John Darko
Looking for a pair of bedroom or desktop loudspeakers but don’t want to engage in the faff of finding the right outboard amplifier for a passive pair? Yamaha wants to pull on your coat about two new super affordable powered monitors: the HS3 and HS4.
Inspired by the legendary NS-10 studio monitors, the HS3 and HS4 are both two-way designs with XLR ‘combo’, RCA and minijack sockets on the back to maximise analogue hook-up potential. As is common with monitors of this stripe, the back panel also features bass and treble ‘trim’ adjustments to assist the user in compensating for wall or corner proximity (at 500Hz) or a livelier-sounding room (at 2kHz).
The HS3 is the smaller of the two models, marrying a 0.75″ fabric dome tweeter to a 3.5″ mid/bass driver. The HS4 pumps the tires on driver sizes to 1″ and 4.5″ respectively but uses the same driver materials.
Bass extension on both the HS3 and HS4 is aided and abetted by a rear-firing ‘twisted flair’ port, which brings us to our first wrinkle. Yamaha specifies the HS3 as good down to 70Hz and the HS4 down to 60Hz; but those are -10dB ratings. That means 70Hz emanating from the HS3 (and 60Hz from the HS4) will be perceived as half as loud as, say, 1kHz. Room gain might assist with bass extension but no room is as good as a subwoofer.
The next wrinkle: the HS3 and HS4 are powered loudspeakers — but they’re not active. An active 2-way would put four amplifiers after a powered crossover, one per driver. The amplifier inside the HS3 and HS4 is a stereo Class D module that resides in the primary loudspeaker and sits before a passive (read: non-powered) crossover network to drive the secondary loudspeaker over a simple speaker wire interlink.
Best to think of these new Yamaha as passive speakers where the usually outboard amplifier has been squeezed into one of the MDF speaker cabinets, thus saving us the palaver of sourcing our own. A small volume control sits on the front of the primary loudspeaker.
The HS3 sell for US$250/pair and the HS4 for US$285/pair. Your choice of black or white. Shipping begins at the end of November.
Further information: Yamaha
