Specifications

Turn to Disc Two from the Standing in the of
Motown
disc and listen to three jam sessions by
some of the world's best musicians. These cuts
sound like what you would experience if you
carried the microphone around the room while
next to the camera man. The ambience of this
famous recording studio is stitched into the
space of your listening room by the YSP-1. You
hear the juxtaposition of the different musicians,
the reverberations from those hallowed Motown
walls. You hear it all! I'm talking about being
immersed in the musical exhilaration of an event
which only a lucky few ever experience. The
YSP-1's three dimensional portrayal of this
musical event is simply phenomenal.
Again though, when the camera moves to
the Funk Brother's tambourine man, the front-
and-center energy of his instrument so
highlights the 3-6 kHz frequency region that the
overall sound becomes grating and loses
delineation. This segment is one of the many
reasons why
Standing in the Shadows of
Motown
is such a great reference disc. This
scene in particular is torture in the extreme for
even very high-end tweeters. It is infinitely
harder for the YSP-1's much fuller range
drivers to be expected to handle.
For the two movie examples just described,
the average SPL levels, measured at the
listening position (8 feet away), ranged between
95-98dB using the Radio Shack meter. At
these very loud levels the YSP-1 remained very
clean and unstrained sounding except on the
most over-the-top interjections of sound such
as when the F14's afterburners kicked in. At
this instant it did appear that the YSP-1 went
into hard clipping. But I must emphasize that
this was the only instance when I could actually
say yes, the unit is clipping.
For the rest of my listening it seemed as if
the YSP-1 was playing impossibly loud and
cleanly when producing its prodigious SPL
output. So I would conclude that some very
clever soft-clipping circuitry has been designed
into these 10-channel digital chips. Better than
I've yet heard from any moderate power digital
amps up to this time.
Okay, any other nits? Yes, a couple:
The Yamaha YSP-1, in order to sound its
best, must have a least one subwoofer to
supply the required low frequency balance if
you want to crank this puppy hard. In my set-up
I was using a 650-watt, sealed 10" and an
850-watt sealed 12". Both subs had been
equalized in my listening space to within ±2dB
from 20Hz to 100Hz.
It was only with this
monstrous bass accompaniment that I was able
push the YSP-1 hard enough SPL-wise to
induce audible clipping
.
Second, in my open floor plan living room
with corner placement, the YSP-1 cannot
synthesize a fully round "sound bubble" like an
actual set of -90º and +90º dipoles or bipoles
can. This is almost an impossibility given that
1 Ltd's Design Engineer adds:
One of the subtle but very powerful
advantages of generating all of the 5-
channel sound from the same set of
loudspeakers and amplifiers is that there is
inherent dynamic power sharing; so that
when one channel is quieter it leaves all its
unused headroom available for use by the
other channels. Thus, the continuous max
power available on any one channel is the
same as the continuous max power
available on all channels simultaneously.
Dr. Hooley adds:
This is likely related to the almost
spherical waves emitted by the centre
channel when its focal length is set
negative, e.g. to say ~-0.5 to –1.5m.
the sound-beam-throwing phenomena
exploited by the YSP-1 depends on the ear-
brain being able to triangulate a point of sound
using the sound source and both ears. Once
one ear is blocked by one's head, such as
would be the case for a sound at ±90º from the
0º listening position the "full-round-surround"
effect is much more difficult to synthesize.
The upshot of the preceding paragraph is
that for the YSP-1's power and small driver
size, sound "beams" can only be made so
narrow and therefore project only a specific
distance with a limited amount of power before
the beam spreads out and loses both power
and focus. The YSP-1 does, therefore, have
the potential to perform even better in a smaller,
rectangular room, mounted not in the corner but
against one of the wall surfaces. I plan to follow
up this first review with a further thoughts piece
when I move the YSP-1 into my smaller, almost
square home office. Stay tuned...
Summing Up
The Yamaha YSP-1's Digital Sound
Projection is totally different and much more
immersive and believable than I've heard from
anything less the most precisely placed and
calibrated "traditional" circle-of-surround set-
ups. It is more real; and truly three dimensional
in its ability to convincingly envelop the listener.
Center channel dialog can be tuned within
the software to portray an actor's natural timbre
without chesty upper bass frequency boost
often heard with horizontal D'Appolito-style
center channel speakers. Overdubbed voice
insertions can more easily be detected
within a movie scene because the voice
will often exhibit the hooded mouth-too-close-
to-the-microphone characteristic of a hastily
added section of dialog. Conversely, a vocal
recorded in the natural environment of the
scene will be heard as such.
This natural, out-of-the-box effect is usually
only heard from very flat-response
loudspeakers which also have a very smooth
polar response envelope. The YSP-1's center-
channel articulation prowess, properly tuned, is
among the most naturally detailed I've heard.
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