That's a totally useless generalization. Well, maybe it applies to crap cheap PA. But not well-chosen mid-tier boxes, and not the big boy toys. Say stuff like that and anybody who knows PA is going to have trouble taking anything else you say all that seriously, even if you might know something about other types of gear.
Ok, easy mate
as someone stated further up this thread "The majority of PA speakers these days (good or bad), are compact two-way boxes, crossing a 12" or a 15" woofer off to a large horn. Inherent in the design, is a boost in the midbass, a fairly big scoop in the midrange, and a lack of detail at the very high end." which certainly tally's up with my experiences. It was an over generalised statement, I admit, but it does seem to be a feature of most of the pa systems I have used.
I think in the context of this thread we can ignore big BIG venue/'big boy' systems! It was a rather playful suggestion, NS10's boost a lot of the nasty frequencies, PA's are likely to have a little less of them (if anything).
Bob Clearmountain himself, who largely got the ball rolling on their acceptance, was one of the first to admit they were practically crap, but if you KNEW them, you could do good work with them (with occasional cross-referencing). There were a fair number of nearfields back then that were more accurate with good detailed midrange imaging that didn't force foam or tissue paper retrofitting. But they didn't meet the price point and they weren't distributed enough to become ubiquitous.
Yeah, they are largely crap, but they DO have the benefits I suggested! My boss (who is VERY experienced) was the one who told me the NS10 low end limit trick. I know that when the kick is on the edge of breaking up on the ns10's then I've reached a nice limit for it to go , low end wise. Of course you'd generally do this on the bigger monitors and just listen, but in a tricky track with an abnormal low end it can be a good 'meter'.
Ditto the mids, I'm happy (as are a lot of the engineers I work with) they are pretty awful in the top and bottom because it is , as I say, an audio magnifying glass on the region where all hell can break loose. They just make a couple of things easy to sort. And monitors are an area where personal preference is so crucial, Bob Clearmountain is a legend of course but him saying they are crap is not going to make me want to use something else. They happen to be one of the nasty sounding speakers that seem to have stood the test of time. I cringe a little when yamaha release new revisions which are 'like the ns-10 but with more lows!!' etc etc,it seems someone has missed a trick there. I'm not alone as an engineer who like to work on a very imperfect speaker design. In mine and a lot of others opinions its not a case of 'I just about know them well enough to do something which doesn't suck' and more 'they make certain parts of the whole process really easy' sometimes on there own but more favourably in conjunction with a nice pair of mains. I generally prefer one pair like NS-10's or AR-18's and one slightly low/hi hyped pair like KRK V8's or adam A7's.
As for latency: ohmigod. I guess we've gone as far as we can with this little chat.
..ok, my bad, by latency I mean the group-delay of the speaker, and the time domain characteristics which are very good in the NS-10's low and mid range. Have you looked at a Freq./Amplitude/Time waterfall plot of the NS10's? They are pretty good results! One factor that makes the bass sound small on NS10's but pretty accurate for a cheap speaker. I'm not certain, but I would imagine the size alone would impact on this particuar area of performance in a pa speaker or even a bigger monitor speaker.
Sorry latency is the wrong word, lazy english, though it kind of works as long as you differentiate from digital system signal latency (which I didn't
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