YAMAHANSF51 Floorstanding Speakers - Black

I moved house recently, and have a larger living room, so I decided to get some floor-standing speakers to replace my Mission bookshelf units. On unpacking the units, I was impressed by the quality of the finish, and how solid, heavy, & well built these speakers are. Connecting them was easy, as I already have good quality speaker cables terminated in banana plugs. When I first started listening to them, I thought they sounded awful, but this was because they were not run in yet. After as little as an hour, they started sounding more natural. I was surprised that the instruction manual doesn't even mention breaking the speakers in! This procedure normally takes around 20-30 hours. They still sound a little 'boomy', however, but I was able to improve this by turning down the bass a little. They may improve after they are fully run in. I opted to remove the grilles, as I think they look and sound better without them. The speakers achieve very good volume levels using my 40W per channel Rotel amplifier. I find the sound very detailed, but also quite laid-back compared to my previous monitor speakers. I know it's a bit of a cliché, but with these speakers, I really do hear details in the music I havn't heard before, especially in the bass range! Overall, I'm very impressed with them, although I've knocked a star off because the bass resonates rather too much. This may improve as they settle down, however.Update: After using for nearly 2 weeks, my speakers are well & truly run-in, and they are indeed less boomy and sound much smoother now. They seem to be sounding better & better with use.Further update: I had some people looking round my house the other day, and one little b***** dented one of my dome tweeters! So I thought I'd share how I fixed it. Firstly, I unscrewed the 3 allen bolts, & removed & unplugged the driver. Then I sucked out the dent. After this, there were still a couple of small creases in the plastic, so I warmed it with a hairdryer on high setting & the marks vanished! You'd never know it had been damaged, and it sounds as good as ever!

This is written only a couple of hours after installation (and 2 radically different CDs). Therefore, I would expect it to improve quite some degree after a proper running-in, without resorting to extreme measures to speed the process up...I 'tested' them in the same room where my old Mission speakers are, positioned in exact same places, driven by same old & trusted Marantz amplifier fed by the same source as I used for many years. Thus, differences on inside-out known music material would, I thought, make themselves obvious.So... where credit is due, it is due. Sure, 'audiophiles' may look down on Yamaha speakers (even more on their prices in low and mid-categories), but as a techie, I firmly think that progress has superseded some quite stuck-in-time snobbish opinions.Fresh out of the box, they behave absolutely stunningly (with full consideration given for no run-in yet).To put it in context, evil little me first subjected them to Jean-Michel Jarre's remastered Equinoxe, which has myriad details across the vast electronically-generated frequency spectrum, without any hard thumping beats.Then, for something completely different, came Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny's Beyond The Missouri Sky - eminently acoustic, with a full-bodied bass playing from Haden, and Metheny going through numerous guitars in different manner.Everything was played at a 'comfortable' volume, I didn't want my head to cave in, the focus was on properly hearing things without audio anatomy kicking in and starting to desperately attenuate what it can.Well, gosh. This is a pair of speakers at 200 pounds price point. Raw, out of the box. But... a huge but:- we have strong bass where it is needed, without any muddiness or disturbing colouring. Even compared to my old Missions, I can hear way more detail in both the superb overture of the electronic Equinoxe and Haden's double bass plucking.- the translucent, very high pitch electronic shimmerings sprinkled on top of some tracks on Equinoxe came through with detail I have not managed to hear on my Missions, without shrill emphasis either;- the mid-range doesn't dominate and does not mask higher end of the bass,- the clarity and detail are simply heartwarming. Things sound cosy, filling the room effortlessly. I mean, dear me, every single plucking from Metheny comes across with the necessary transients and the harmonics, with subtle sounds of the fingers sliding on the fretboard... while the deep bass from Haden is sounding natural - heck, they are practically sitting in my lounge...A special note on the evenness and details, because sections of Equinoxe are demanding - not in the nightclub "blow my head off" sense, but in the sense of 'busy, electronically generated, low end plus multi-layered mid-range plus some very fine metal and glass particles at the very top end' sense'. I was curious whether something takes over or starts to smear audio details. Well, nope.Again, to re-re-iterate, these are 200 UKP speakers. But I just cannot believe it. Absolutely definitely one can VERY easily pay 2-3 times more than this price for some other big names.I think my Mission speakers from 20-odd years ago will be severely demoted to the home office room for some background music... and I paid quite much more back then for those (not calculating with inflation...).

I have to be honest, I wasn't sure initially if these speakers would be as good as most of the reviews said they are. However, I'm blown away...they have a real depth and solidity of sound plus excellent detail and they have that ability of being able to put a great big smile on my face!Whether I'm listening to orchestral, jazz, piano or prog rock with Emerson, Lake & Palmer they really, really sing! They look terrific too and the price is unbelievable for this kind of high quality sound.Use some really good gear with these and they deliver, really deliver! Highly recommended.UPDATE!I've now been running these loudspeakers for a few months so they should be run in now. I still stand by what I said earlier. For the asking price they are fabulous with a solid delivery of sound which have a firm bass extension and good detail and clarity at the top end with a nice middle that doesn't take over!For many years I had Yamaha NS1000M Monitors which I absolutely loved. They gave me everything I wanted in high quality sound reproduction. Now I'm not saying these new Yamaha speakers will produce the sound of the NS1000M, I don't expect them to do that, but they create a really good, indeed very, very good sound stage which can at times make me think back to those days with the NS1000M's and make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and like I have said earlier, put a great big smile on my face! At this price, they're very good...no, they are more than that, they're excellent!