Yamaha NS-1000M

I purchased a pair new in 1980; still use them in my second system, driven by a QUAD 606-II power amp. I could not even think about parting with them now. They still look great and sound excellent. Lots of dynamic range, tight bass and crystal clear mid/upper with fantastic transient response. Of course there are better speakers available (I love my Nautilus 801s), but for the money and longevity, you can't beat the NS1000Ms.

I agree. They typically sell for around $1,000 nowadays..give or take $300. I have the madacassar (spelling?) ebony finish. I have fallen in love with them. I'm using them in my office and I'm having difficulty partying with them. Much like the Altec A7 Voice of the Theaters that I kept in my garage for a year. I refinished those. They two had a great, but unique sound.

The common wisdom calls for these speakers to be used with tube amps to minimise the "brightness" and give them more "life" than with ss. They have always been an exceptional speaker and I still enjoy them at a friends house. They are certainly the equal of anything anywhere near there price. There is also a slight improvement if you bypass the mid & high speaker controls. Also sound a little less harsh if you use silver wire to the tweeters. Enjoy them.

Here goes again.
Speakers that use dome midranges do not image well.It took me some years of building speakers to realise this.I have built and owned several speakers with dome mids and have listened closely to both the Yamaha NS1000 and NS1200 speakers.This is not just room reflections/acoustics because even outside they still don't image precisely.
A friend with NS1200s has replaced the mid dome with a Fostex cone mid because they were not imaging properly.Now they do.
Good imaging means that you should not be able to discern that the soundstage is coming from the speakers.Voices for example should sound quite narrow and sound that they are hanging in air between the speakers.The NS1000s don't do this.Voices are very wide and vague and you hear that they are coming from both speakers.
When you think about it this makes perfect sense.A cone shape will focus sound whereas a dome will just spread it.
Really good speakers regardless of type should image properly.Otherwise we might as well all listen in mono to Bose 901s.

JT

I don't know about that. I do get a pretty solid image. Maybe not as pinpoint as other speakers, but pretty good still.

Imaging has more to do with time alignment then dome vs. cone and to a lesser extent, intensity. The one thing domes do, is that they increase the area of the sweetspot. That is why most tweeters are domes. Producing high frequencies off axis is difficult, especially outside of 30 degrees. By using a dome, the window is widened. With a normal speaker you can clearly distinguish when you move a foot or two to oneside of the sweetspot. The image begins to collapse.