Yamaha NS5000

I suppose I should have asked what others are finding out about the speakers, does the bass fatten up over time? how far do you place them from first reflection points, do you angle them so the drivers are aimed at ear height, stuff like that will be appreciated even if it seems contradictory. So far they seem to excel at vocal clarity and as I'm looking for 2 channel speakers to serve in my tv room that's important. low volume detail is also high on the list A hegel h360 will likely be the integrated driving them.

Toed in a just a tiny bit.

Townsend Podiums are placed under the rounded spikes. Made a nice improvement on the sound.

The thing that you will notice about the NS5000 is the incredible coherence in the sound. You cannot tell what the 3 drivers are doing separately. The sound seems to come from 1 driver. That was the main reason I got the NS5000.

The Persona 7F you had is a great speaker to compare with the NS5000. The Yamaha NS1000 was the very first speaker to use Beryillium (Be) in the tweeter and the midrange. This was done in the 1970’s. Paradigm Persona copied that BE tweeter and mid design a few years ago. Yamaha says the new NS5000 Zylon material is better than Be. I agree with this point and do not hear the sharpness or edge in the sound with Zylon as I do with Be.

The NS5000 scales with the gear you put on it. For example, the Schitt Yggi+ LIM DAC was bad with the NS5000. The Schitt Yggi+ OG was a revelation with the NS5000 (incredible). I converted my LIM to the Schitt Yggi+ MIB and that is much better than the LIM on the NS5000 but not as good as the Yggi+ OG. I think the DAC in the Hegel 360 is not as good as the LIM.

I tried a Schitt Wotan amp with the NS5000 and it was passable. I think this amp is as good as my old CODA #8 and other $8k and under amps I owned. However, the CODA #16 takes the sound to the top end levels. The better the gear the more the NS5000 will shine. This is not always the case with speakers I have owned, such as my Magnepan LRS+ or Mini speakers. The improvements in sound with my best gear was marginal. With the NS5000 it is a huge difference.

It is a very resolving speaker that will reveal a lot about what’s upstream of it.

It needs a sizeable chunk of power, as you may have noted. Think of it as some....hybrid between a high end studio monitor and a ’audiophile’ speaker. I have it about 5 ft from the wall and I sit midfield about 7ish feet from it.

Your mcintosh is probably not doing it a lot of favors (with the 2d flattening the mac tends to do). If you can snag a higher end luxman, rotel michi, some of the big older Levinson, etc, it would be a better fit for just listening. I also use it as a monitor when I am trying to fix an endless amount of crappy recordings I have. It is a fairly popular speaker with musician dudes... (not the starving kind, the ones who have slightly bigger pockets). I can think of a few reasons why, but, this is probably not the forum to argue about it.

Get a high quality subwoofer to go with it and it should work well for a wider variety of musical genres.

The mc611's sound great driving my Blades and aren't going anywhere. Ideally the yammi's will play nice with my Hegel H360, another piece I chose after comparing to the others I could try in their price range. 

I managed a few hours with the NS5k in my basement system last night and will try to do the same tonight. I'm replacing the stereo speakers in our tv room and these are probably overkill, but I'm pretty confident wifey won't deed closed captioning anymore as these are very clean and clear. While listening I was wondering if the woofers needed time to loosen up as they sounded a little lean to me yet this morning my mrs said all she could hear was John paul Jones from upstairs! I was playing Fool in the rain. 

When I look at the current market it's the $10-20k price range that holds the most value to my ears and while I've got a couple weeks to decide to keep or return, I haven't really set them up properly yet and appreciate what they do well.

If I had to compare them to the Blades I'd remind they cost double and both punch above their weight.

Oh yeah, are you guys tilting them back to compensate for the low tweeter height? My  ears are 3-4" above. 

IDK what was wrong with the mc611's you auditioned, but there's nothing 2d about the delivery. 

