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by rocketbop 1206 days ago
> Sure shitty laptop speakers are how most people listen to music, but they each listen on different shitty laptop speakers with completely different sound characteristics.

The canonical shitty speakers that almost every studio used for years was the yamaha NS10.

They were used because of their limited frequency response and dynamic range. When mixing the engineer would switch between the good speakers and the Yamahas. The reason is if it sounds good on the bad speakers then it will sound good anywhere.

It’s not necessary to test mixes on every conceivable speaker, but a couple of different types should satisfy you that it’s in the pocket.

1 comments

I remember reading a paper that analysed the Yamaha NS10 and came to the conclusion that they were not just some shitty speakers but actually had some exceptional qualities like their transient response. It probably was the one linked in this article: https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story
Thanks, that’s a good article. I liked this observation which I think applies to multiple fields.

> Misunderstanding also tends to breed misinformation, which is often disseminated by well-meaning amateurs: those whose knowledge of a subject is sketchy are always prey to the intuitively plausible but utterly wrong explanation for one phenomenon or another.