Yamaha NS-8HX

How do you make 65 Kg's disappear? Just use a set of these magnificent speakers to listen to music, that's how. These Reference Monitors from Yamaha are so transparent that the speakers become invisible and the music all encompassing. Yamaha have a history of reference speakers in the professional audio industry, for many years the NS-10's and NS-1000M's have been the staple mix down monitor for recording studio's worldwide. This new range of speakers, called the HX Home Theatre Reference Series builds on the expertise gained in this field. The NS-8HX's are the top of the range in this new series and are an imposing and handsome piece of furniture. With dimensions of 1102 mm (H) X 364 mm (W) X 397 mm (D) each box weighs a hefty 32.5 Kgs and is finished in Canadian Maple. These boxes are crafted in Yamaha's Piano factory in Indonesia and as a consequence would grace any lounge room.

Power rating is 140 Watts nominal with a maximum input rated at 400 Watts. With an efficiency of 92 dB I would suggest any amplifier of 60 Watts (RMS / 8 Ohms) would be more than sufficient, as always, of course, the more power - the merrier (within reason). The cone is made out of Canadian Evergreen White Spruce and is currently the worlds lightest single-sheet diaphragm material allowing for an immediacy not apparent in many other speakers. Musically, these things are superb, as I mentioned earlier they melt away as the performance takes over the room. They are not quite up to the standard of the Paradigm Reference 100's (there again, I've never heard any speaker under $8000 as good as the Paradigm's) but as a combination Home Theatre / Music speaker. and the fact that they're $500 less than the Paradigms, there's little on the market to compete with them.

Matched with the NS-4HX as surrounds and the NS-C5HX Centre, we put the NS-8HX's through their paces using the matching Yamaha YST-SW1500 subwoofer. This, folks, is how theatre should sound. Everything is just There, the soundstage is rock solid, vocals crisp and clear and even at ear splitting levels there is no signs of distress or distortion. Playing ELO's ZOOM DVD Concert, the opening bass just explodes with the first vocals cutting through all the audio clutter. It's how you'd imagine the sound to be in the first row of the concert hall. Our test movie - Terminator 3 - is one of the most demanding movies in terms of dynamics and the ability of the speaker to handle high levels of extraneous sound whilst still delivering intelligible vocals, the HX series was just superb in this respect and this set up would be one of the best single brand integrated speaker packages we've had the pleasure to play with. It knocks the socks off the M&K THX 750 System and is musically better than their THX Ultra packs. We are talking serious money here though, the total speaker package retails at around $9,800. For those of you interested, I've included a picture of the whole HX Reference family. Remember though, Uncle Steve's arm can always be twisted (his brain already is) so a magic package price can be negotiated.