production decisions and it was financially unviable to give production staff expensive studio time to familiarize themselves with new monitors. As a result, pretty well every U.S. studio had a set of 604's and every European studio a Tannoy Dual Concentric or two. However, in 1959, at the height of its industry dominance, Altec made

7482-516: Was one of a new breed of creative freelance recording engineers and producers who would travel from studio to studio equipped with their own gear that included microphones, and a pair of Yamaha NS-10, as a reference. Recording studios around the world, particularly those specialising in rock and pop music, adopted the speaker as the standard. In excess of 200,000 pairs were sold throughout the world. Gizmodo referred to it as "the most important loudspeaker you never heard of". Yamaha stopped manufacturing

7569-516: Was used simply to check that no obvious technical flaws had spoiled the original recording. As a result, early monitors tended to be basic loudspeaker cabinets. The state-of-the-art loudspeakers of the era were massive horn-loaded systems which were mostly used in cinemas. High-end loudspeaker design grew out of the demands of the motion picture industry and most of the early loudspeaker pioneers worked in Los Angeles where they attempted to solve

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