Review: Yamaha HS5

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are reviewing an interesting pair of studio monitors, part of a wide range that features several sizes and wattages: Yamaha HS5!

In a market that proposes self proclaimed mixing level monitors for all price tags, Yamaha HS5 are in my opinion the entry level studio monitors to begin mixing with a sufficient degree of realism (and for realism I mean that a mix made through these monitors translates well also in other systems, such as car stereo, mp3 player, pc speakers and so on).
Mixing with cheap monitors that doesn't guarantee a good degree of realism instead means only one thing: the mix will sound well only from there, and as soon as you try to play the song somewhere else, it will sound completely unbalanced, with some parts of the mix too loud and others too quiet.

Here are some good criteria to keep in mind when choosing a pair of mixing monitors:

- the size of the speaker: the bigger, the more the bass area is represented well in the spectrum, but beware because some speakers can over emphasize it. 5 inches is a good starting point, below this size, the frequencies that are cut away are too many (arriving also to the mid area).

- the wattage: 70w as per these speakers is a lot, and it grants an impressive headroom. Also lower wattages are good, since the ideal mixing volume is the conversation level to limit ear fatigue, but beware of excessively low wattage monitors (like 10w), because in order to hear decently you will have to crank them, ruining the quality of the reproduction. To mix and master we need perfect clarity and headroom.

- the adaptability to the room: this is a blog about home recording, which means that most of our readers are bedroom producers, or enthusiasts that doesn't have a perfectly treated mixing room.
Some monitors, included these Yamaha, features a low and high frequencies equalizer to adapt the response of the monitor to our room, allowing us to limit the lower resonances or work on the high end to make the details pop out more or less, according to our necessity.

In conclusion I can't but recommend these speakers: they have the best price for what they offer, and they sound extremely clean and detailed; since I am using them the quality of my mixes has increased, and compared to the devices I was using before is like twice as easy to find the right balance.
Thumbs up!


Specs taken from the website:


- 2-way bass-reflex bi-amplified nearfield studio monitor with 5" cone woofer and 1" dome tweeter

- 54Hz - 30kHz frequency response

- 45W LF plus 25W HF bi-amp system for high-performance 70W power amplification

- ROOM CONTROL and HIGH TRIM response controls

- XLR and TRS phone jack inputs accept balanced or unbalanced signals

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