The bass on the NS5000 is a function of the gear in front of it. When I put my Schitt Yggi+ OG DAC, which is well known for bass, the NS5000 was really pounding the air with bass. I put on When the Levee Breaks to see how far the hard-hitting sound would go and it was chest pounding great. A very coherent sound with great detailed bass.

I have heard more bass with the Paradigm Persona 9H speaker but it sounded like bass was coming from a subwoofer. The bass on the NS5000 is less in quantity than the 9H but it sounds better to my ears.

To expand on the comment above about musicians loving the NS5000. My friend, who is a musician, came over and listened to the NS5000. He loved the sound. He even called me up the next day and said he could not get the sound out of his mind. That was an interesting comment to me because that dude has great hearing.

I am not tilting the speakers at all. I used to sit in front of the speakers but these days I listen 1 floor up in a balcony like space (still sounds great). That may change since I quit a job last week.

BTW - both my amps really drive the NS500 well, the Schitt Wotan and the CODA #16. The #16 is a better amp but the Wotan at $2k is surprisingly good and I think sounds like an $8k amp. I have owed a few $8k amps in the past.

BTW2 - how does the NS5000’s clarity compare with the Persona 7F you owned?

Indicator that there are room issues (modal, sbir, etc) you may need to address...

While listening I was wondering if the woofers needed time to loosen up as they sounded a little lean to me yet this morning my mrs said all she could hear was John paul Jones from upstairs! I was playing Fool in the rain.

I’ve had so many speakers in this room the last 10 years and the ns5k immediately reminded me of the 7f. The 7 f was more critical of placement and while I can’t speak to the ns5k yet the 7 f was also sensitive to source, maybe the only speaker I could hear a difference in dac’s. Tonally though with the 7f playing well the balance between bass, mids, and treble was very similar . I read a review claiming the 5k did miniature imaging? I’m not getting that, as to a review claiming the music would pull his focus back to the speakers, I’m not really getting that either. I really think placement makes or breaks speakers. I’m not getting a lot of depth in the soundstage right now, but I bet a little more toe in would do it, not that important right now as I’m just enjoying playing the oldies. Oh, just for fun play amused to death, three wishes. Half the speakers I try it on botch the voice at the outside of the soundstage, the 5k’s managed nicely, I was going to drive 1200 miles to grab a used pair of Vienna Acoustics the music, but I think I’ll keep these.

@steve59 I loved the detail on the Persona but I felt it was a bit fatiguing. I would have needed a warm amp like the KRELL Duo XD on a Persona. I think the NS5000 has the same detail as the Persona, but it is not fatiguing and can be used with any amp’s sonic flavour.

I love playing the Stones Sympathy for the Devil from one of the remasters on the NS5000. The soundstage is huge, way beyond the speakers, almost KEF Blade like. Last time I played that track my musician friend who I said loved the NS5000 was at my place, and he tells me his friend plays on that track. We had a great conversation about that.

BTW - if the review of the NS5000 that you are talking about was from the Australian SoundstageGlobal then I would dismiss it. That was a messed up review and the editor of that site did a follow up review saying in not so many words, to ignore the previous review.

BTW2 - I have heard THE MUISIC speaker, and I like the NS5000 way more. That thing was setup with the most toe in ever. That bugged me a bit.

I agree everything you just posted. Including my experience with krell electronics.  There were some tracks I played the other night that equalled or at least came close to the blades, I was pleasantly surprised. The more I listen the more I notice. 

Regarding the VA's a thread on this forum mentioned a bad batch of coax drivers that ran $2500 each,add that to current distribution issues and I was trying to talk myself out of them despite being a sucker for their house sound 

you have the tweeters on the inside or outside?

Inside, because the tv room has an inside corner that will necessitate that anyhow and is how Yamaha recommends setup I went with it.

When I said the ns5k equaled the blades or at least came close I left out that I was comparing the soundstage, an important distinction I think. I’ve learned enough to know there’s too many variables to make qualitative remarks.