Yamaha NS5000

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.

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?

@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.