<font color='#0000FF'>Hi Rob,
Yamaha has always made speakers from seventies onwards, the company was formed to supply speakers for their musical instruments and was soon ported for home and commercial audio speakers. The NS-1000x luanched in the 70s used berrilyum for mid range and tweeters and was considered way ahead of its contemporaries then. It was rated as the flattest and most transparent speakers by several magazines and was used as monitors by big names as Danish Boradcasting and several big studios. The NS-10M sold 170,000 units worldwide is also another popular Yamaha monitor and chanes are that most of your CD collections has been mastered on that.
Even though Yamaha stopped NS-1000 sale in the US in the late 80s, people still actively trade it on e-bay. Read another forum member Hondaman's experience with the NS-1000M.
Sadly Yamaha only bought mediocore speakers to the US because of majority's ignorance on Yamaha speakers. They sold low end speakers at BB and never bought their award winning NS-200/300 to the US. The situation is slightly better today as they are selling their medium range NS-555/777 at BB which is receiving accolades from those who are auditioning them, sadly their Grand Prix award winning NS-6/8HX are yet to be launched and the NS-200/300 are never going to be marketed by them.</font>