This started out as a reply to
@Rusty Dogg 's thread "Why no love for Yamaha speakers?"
So just making an observation, it seems hard to find anyone giving yamaha speakers a good rap, surely there's some yammy fans in here , , , , I have 2 x ns-777 for fronts, 2 x ns-c444 for centres, 2 more ns-c444 for height speakers, 2 x ns-333 for rear surrounds, 2 x old ns-50f for L&R rear...
forums.audioholics.com
However, as it panned out I realized I had totally drifted from Yamaha to Japanese speakers in general, so thought it might be best to start a new thread.
I know some of our members live/have lived in Japan and hope to hear any insights they might have!
So just making an observation, it seems hard to find anyone giving yamaha speakers a good rap, surely there's some yammy fans in here , , , , I have 2 x ns-777 for fronts, 2 x ns-c444 for centres, 2 more ns-c444 for height speakers, 2 x ns-333 for rear surrounds, 2 x old ns-50f for L&R rear...
forums.audioholics.com
On the flip side, I don't think I've ever read anything bad about them ... I just hardly ever see any mention of Yammy speakers.
Extending that further, I rarely see any mention of
any Japanese companies for speakers in today's market (maybe there are some, but I don't realize they are Japanese). Back in the mid-70's to early-80's, I listened to lots of speakers when even a small town had a couple of audio shops and the Japanese speakers (Technics, Pioneer, Sansui, and Sony come to mind) just did not compete for sound quality with the better US and European speakers (FWIW, I liked Technics best among the affordable Japanese speakers I listened to). The Japanese had so dominated the audio electronics market and it seems a little strange that they never really got much of a foothold in the speaker business. I have often wondered if, somehow, the fact that traditional Japanese music uses such a different scale that it may be a different timbral quality is preferred among the Japanese! The Japanese surely sold tons of speakers here, but they never really made a name for themselves in the speaker market!
That was ~40 years ago and certainly there has been a substantial blending of culture (including music) since then. It is hard to know how significant/relevant the marketing position from those formulative years would be on today's market. It may be that the Japanese companies decided that being the worlds premiere source of consumer electronics kept them busy enough and it made since to keep focus on that instead of venturing out. Or maybe today's Japanese speakers are wonderful, but the economics of shipping them here in today's economy is not so lucrative as to make sense. I would love to see statistics on what speakers Japanese audiophiles use. Until Pioneer brought Andrew Jones' inexpensive speaker design to the market, Yamaha was the only (Japanese speaker) presence that I have been aware of (not that I have been watching). Sony may have been there, but did not make my radar until the Core Series was introduced in response to the AJ Pioneers. Of course I am not counting the thousands of Japanese speakers in boombox and shelf type systems (which are of impressive sound quality given the cost)!
Any thoughts?
